Translation problems. The experience of reading one interpretation of religious life: A Review of J. V. Kormina, Palomniki: etnograficheskie ocherki pravoslavnogo nomadizma [Pilgrims: Ethnographic Sketches of Orthodox Nomadism]. Moscow: HSE Publishing House, 2019, 349 pp.

Abstract

The study is the result of many years of work by Jeanne Kormina among contemporary Orthodox believers in Russia. It is based on the methodological approaches of the anthropology of pilgrimage; the author describes the mobile life of modern pilgrims in the northwest of Russia on the basis of rich field material. Contextualizing the approaches adopted in the English-language literature, Kormina discovers such a phenomenon as Orthodox nomadism, which is a completely special and previously not described type of religious sociality. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the author does not clearly define the employed terms; as a consequence, she often extends her conclusions not only to the studied “weekend pilgrims”, but also to the Orthodox in general. Lastly, this work allows us to continue the discussion about the influence of the identity of the researcher on their interpretations in the field of anthropology of religion.