The Siberian Studies Manifesto

Abstract

his issue marks the re-launch of our journal with Berghahn after ayear’s hiatus in publishing. I would like to thank Vivian Berghahnand her team in the journals division for all their efforts in workingwith us to continue the journal and improve upon the excellent base es-tablished by Alan Wood and Cathryn Brennan. As editor, I coordinatethe work of the associate editors, who put in many of the hours neces-sary to prepare high-quality manuscripts for publication. In volumefour, we published short editorial notes that were collectively signed.This manifesto marks the introduction of a new genre to the journal, asubstantive editorial intended to provoke discussion on a particulartopic. It is authored by a single person, but distributed for comment tothe other editors, and although not peer-reviewed, it has at least re-ceived some peer discussion before going to press. We will take turnsstepping onto the soapbox, and we invite our readers to contribute todiscussions, as well. The topic at hand is very br oad: the place of Siberianstudies in the humanities and sciences generally.First, a note about the term ‘interdisciplinary’ in our subtitle and itsrole in Siberian studies. The term has been reduced to a buzzword oflittle import in much usage, but we take the idea behind it very seri-ously, even more so as the editorial committee acknowledges that weare all (and only) anthropologists. I have participated in several eventsheralded as interdisciplinary, and I know firsthand that fruitful discus-sions are possible, but they are hard work. Interdisciplinarity is oftenaccomplished only so far as crossing of disciplinary boundaries withinan otherwise comfortable discursive framework—philosophers talkingto historians or literary critics, anthropologists talking to sociologists orpolitical scientists, biologists talking to ecologists or geologists. We en-vision something broader in the pages of this journal.