The Foundations

by Alexander Dugin

  Bastide added to his studies the psychoanalytical method. He considered the situation, typical for Brazil, in which a White Portuguese landowner has a White Catholic wife, a group of Native mistresses, and a concubine of Negro women. Thus, a gender hierarchy is added to the social and ethnic ones. Bastide traces the self-consciousness of the numerous groups of bastard children, who are born owing to extramarital colonial practices, which comprise an imposing percent of the contemporary Brazilian population. The social identification of the bastard children plainly demonstrates the settled attitudes towards a group of values (White, male, Portuguese, proprietor, master) and anti-values (Black, woman, Native, slave, pauper).294

  Gilbert Durand: The Anthropological Structures of the Imagination

  The contemporary French sociologist Gilbert Durand, a pupil and successor of Roger Bastide and the philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962), develops Jung’s ideas as applied to society and social structures. In his main work The Anthropological Structures of the Imagination he proposes an original development of Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, which Durand himself calls the “imagination” (imaginaire), distinguishing within it different modes, responsible for certain social phenomena, institutes, and processes.295 Society is conceived of as a projection of the imagination in the combination of a few of its modes.296

  Durand isolates one “diurnal” mode and two “nocturnal” modes (the mystical and the dramatic). All myths, legends, religious rites, and social arrangements reflect one or another of the modes of the imagination or their combination. In his works, Durand describes the symbolic arrays that correspond to these modes and identifies them both in myths and in contemporary literature, philosophy, etc. For Durand, the modes of the “imaginaire” are active in both archaic societies (directly) and in complex, differentiated societies (indirectly).

  The “diurnal” mode (ancient, bright) is responsible for the creation of vertical hierarchies and symmetries of “up-down.” Many religions and cultures, at the centre of which lie the worship of the sky, light, sun, and corresponding heavenly figures, are based on this. In social structures this corresponds to social hierarchy, power, politics, and patriarchy; in the domain of culture, to rationalism, will, and logos. In this mode, binarity, opposition, and polarity dominate in an intensified and irremovable form. This is the mode of differentiation, distinction, division.297

  The mode of the “mystical nocturne” (the first nocturnal regime) is the complete opposite of the diurnal mode. In it, oppositions are removed; the symbolism of night, mother, unity, peace, and calm predominate. It is the symmetry of center and periphery. The themes of water, earth, calm, shelter, food, comfort, and sleep are associated with it. In differentiated societies, this mode corresponds to privacy, home, kitchen, family, woman, children, fertility, and the peaceful rhythm of toil.298

  The mode of the “dramatic nocturne” (the second nocturnal mode) is built on the integration of binary opposites, which are admitted, but overcome in a synthesis, in order to make room for a new pair. This is a dialectical mode. Its symbols are marriage, the symmetry of right and left, the gender pair, and unstable and dynamic balance. Various twin myths, constructed on the principle of opposition/supplementation (complementarity), correspond to it. Erotic cultural motifs, and everything associated with marriage, are found under the sign of this mode. Various cyclical forms pertain to it.299

  Durand’s reconstruction allows one to study social and political institutions, economic practices, myths, rites, symbols, and dreams — including psychic illnesses, which are also classified according to the modes, with the diurnal being responsible for the family of paranoid disorders, the mystical nocturne for schizophrenia and epilepsy, and the dramatic nocturne for cyclothymia and cyclophrenia — all with the same method.300

  Durand himself did not apply his sociology of the imagination immediately to the ethnos, but he based his theories on abundant ethnographic and ethnological material. We provided examples of the constructiveness of his method as applied to the ethnos and Ethnosociology in the books Sociology of the Imagination and Mythos and Logos.301 , 302

  Pierre Bourdieu: Engaged Ethnosociology

  The well-known French Marxist sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) sometimes used the term “Ethnosociology” in his works. In the context of the discipline of Anthropology, he wrote numerous works critical of structuralism, to which he opposed the “dynamic” approach of “practice and strategy,” aiming to depart from the constancy of structures and functions that comprise the essence of cultural, social, and structural anthropology, as well as the ethnosociological approach as a whole.303 Bourdieu tried to overcome the dualism of Structuralism/Constructivism, suggesting the hybrid term “constructivist Structuralism.”304

  Bourdieu’s attitude towards the ethnos is maintained in a Marxist spirit; by it he understands a primitive society finding itself in the early stages of social development. In the spirit of Marxism, he also criticizes the capitalist exploitation, lying at the basis of colonial practices. On this foundation, in the early stage of his work, Bourdieu promoted “engaged Ethnosociology,” i.e., the active participation of left intellectuals-sociologists in the struggle of European colonies for independence, development, and the building of socialism. Bourdieu was influenced in the elaboration of this model by his own stay in Algeria in the period when a dramatic struggle for the attainment of independence and freedom from French colonial domination was unfolding. Bourdieu studied the ethnic groups of the Berbers and Kabyle.305

  For the Marxist Bourdieu, Sociology and Ethnology, like any sciences, reflected a class ideology, and hence the majority of European studies of colonial societies were conducted under the weight of bourgeois-colonialist clichés. Bourdieu was calling for the leftist European intelligentsia to take the side of the oppressed colonial masses, which acted as the social synonym of the “world proletariat.”

