Ideas of Alexei Nikishenkov about the Course of “Primitive Society”: Big Problems or Problems of Big Value?

• Main Author: Туторский, Андрей Владимирович
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Russian
• Published: МГУ имени М.В.Ломоносова (Lomonosov Moscow State University) 2016
• Subjects: prehistory; simple societies; contemporary tribes; teaching anthropology; tribal life; prehistory as epistemology; первобытность; теория первобытности; первобытность как эпистемология; преподавание антропологии; социальная антропология; Kung; inuit
• Online Access: http://www.historystudies.msu.ru/ojs2/index.php/ISIS/article/view/66

Alexei Nikishenkov started teaching the Prehistory course in 1986. It was quite clear to him that the prehistoric societies covered this course were diverse and not homogenous. Nikishenkov diverged from the approach presented in the three-volume book “The History of the Primitive Society” edited by Valeriy Alexeev, Abraham Pershitz and Yuriy Semenov, in which different historical, geographical, and economic societies were merged together to form the structure of a nonexistent “Primitive-State Society.” The facts about Australian aboriginals were also applied to Paleolithic Era hunters and gatherers, and the facts about the Inuit people were used as a basis to reconstruct the Neanderthal’s way of life.At the same time, the very facts about the way of life of tribes and peoples from classical anthropological ethnographies – such as the Trobriand Islanders, Tikopia, Dobe !Kung, Yanomamö, Papua-New Guinea highlanders and coast dwellers, among others – are of crucial importance for ethnographical/anthropological education. In history education, the scientific problems of the “prestige economy,” “segmentary society”, “classificatory kinship”, “mythology”, “totemism”, and many others are only discussed in a “History of Primitive Society” class. As a result, discontinuation of this course causes more negative than positive results.The course’s problematic can also become an epistemological tool to investigate contemporary societies such as international corporations, small companies, prison or criminal cultures. A clear understanding of what truly constitutes the culture and social structures of classical anthropological-cases tribes is a necessary condition for the successful investigation of new types of societies. В статье рассматриваются взгляды А. А. Никишенкова на курс «История первобытного общества». Указывается двойственность этих взглядов. С одной стороны, портрет первобытного человека – это сочетание несочетаемого: культуры маори Новой Зеландии, папуасов Тробриандских островов, эскимосов Гренландии, бушменов ...