Development of Gender Studies on Ethnocultural Grounds: Problems and Prospects

The fact is that gender relations in the Caucasian ethno-social space are not only specific, but also undergo contradictory changes in the context of the general trends of modern Russian sociocultural transformation, requiring close scientific, primarily ethnological attention. However, ethnology in the region still remains under the influence of conservative ideas from the 1990s “on a return to the roots of culture, on the re-Islamization of culture”. In this difficult context, the barriers to the development of gender science in the space of Caucasian ethnic cultures are analyzed with maximum consideration of the characteristics of these cultures. On a wide range of facts and phenomena, the genderological features of the Caucasian ethnic cultures are revealed in detail (especially on the examples of the gender existence of the Adyghe ethnic groups). They are not properly studied, as well as the inconsistency of the stereotypes existing in the Russian discursive arena regarding Caucasian gender culture with facts and realities, which distances the attention of the centers of the country’s humanities from understanding ethno-gender issues. Possible (potential) prospects and horizons for the development of ethnic gender studies in the Caucasian regions are outlined. Considerable attention is paid to the particularly significant role of literary criticism (and philological science in general) in overcoming barriers to the development of gender science in the space of ethnic cultures. At the same time, it is argued that there are growing tendencies towards the formation of literary criticism as the leading science of ethnology, which is objectively facilitated by both the general trends of cultural transformation processes in modern Russia and the current conservative intentions of ethnology in the Caucasian regions.