  Bourdieu introduced a few new concepts into Anthropology that can be somewhat significant for Ethnosociology. Thus, he developed sociologically the term earlier used by philosophers (in particular, medieval nominalists and scholastics like Thomas Aquinas, and Husserl in the modern era), proposing to consider it as a kind of third unit between rigidly established impersonal social structures (with which the classical functionalist theory of Durkheim and the structuralists dealt) and the subjective interests, wishes, and impulses of the individual. A “habitus” is a form of consciousness, containing within itself a set of schemata, sympathies, tastes, and dispositions. The main difference between a habitus and a structure consists, to a large extent, of its individuated and dynamic character. Bourdieu develops these ideas in more detail in his so-called “sociology of taste.”306

  Bourdieu also often employed the concept of a “field” in an attempt to replace the more rigidly hierarchized concept of “class.” In complex societies, he thought, there are a few social fields which are not related hierarchically and are relatively autonomous. He considered as such fields the areas of politics, law, education, art, and economics. Each field is differently structured sociologically and develops in accordance with its own regularities. In simple societies, among the Kabyles, whom Bourdieu studied in North Africa, fields tend toward combination in one field. Contemporary bourgeois societies, on the other hand, distance them from one another and create the preconditions for various algorithms of stratification in each of them. A recognized artist differs from a beginner not like rich from poor, but like commander and subordinate.

  The unified or differentiated character of social fields can be applied in Ethnosociology for the analysis of criteria of difference of the ethnos from its derivatives.

  Summary: Ethno-Analysis and Post-Ethnic Analysis

  If we unite the four basic scientific traditions we have considered, we get a fundamental theoretical and methodological apparatus for the construction of a general ethnosociological discipline. The specific character of this discipline consists of the fact that it
holds the simple society (koineme), thought of as the ethnos, to be the foundation of sociological analysis (for all types of society!) and further builds its analysis on the study of both the simplest form and its more differentiated derivatives. At the same time, it is the ethnos (archaic society, the primitive form, society, Gemeinschaft, community, folk-society) that serves as a benchmark and model for comparison. The ethnos is taken as an “ideal type” (Weber) or “normative type” (Sombart), with the help of which and through comparison with which, any society, however complex, is studied.

  Moreover, the correlation of the ethnos and its derivatives is carried out in two main directions: along the lines of similarity and difference.

  If we consider the complex and differentiated society as a derivative of the ethnos (the line of similarity), then we can find in complex society traces of the ethnos, ethnic dimensions, or analogues of the phenomena met with in the ethnos. We can call this the “ethno-analysis” of complex societies.

  On the other hand, we can raise the question: how does complex society differ from simple society and in what does the difference between narod/laos, nation, civil society, and ethnos consist? This is analysis along the line of difference, which is called upon for the study of complex societies to the extent that they are not the ethnos or are post-ethnic. We can call this approach “post-ethnic analysis” or the study of the orders of ethnic derivatives.

  In both cases, it is necessary for us to have knowledge, classificational models, analytic instruments, typologies, taxonomies, etc., relating to simple societies (Anthropology, Ethnology, Ethnography, Religious Studies) and the same in the case of complex societies (Sociology in the proper sense of the word). Ethnosociology exists at the intersection of these two sets. Even a brief survey of authors and orientations shows how well-founded and solid its theoretical foundation is and how gripping and profound the history of its scientific establishment is.

  5.

  Ethnosociology in Russia

  I. Prehistory of Russian Ethnology

  The Origin of Russian Historical Science and Ethnography

  Interest in what we today call “the ethnic problematic” was in evidence from the very moment of the emergence of Russian science. In the 18th century, the founder of Moscow State University Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711–1765), Fedor Ivanovich Miller (1705–1783), who stood at the wellsprings of Russian historical science, August Schlözer (1735–1809), Vasily Nikitich Tatischev (1686–1750), the founder of Russian Ethnography, Ivan Nikitich Boltin (1735–1792); Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov (1733–1790), Nicolay Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766–1826), and many others who were interested in the origin of the Slavic narod, antiquities, and other ethnic groups and tribes, advanced hypotheses about the nature of the ethnonym “Russian,” tried to systematize information about those ethnoses which populate and populated Russia from antiquity. They collected, processed, systematized, and published ancient Russian chronicles, annals, and other materials of a historical and geographical character. Miller personally participated in an ethnographic expedition to Siberia and gathered much worthy information there about the life of the Russian narod and other ethnoses.

  The Early Slavophiles: Kireyevsky, Khomyakov, Aksakov, Samarin

  Interest in ethnography in Russia peaked in the 19th century, when interest in the philosophy of history (Hegel) and the influence of the German Romantics on the Russian nobility reached its apogee. This is evidenced most clearly in three phenomena:

  • In the tendencies of the Slavophiles;

  • In the flowering of the study of Russian folklore and Ethnology;

  • In the political movement of narodnichestvo.

