Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-8v9h9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-28T21:44:40.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnicity in the City: Tatar Urban Youth Culture in Kazan, Tatarstan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Andrea Friedli
Andrea Friedli*
Affiliation:
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
*
Andrea Friedli, University of Fribourg, Boulevard de Pérolles 90, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland. Email: andrea.friedli@unifr.ch
Get access

Abstract

In this article, the city and the urban space shall be understood as a political platform, where identities and powers are bargained, and as a screen on which they are projected. In this context, I will reflect on the strategies of identity management ‘from below’ employed by Tatar young people in Kazan and on their attempt to build a ‘Tatar urban youth culture’. These identity strategies are mainly oriented against the ‘Russian other’, a decadent consumerist West and an ignorant rural Tatar culture and their main issue is the ‘repossessing’ of Kazan and the Tatarisation of the city. Such strategies namely include the use of the Tatar language in predominantly Russophone public spheres, the introduction of Tatar folkloristic elements in music and fashion as well as the appeal to a (lost) Tatar urban culture associated with an enlightened approach to Islam and to the pre-revolutionary Tatar intelligentsia. Tatar youth scenes thus use ethnicity as a resource in the linguistic, religious, historic and cultural (re)appropriation of the urban space, which in turn has to be understood as a symbolic political act in a specific historical as well as ‘glocal’ context. Thus, this article can be seen as a contribution to a critical approach towards cosmopolitanism introducing alternative concepts to reflect relationships, norms and values in urban life.

Keywords

Identity managementurban youth culturesethnicityappropriation of urban spaceTatarstan

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 63 , Issue 3-4: Urban Anthropology , August 2016 , pp. 72 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aitmatov, Ch (1988 [1980]) The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. Transl. by French, John. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A (2000) Spectral housing and urban cleansing: notes on millennial Mumbai, Public Culture, 12(3): 627–651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P (1985) The forms of capital. In: Richardson, JG (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood, pp. 241–258.Google Scholar
Brubaker, R (1996) Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faller, H (2002) Repossessing Kazan as a form of nation-building in Tatarstan, Russia, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 22(1): 81–90.10.1080/13602000220124845CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedli, A (2012) Tatarization of the city: ethnocultural youth identity management in Kazan, Tatarstan, Urbanities, 2(1): 4–17.Google Scholar
Friedli, A (2013) Informality as a ‘weapon of the weak’? Public representation of Tatar youth movements in Kazan, Russia. In: Hayoz, N, Giordano, Ch (eds) Informality in Eastern Europe: Structures, Political Cultures and Social Practices. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 397–414.Google Scholar
Friedli, A (2014) Children of Genghis Khan, Lenin and MacDonald's: cultural belongings of the post-Soviet generation in Tatarstan. In: Giordano, Ch, Ruegg, F, Boscoboinik, A (eds) Does East Go West? Anthropological Pathways Through Postsocialism. Münster: LIT, pp. 167–182.Google Scholar
Gdaniec, C (2010) Cultural diversity between staging and the everyday – experiences from Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities: an introduction. In: Ead. (ed.) Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities: The Urban Landscape in the Post-Soviet Era. New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Graney, K (2007) Making Russia multicultural: Kazan at its millennium and beyond, Problems of Post-Communism, 54(6): 17–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hebdige, D (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London-New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodžaeva, EA, Šumilova, EA (2003) The revival of religion and ethnic identity of youth in the Republic of Tatarstan, Socls [Sociological Studies], 3: 106–108.Google Scholar
Humphrey, C, Skvirskaja, V (2012) Introduction. In: Eaed. (eds) Post-Cosmopolitan Cities: Explorations of Urban Coexistence. New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, J (1993) The city unbound: qualitative approaches to the city, Urban Studies, 30(4–5): 827–848.10.1080/00420989320081931CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khodzhaeva, E (2011) Muslim youth identity: ‘ethnic’ versus ‘practising’ Muslims. In: Heinrich, H-G, Lobova, L, Malashenko, A (eds) Will Russia Become a Muslim Society? Frankfurt a. M.: P. Lang, pp. 179–222.Google Scholar
Kokot, W, Giordano, C, Gandelsman-Trier, M, eds (2013) Diaspora as a Resource: Comparative Studies in Strategies, Networks and Urban Space. Berlin: LIT.Google Scholar
Kosterina, I, Andreeva, U (2010) The construction of ‘marginality’ and ‘normality’: in search of a collective identity among youth cultural scenes in Sochi. In: Gdaniec, C (ed.) Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities: The Urban Landscape in the Post-Soviet Era. New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 115–137.Google Scholar
Mayer, D (2011) Park Youth in Vienna: A Contribution to Urban Anthropology. Berlin: LIT.Google Scholar
Modood, T (2004) Capitals, ethnic identity and educational qualifications, Cultural Trends, 13(2): 87–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pardo, I, Prato, GB (2012) Introduction: the contemporary significance of anthropology in the city. In: Pardo, I, Prato, GB (eds) Anthropology in the City: Methodology and Theory. Farnham: Ashgate (now published by Routledge), pp. 1–28.Google Scholar
Pilkington, H (2002a) Introduction. In: Pilkington, H, Omel’chenko, E, Flynn, M, Bliudina, U, Starkova, E (eds) Looking West? Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. xiii–xix.Google Scholar
Pilkington, H (2002b) ‘Progressives’ and ‘Normals’. Strategies for glocal living. In: Pilkington, H, Omel’chenko, E, Flynn, M, Bliudina, U, Starkova, E (eds) Looking West? Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 101–132.Google Scholar
Robertson, R (1995) Glocalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In: Featherstone, M, Lash, S, Robertson, R (eds) Global Modernities. London: Sage, pp. 25–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, O (2004) Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Sergeev, S (1998) Youth subcultures in the Republic (of Tatarstan), Socls [Sociological Studies], 1: 95–102.Google Scholar
Werbner, P (1995) From commodities to gifts: Pakistani migrant workers in Manchester. In: Alidair, R, Vertovec, S (eds) The Urban Context: Ethnicity, Social Networks and Situational Analysis. Oxford: Berg, pp. 213–236.Google Scholar
Yiftachel, O, Yacobi, H (2003) Urban ethnocracy: ethnicization and the production of space in an Israeli ‘mixed city’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21(6): 673–693.CrossRefGoogle Scholar