PhD Project: Interactions, Objects, Spaces: Interdisciplinary approach to vernacular practices in public places

Kristina Eiviler joined the URPP Language and Space in April 2019. She successfully completed her doctoral project entitled "Interacting with the Gus and Devyi stones: An interdisciplinary study of living folk religion in Moscow"  and defended it on 25.07.2024.

In my research, I apply EMCA methodology on the ethnographical data, to analyze the cross-cultural phenomenon of interaction between people and publicly venerated objects, along with the spacial modifications that emerge as a result of these interactions.
The commonly seen form of the indicated phenomenon is: people touching specific parts of the statues, or stones, for luck. Nonetheless, this phenomenon can attain significantly complex expressions, such as accomplishing more engaging physical contact with the object (sitting, standing, lying, bowing to the object, etc), incorporating other objects to the venerated object (food, flowers, coins, notes, etc), constructing new discourses about the place or institutionalizing it (making it a public facility, organizing touristic venues, etc). Given that these objects are a part of the public landscape and that the interactions occur in mundane settings, the human-object, human-human and the spatial dimensions of the interactions are strongly entangled. Therefore, I examine the embodied forms of the behavior and the semiotic resources of the space which are being activated through these encounters and which might differentiate ritual(ized) from everyday actions. My focus in on naturally-occurring interactions, namely object-cantered sequences and sequences of distinctive spatial practices. I analyze how participants moderate their trajectories, postures, gestures, how they interact with the object and through the object, how the dynamics of these interactions re-shapes spacial dimensions.
In order to answer the research questions, I include disciplines such as linguistic anthropology, material culture studies, sensory anthropology, popular culture studies, urban studies. The data I am currently working on consists of video recordings, audio recordings, photographs, texts and interviews. The significant part was collected in Russia, in the Moscow Metro station “Revolutionary square” with the 76 human-size bronze statues; in the Moscow park Kolomenskoe, with the Gus stone – male stone and the Deviy stone – female stone, and in Pereslavl-Zalessky (Yaroslavl Region), which, thought the years, became a pilgrimage hot-spot due to the Synyi stone, located there.