Well-Oiled Cultural Politics in the Altai Republic: Promoting Indigenous Heritage in Gazprom’s Resource Colonies

Abstract

A growing number of scholarly work in the field of cultural studies has been investigating the role of culture in corporate relationship management. By assessing the use of indigenous heritage and the repatriation of archaeological finds by multinational Gazprom, a natural gas company, in the Russian Federation, this paper contributes to the cultural politics research in Russia by critically repositioning some of its core paradigms and its predominant emphasis on nationalist patriotic projects. As explored in this paper, archaeology and heritage are cultural technologies of rule that help a plethora of non-state agents in shaping local subjectivities and regional governmental frameworks. By exploring a case study investigating the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of a resource extraction and transport giant in Russia, this paper contributes to the extensive literature on neoliberalism in developing economies characterized by an authoritarian electoral regime. By using an indigenous case study from Siberia to describe cultural policy in Russia, it also adds important nuance to a debate currently dominated by analyses focusing on Russia’s European cosmopolitan centers.