International Centre of Anthropology

The International Center for Anthropology conducts fundamental researches on societies of different eras, geographical areas and sociocultural types. The Center develops and implements international research and educational projects in the field of historical anthropology.

The main targets of the Center are scientific and educational. The educational activities are aimed at enriching the undoubtedly useful anthropological knowledge of novice historians, culturologists, philosophers, linguists, sociologists, and political scientists. The Center also intends to contribute to the formation and maturation of a new generation of anthropologists who can support the connection of Russian anthropology with historical science and at the same time convert Russian anthropology into a natural part of world anthropology, and stay at the forefront of emerging trends in it.

In this regard, the most important task of the International Center for Anthropology is to integrate Russian anthropological science into the latest, barely emerging, but very important trends in the world science, at the same time preserving and using the positive aspect of the heritage of the Russian scientific tradition in the field of social anthropology (“ethnography”) of the past era. The main result of the Center's scientific activity should be a new concept of the socio-cultural history of mankind, based on the identification of the main factors of socio-historical dynamics and mechanisms of their interaction, on the postulates of the plurality of directions and forms of social evolution and the essential role of human subjectivity in the so-called objective cultural and historical processes.

At the current stage of the Centre's activities, the academic work of its faculty complies with two main areas that have a profound inner content and conceptual-methodological connection for all their autonomy: 
1. Historical diversity of directions of social evolution and forms of socio-political organization; 
2. Historical anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa and the African diaspora. The Centre's researchers are acknowledged experts in one or both of these fields.

Historical diversity of directions of social evolution and forms of socio-political organization

Supervisors – Prof. Dmitri Bondarenko and Dr. Dmitri Beliaev

The main Russian partners are the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Faculty of History of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Knorozov Center for Mesoamerican Studies of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

The main foreign partners: City University of New York (USA), George Mason University (Fairfax, USA), Institute of World History (China), James Madison University (USA), Lehigh University (Bethlehem, USA), Universita degli Studi Roma Tre (Italy), University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, USA), University of Georgia (Athens, USA), University of Kansas (USA), University of Western Australia, Winthrop University (Rock Hill, USA).

The goal of the project is to form a holistic concept of non-linear social evolution and the diversity of forms of socio-political organization of societies of the same level of socio-cultural complexity. At the initial stage of the Centre's activities, researchers are focusing on two key aspects of the theory. The first aspect is the basic principles of organization of societies (heterarchic and homoarchic) and variations of their historical realization, from the communities of prehuman primates to modern societies. The second aspect is related to the forms of socio-political organization of pre-industrial societies alternating the state. In these particular aspects of overall problematique of the project the Centre's employees have the most serious, solid works including a large number of individual and collective monographs, articles in collections of essays and journals, papers at conferences in Russia and abroad.

Historical anthropology of Sub-Saharan Africa and African diaspora

Supervisors – Prof. Dmitri Bondarenko and Prof. Marina Butovskaya

The main Russian partners are the Oriental Faculty of the St. Petersburg State University, the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Global History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Asian and African Studies of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Scientific Research Institute Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera).

The main foreign partners: Boston University (USA), City University of New York (USA), Harvard University (USA), Mwalimu Nyerere Memorial Academy (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania), Northwestern University (Evanston, USA), National Museum of Tanzania (Dar es Salaam), United Methodist University (Monrovia, Liberia), University of Hradec Králové (Czech Republic), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), University of Nigeria, University of Zambia (Lusaka)

The aim of the project is to determine how the historical past - both real facts and cultural memory of it – affect the current state of societies and cultures of post-colonial countries in sub-Saharan Africa and African diaspora communities. The particular aspects of the problematique at the initial stage of the Centre's existence are: the influence of historical memory on modern socio-cultural processes in Africa (in particular, on the formation of postcolonial nations); the role of historical and cultural factors in determining the nature of relations within African diasporas and between migrants from African countries and host societies in Africa itself, in Western and Eastern Europe (including Russia), North America, the Caribbean and Australia; the identification and analysis of a wide range of factors (beginning with biological factors) that determine the formation of socio-cultural attitudes of the inhabitants of modern African countries and the directions for the transformation of the post-colonial sub-Saharan African societies.

Educational activity

The Centre faculty members and specially invited foreign colleagues can teach general anthropology courses as part of basic curriculum of educational programs for bachelor and master's degree in various fields and in the framework of university "minors", as well as more specialized courses – Historical Anthropology, Political Anthropology, Evolutionary Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Anthropology of Archaic Societies, Anthropology of Diasporas, Anthropology of Conflicts, Anthropology of the Ancient and Medieval World, anthropology of various regions of the world, etc.

International Centre of Anthropology Brochure (DOC, 6.87 Mb)