Indigenous Christianity

Missionaries, Modernity, and Marginality in the Siberian Tundra
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-90-485-7515-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 310 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Reihe: Central European University Press

This book traces the story of a Nenets indigenous community in Siberia and how their lives were transformed by religious conversion in post-Soviet and Putin’s Russia. Based on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in a region now largely closed to outsiders, it offers an intimate account of faith, power, and endurance in one of the Arctic’s most marginalized communities.

Nenets nomads, long shaped by Russian colonialism and Soviet modernization, experienced sweeping conversions in the mid-1990s, culminating in the creation of a tundra church tied to a radical evangelical movement. Amid Putin’s tightening control—when indigenous peoples and minority faiths faced renewed surveillance and harassment—the book follows Nenets and missionaries whose encounters across the tundra sparked tensions between converts and non-converts, faith and state. Through stories of hope, loss, and resilience, it reveals how global evangelical Christianity intersects with local traditions, reshaping kinship, belonging, and modernity in the Siberian tundra.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vagramenko, Tatiana

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Note on Transliteration and Terminology

Part 1. Ethnography of Marginality in a Difficult Field

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Nenets Conversion Story: Voices, Choices, and Ethical Dilemmas

Part 2. Religion, Power, and Modernity: From the Soviet Era to the Putin Regime

Chapter 2. Modernity: Russian, Unequal, Contaminating

Chapter 3. The Politics of Religion After Socialism and the Predicament of Religious Life in the Russian Arctic

Chapter 4. Religion and Power: The Rise of the Putin Regime

Chapter 5. Contested Identities: The Rise and Fall of Indigenous Movements in Russia

Part 3. Continuity and Rupture: Nenets Christianities

Chapter 6. Burning the Sacred: Christian Conversion and Cultural Discontinuity

Chapter 7. The Nenets Christian Project: Ethnotheology and Re-Indigenization

Chapter 8. The Production of Christian Fundamentalism in the Nenets Tundra

Part 4. Lived Religion in the Nenets Tundra

Chapter 9. Blood and Faith: Rethinking Kinship Through Christ

Chapter 10. More About Love: Gender, Family, and the Return to Tradition

Conclusion

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Vagramenko, Tatiana
Tatiana Vagramenko, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at University College Cork and Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, works at the intersection of anthropology, religious studies, and digital humanities. She studies religion and surveillance in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts and is co-author of The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents (2025).

Tatiana Vagramenko, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at University College Cork and Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, works at the intersection of anthropology, religious studies, and digital humanities.