The future is not only in the present but also in the past: once again about the subject of ethnosociology

The author defends the idea of an important role of domestic ethnology research traditions in preserving and developing ethnosociology as an independent scientific direction. Author builds on the conclusions of his previous article [Popkov, 2024], in which he presented a crisis diagnosis on the state of affairs in ethnosociology and the threat to it in connection with the anthropological revolution in domestic ethnological science. The definition of the strategic ethnosociology prospects is linked to the solution of a fundamental problem for it – of defining its special subject-problem field. In this context, the author develops some provisions of the ethnosociology founders and the achievements of the Novosibirsk ethnosociological school. On this basis, he substantiates an understanding of ethnosocial processes as a complex, generalized subject of ethnosociology. He argues that these processes themselves are a stable-dynamic system of reflexive interaction and development of ethnosocial subjects as a unity of stability and variability, dialectics of the objective and subjective, material and spiritual, real and virtual, taking into account the identification strategies of subjects and the impact of network structures. Such presentation allows to highlight specificity of ethnosociology in relation not only to anthropology, but also to a number of other disciplines about peoples.