Human faces Global Challenges of Modernity

Anthropologists of Tomsk State University have presented their scientific project as part of a newly opened Siberia Research Center. The scientists focused on global challenges of modernity. Taking into account their own considerations and approaches used by the leading social and humanitarian teams, the anthropologists of Tomsk State University identified three main challenges of modernity: high intensity of migration flows, mass distribution of information technologies and active nature development by the mankind.

People over the world respond differently to these challenges, so the project aims at studying specific features of such response.

"This project is transdisciplinary due to the complexity of goals set by the team. Its aim is to understand how identities are formed and transformed, analyze social adaptation of people in context of modernization and global social disruptions. The study will supposedly be carried out with the Siberian data and we all know that Siberia has long been cosmopolitan, multi-confessional, urban and it has witnessed complicated combinations of life styles, behaviors and socioeconomic structures. Thus, the analysis will be performed in the context of global processes," says Dmitry Funk, Project Manager, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Principal Researcher of the Social and Anthropological Research Laboratory at Tomsk State University, Head of Ethnology Department at M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Scholarly importance of the project is evident through planned outcome and exceeding the limits of the academic sphere — the researchers enter the sphere of education, social design and management.

The project team is already working on bachelor and master training in Anthropology and Ethnology as part of the Faculty of History at Tomsk State University. First-year students are actively engaged in scientific life by going on anthropological expeditions (Shoriya, Sakhalin, Kazakhstan – this is only the beginning), taking part in scientific schools in Russia (Yekaterinburg) and abroad (Italy, Bulgaria).

Employees of the Social and Anthropological Research Laboratory, which serves as the main scientific basis in project development, work in close cooperation with primary stakeholders (users of anthropological information): Federal Migration Service, regional energy providers, regional and municipal authorities, non-governmental organizations and schools. These are the parties who are interested in major project deliverables such as: expertise in managing migration processes (Directorate of the Federal Migration Service), resolution of conflicts between producer companies and local communities, as well as nurturing citizens that would be sensitive to cultural differences.