On Tuesday February 26 at 18:00 social anthropologist and Rīga Stradiņš University guest lecturer, Tobias Köllner, will give a public talk – ‘On Entangled Authorities: The Interplay between Orthodox Religion and Politics in Contemporary Russia.’ The event will take place in the AsiaRes Reading Room (Level M) in the National Library of Latvia.

The event is part of the Narrating the Human series, co-organized by the Latvian Association of Anthropologists, the National Library of Latvia, and Rīga Stradiņš University.

About the talk:

‘Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in the Russian Federation I have developed the concept of entangled authorities. Through the idea of entangled authorities I emphasise two major shortcomings in recent research on politics and Russian Orthodoxy. First, there has been a tendency to focus on cooperation and entanglement neglecting unintended consequences and conflict. Recent research, however, has analysed the limits of this cooperation showing it to be far from harmonious. It is more useful, therefore, to describe the interplay between politics and Russian Orthodoxy as a rivalry for scarce resources and authority in a rapidly changing society. At times this allows for close cooperation, but does not prevent conflicts and competition. Furthermore, at least three different forms of entanglements have been intermingled which have to be delineated and analysed separately: personal, ideological and institutional. I suggest that it is only then that we will we be able to describe, analyse and grasp the interplay between Russian Orthodoxy and politics more completely and accurately.’

About the speaker:

Tobias Köllner received his PhD in social anthropology in 2011 from the University of Leipzig, based on his research on Russian entrepreneurs and their relationship to Russian Orthodoxy. In 2013 he received a grant from the German Research Foundation and has since then been working on the research project ‘The Interrelationship between Religion and Politics in Contemporary Russia.’ He currently works at the Witten/Herdecke University in Witten, Germany. Tobias Köllner is the author of Orthodox Religion and Politics in Contemporary Eastern Europe: On Multiple Secularisms and Entanglements (Routledge, 2019) and Practising Without Belonging? Entrepreneurship, Morality, and Religion in Contemporary Russia (Lit and Transaction Publishers, 2012).