Multinational State and Policy Towards Different Ethnic and Cultural Groups

On May 5, the fourth meeting of the "Laboratory for Diversity Research" was held. It was dedicated to the theme of "Multinational state".

At the beginning of the meeting, Andrey Kozlov, Doctor of Sciences in Biology, made a presentation. He spoke about the peculiarities of stratification in the communities of indigenous northerners, reflected the problems of the crisis of egalitarian structure and provided results of a historical analysis of the role of modernization and urbanization in these communities. The participants of the discussion asked questions about the methodology for collecting and analyzing the presented research results, about contemporary Russian policy on indigenous peoples and its main trends.

After the lecture part, the participants divided into working groups to discuss relevant cases. The first case was about differences in level of cortisol (stress hormone) in groups of representatives of three ethnic groups: Russians, Khanty and Komi-Permyaks. Discussion concluded that strong ethnic identity could function as a semantic 'shield' that reduced the influence of a stressful context on the human psyche in crises.

The second case was dedicated to a series of reading groups on reading national texts, which took place within the V Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art. The aim of the considering project was to implement cultural exchange and increase the visibility of ethnic minorities. The colleagues discussed the reading group as a new ambivalent format for the practice of cultural exchange and noted the risks associated with reducing cultural diversity to the so-called 'boutique multiculturalism.'