Open AccessBehind the Scene
Author(s) -
Ildikó́ Lehtinen
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
ethnologia fennica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.103
0eISSN - 2489-4982
pISSN - 0355-1776
DOI - 10.23991/ef.v48i2.103024
Subject(s) - clothing , agency (philosophy) , politics , context (archaeology) , power (physics) , ideal (ethics) , white (mutation) , gender studies , soviet union , sociology , position (finance) , phenomenon , everyday life , political science , aesthetics , history , art , law , social science , philosophy , business , archaeology , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , finance , epistemology , quantum mechanics , gene
In this article, I analyze teacher’s attire as a political phenomenon in the context of the Mari people, a Finno-Ugric minority living in Central Russia. The material for this study is based on observations and interviews made by the author during 1987‒2019 in different places of the Mari region. The Mari teacher’s dress code, a dark dress with a white collar, is usually considered self-evident, but as I argue in this article, in the Soviet Union, and in Russia at the post-socialist time, the Mari female teacher’s dress served two practices. Firstly, clothing represented position and agency of power, the socialist ideal, and later the political trend of the majority. Secondly, clothing represented traditional, everyday Mari life.