  The first Slavophiles — Kireyevsky (1806–1856), Khomyakov (1804–1860), the Aksakov brothers Konstantin (1817–1860), Ivan (1823–1886), and Samarin (1819–1876), advanced the thesis of Russia’s distinctive character, of the distinctive value of Russian Slavic culture, and that its difference from European culture should be considered, not as “backwardness,” but as the expression of the peculiarities of the narodni spirit. Essentially, the question was raised whether European society, despite its pretensions to universality, is a local cultural phenomenon, which must be set in an array of different societies, among which the Russo-Slavic Orthodox culture will occupy a worthy place.

  To this, as is well-known, responded the Westernizers (Chaadaev [1794–1856], Granovsky [1813–1855], Belinski [1811–1848], and others) whose positions amounted to the idea that Western culture is universal and all of Russia’s differences express its “backwardness” and “underdevelopment,” that there is nothing distinctive in character about it, or that if there is, it should be discarded as quickly as possible.

  In any case, the Slavophiles focused on the question of the fates of narods, the differences among ethnic societies, the distinctive characteristics of culture and values, and, correspondingly, their significance. They called for the systematic study of Slavic ethnoses and Slavic cultures, with the aim of systematizing knowledge of their social arrangement, customs, mores, distinctive psychological characteristics, etc.

  Thereby, they laid the prerequisites for the later emergence of ethnology.

  The Late Slavophiles: Danilevsky

  The second generation of Slavophiles developed and justified the intuitions of the founders of this movement. We should single out among them the three brightest figures: Danilevsky, Leontiev, and Lamansky.

  In his principal book “Russia and Europe,” Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky (1822–1885) formulates for the first time the theory of the plurality of civilizations, which he calls cultural-historical types.307

  In contrast with Western European thinkers, who considered their own civilization the only one possible, attributing all others to the category of “barbarism,” Danilevsky proposed to consider it as one of the civilizations, as a “Romano-Germanic” culturo-historical type. At the same time, Danilevsky distinguished a number of other distinct and fully completed cultural-historical types, which were based on entirely different principles, but possessed all the markers of long-term and stable civilizations, having existed over the course of many centuries, preserving their identity, and surviving governments and different ideological formations, epochs of religious revolutions, and changes of value-systems.

  Danilevsky singled out ten fully-fledged culturo-historical types (civilizations):

  1. The Egyptian;

  2. The Chinese;

  3. The Assyrian-Babylonian-Phoenician-Chaldean or Ancient Semitic;

  4. The Indian;

  5. The Iranian;

  6. The Jewish;

  7. The Greek;

  8. The Roman;

  9. The New Semitic or Arab;

  10. The Romano-Germanic, or European.

  He thought that in the 19th and 20th centuries a new, eleventh cultural-historical type was forming, the Russo-Slavic, possessing all the basic markers of a civilization.

  Danilevsky thought that civilizations pass through stages of becoming, maturation, and old-age, like living beings. The Romano-Germanic civilization, in his opinion, is in the stage of senescence and decline. The Russo-Slavic world, on the other hand, is just coming into force.

  In ethnosociological terminology, the concept “cultural-historical type” corresponds to the concept “narod/laos.”

  Leontiev: Three Types of Society

  Konstantin Leontiev (1831–1891) also thought that Russian civilization and Russian culture were something with their “own distinctive character” (samobitnie) and that the main peculiarity of Russian history was its Byzantinism, i.e., movement in the currents of the Byzantine-Slavic Imperial tradition, which sharply differentiated Russian history from the history of other Slavic narods.308

  Leontiev developed the teaching about different types of historical development, isolating such types as 1) “initial simplicity,” 2) “flowering complexity,” and 3) “all-mixing” or “overflow.” He thought that Russia was at the final phas
e of the second stage and that it should be “frozen.” The government should be firm “to the point of severity,” and people “personally kind to one another.”

  He considered most worthy in a civilization the second stage of “flowering complexity.” It is possible that Leontiev borrowed this image from Herder, who had compared ethnoses and narods to different plants, flowers, and trees in the garden of paradise.309 If we apply Leontiev’s periodization to Ethnosociology, then “initial simplicity” corresponds to the ethnos, “flowering complexity” to the narod/laos, and “all-mixing” to civil society and global society (allusions to which can be perceived already in bourgeois nations).

  Lamansky: Greco-Slavic Civilization and the Middle World

  Vladimir Ivanovich Lamansky (1833–1914), the eminent ethnographer, historian, and researcher of Slavic culture, belonged to the generation of late Slavophiles. He was the author of serious works about the culture of the Slavs of Eastern Europe, and also one of the first essays of comparative ethnography and sociology, The Italian and Slavic Nationalities in their Political and Cultural Relations, in which he compared the ethnocultural peculiarities of the Slavic and Italian ethnoses.310

  In his book The Three Worlds of the Asian-European Mainland, Lamansky divided the space of Eurasia into three parts: the Romano-Germanic world, the Asian world, and the Greco-Slavic world.311 The Romano-Germanic corresponded to Western Europe, and the Asian, to the countries of the East, beyond the borders of Russia. He called the Greco-Slavic world the “middle world,” thereby anticipating the concept of Eurasia.