printHow Russians Become Buryats:
Adoption Practices and Ethnic Identification of Adopted Children
Galindabaeva V.V.
Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Senior Researcher, Sociological Institute of FCTAS RAS, St. Petersburg, Russia. vgalindabaeva@gmail.com
Karbainov N.I.
Researcher, Sociological Institute of FCTAS RAS, St. Petersburg, Russia. nkarbainov@gmail.com
Galindabaeva V.V., Karbainov N.I. How Russians Become Buryats: Adoption Practices and Ethnic Identification of Adopted Children. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2025. No 12. P. 121-131
The article examines how and why failures in the application of ethnic categories occur when radical phenotypic differences between a person and an ethnic group indicate a lack of shared ancestry. The authors analyze cases where Russian children in adoptive Buryat families began to speak Buryat over time, follow religious rituals of Buddhism and/or shamanism, and identify themselves as Buryats or simultaneously as Buryats and Russians. The authors, relying on the works of R. Brubaker, B. E. Wiener, and T. Jimenez, show the role of family socialization in the formation of affiliative ethnic identification of Russians with Buryats. Such self-understanding is more an expression of affection and close relations with foster parents than a stable ethnic identification. Thus, the article emphasizes the dynamics of interaction between cognitive and affective in the process of ethnic identity formation.
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