Paper short abstract:

In the context of a postsocialist multicultural society social fears are manifold and reflect tensions between globalising and localising tendencies. I will discuss boundary making strategies and the search for cultural authenticity of Tatar youth scenes in Tatarstan.

Paper long abstract:

If we see emotions such as fear in an interpretive tradition more as a socially validated judgment than as an internal state, then anthropologists may be able to make certain statements about collective social phenomena such as boundary making mechanisms and power relationships between social groups and networks by studying articulation and bias of social fears in a certain society.

Such fears may be shaped by contemporary global events and tendencies, but they are embedded in a cultural and historical background without the understanding of which the articulation of fears as well as social answers cannot be adequately analysed.

I would like to discuss the articulation of social fears in the culturally diverse postsocialist Republic of Tatarstan (Russia) such as the fear of alien "external forces" (e.g. fear of Westernisation, Islamic fundamentalism) as well as the fear of the internal or neighboring Other (fear of Russification resp. Tatarisation, as well as of immigration). With a focus on youth identities, basing on fieldwork conducted in Tatarstan periodically from 2007-2010, I will make some reflections on how such fears influence and shape boundary making mechanisms (e.g. between ethnic Russians and Tatars, between 'nominal' ethnic Muslims and 'practising' religious Muslims etc.). In the discussion of the social answers of youth on such predominating fears I will give an insight into processes such as actualisation of history in overcoming perceived cultural hegemony, the rooting of elements of a 'globalised youth culture' into an ethnonational context etc.