A. V. Berezina. Everyday cultural practices of the Ural Mari

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Original article
DOI: 10.15507/2076-2577.013.2021.01.67-78

Everyday cultural practices of the Ural Mari

Anna V. Berezina
Ural State Forest Engineering University,
Yekaterinburg, Russia

Introduction. The study of everyday cultural practices of the Ural Mari living in rural areas can not only provide extra information, but also change our views on distinctive features of their culture, the prospects for its development, and resistance to ethnocultural transformations.
Materials and Methods. The work used interdisciplinary research methods, the principles of comparative, system and structural analysis, as well as sociological methods: observation, in-depth survey, comparative analysis, interviewing.
Results and Discussion. Distinctive features of the ethnic culture of the Ural Mari were influenced by the regional factor, and were recorded not only in the Mari dialect, national dresses, but also in everyday practices, namely household chores, the relationship between a man and a woman, and between generations. Their formation was influenced by folk religiosity, which is closely related to mythological thinking. Belief in the spirits that accompanies the everyday life of a person, has been transformed according to new everyday practices, and is still preserved in the everyday life of the ethnos. The author provides data from in-depth surveys and interviews of Mari living in the Sverdlovsk region and the Perm Territory, and also analyzes examples from literary sources.
Conclusion. The transformation of the culture of the Ural Mari in rural areas is a response to scientific and technological progress, global changes, and is exteroceptive in nature with a persisting axiological basis. Further research of the everyday cultural practices of the Ural Mari living in rural areas will make it possible to predict the development of their ethnic culture and point out the critical aspects of transformation.

Keywords: Mari, ethnoculture, folk religiosity, everyday practices, mythological thinking

For citation: Berezina AV. Everyday cultural practices of the Ural Mari. Finno-ugorskii mir = Finno-Ugric World. 2021;13;1:67–78 (In Russ.). DOI: 10.15507/2076-2577.013.2021.01.67-78.