Paper short abstract:

I focus on the construction of monuments with political and religious significance and how the local community is linked to the nation. This involves important intermediaries on the local level who communicate this to the local population, foster interpretations and sustain support.

Paper long abstract:

In my presentation, I focus on the construction of monuments and the place making in urban settings that allow for the construction of local communities and interlinkages to the nation. This involves communicative processes of translation into local “language”. This has been called vernacularization and fruitfully applied to the human rights context. Sally Engle Merry (2005: 221) was able to show how “human rights ideas are repackaged in culturally resonant wrappings.” She drew special attention to the role of intermediaries, who take an active role in this process. In a similar reading, I show how businesspeople, politicians, and clergymen at the local level are able to draw on ideas from the national level and translate them into the local context. For the concept of the vernacularization of politics, I draw on Michelutti (2008: 3), who describes this process in which local values and political practices “become entrenched in the consciousness of ordinary people.”

I have chosen the erection of a monument dedicated to Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich, the founder of the city of Vladimir (Russia). The initiative for the construction of the monument is rooted in local initiative. Nevertheless, the construction of the monument was incorporated in a national program, where similar monuments were erected all over Russia. This needed communication to sustain support from state and non-state institutions on the federal level. Moreover, it indicates a general trend in Russian politics of favouring Orthodoxy and helping the Russian Orthodox Church to reappear in the public sphere.