Nakhichevanian “Shahsey-Vahsey” in Moscow: Migration, Translocality and Resistance – a lecture by Erik Seitov
LODZ ANTHROPOLOGICAL SEMINARS
We would like to invite you to attend a meeting with Erik Seitov, an independent researcher and a social anthropologist from Uzbekistan, who is conducting a research internship at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw as part of the IDUB UW project "Global History and Anthropology." Seitov's research focuses on Shiite Muslim communities in the Russian Federation (Moscow region and southern Dagestan) and in Uzbekistan.
Erik Seitov:
In this lecture, I will discuss cultural traditions that accompany migrants as “baggage.” When this “baggage” enters a new social and cultural environment, its inner function and meaning change for the people who brought it. Even if cultural practices appear unchanged, the surrounding context in which they exist changes drastically. If we try to understand this context, we can learn more about the community in question. In the case of the annual practice of “shahsey-vahsey,” which has been observed on the 10th day of the lunar month of Muharram and has been organised in Moscow since the 1990s, I present, using thick description as a methodology, how a new context affects this cultural practice locally. “Shahsey-vahsey” in Moscow is not only a “folk” mourning practice of rural immigrants from the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, but also a symbol that helps us understand post-Soviet Shia Muslim immigration trajectories, the presence of “Soviet religious patterns” in the post-Soviet Islamic agenda, “competitions” between local and national levels, collective memory and trauma, and, finally, what this practice means to its participants.
The seminar is carried out in cooperation with Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Lodz, the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Lodz, the Polish Ethnological Society, Łódź Branch, and the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw.The seminar is carried out in cooperation with Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Lodz, the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Lodz, the Polish Ethnological Society, Łódź Branch, and the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw.
ADMISSION IS FREE! The lecture will be held in English
8 December 2025, 3:30 p.m. , Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Lodz, Lindleya 3/5, room D (2nd floor)
