Moscow: Foundation "Development of Fundamental Linguistic Research", 2016, 216 p.

Nowadays, cultural differences are becoming an important factor in building economic ties, social relations, and interpersonal contacts. Moreover, culture is becoming a dangerous weapon used in political struggles, inter-communal, intra - and inter-State conflicts. The phenomenon of cultural complexity of modern states, the problematization of cultural differences and its economic background are challenges that historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers are trying to understand.

In this regard, as well as in connection with the need to understand the migration problem in Russia, the appearance in Russian science of a new book devoted to the analysis of culturally determined factors of the human "hostel" is very relevant and deserves a special review. In the monograph" Shades of Black", D. M. Bondarenko examines the cultural and anthropological component of mutual perception and relationships between African-Americans and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the United States of America. Although the book is based on materials collected in the New World, namely in the United States, the results of this study can also give food for thought to scientists studying "non-Western" societies, the East in a broad sense, since "African America" looks like a mirror to Africa.

To explore these "reflections of Africa" in the life of the black community in the United States is to come closer to understanding modern American and African cultures in general. The author of the book has done a lot of work on the topic of the monograph "in the field", exploring the culture of African-Americans and African immigrants in the United States. The author of the peer-reviewed monograph also has an excellent command of "native", actually African, material: D. M. Bondarenko visited Tanzania, Nigeria, Benin, Rwanda, and Zambia with expedition research, and also studied Africans located on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The book consists of an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion. The text includes a list of informants and references. I would like to mention the excellent color illustrations-photographs taken by the author personally, and a relatively extensive summary (summary in English), the presence of which greatly facilitates the acquaintance of foreign readers with the book.

In the introduction, the author gives a brief outline of African migration to the United States, justifies the relevance of the research topic and explains the use of two main terms in the book. "African-Americans" - black residents of the United States whose ancestors were brought from Africa, mainly Western, as slaves several centuries ago; "Africans" - modern voluntary migrants from sub-Saharan Africa (p.12-13).

The introduction provides an overview of materials collected during three field seasons from 2013 to 2015 in small, medium and large cities in seven states-Alabama, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, and Pennsylvania. The range of sources is very wide - observations, photographs, 196 interviews and conversations with African-Americans, with Africans - natives of 23 from 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa (Benin, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia), as well as with Afro-Caribs and residents of the United States of other, including European origin.

Hristina TURINSKAYA-Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, krikri75@yandex.ru.

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The first chapter of the book is devoted to determining the factors of mutual attraction and repulsion of groups with different identities (p.37) - African-Americans and African migrants in the United States. The author looks for reasons why they do not form a single "black community". At the same time," black " remains a rather vague and politicized concept (cf.p. 123). I note that in describing these communities, the author uses the controversial term "ethnos" (as well as "ethnic", "ethno-cultural", "ethno-racial") along with the terms "racial", "linguistic", "religious", "national (by country of origin)", without explaining its content in relation to "black " Americans.

D. M. Bondarenko critically analyzes the concept of "diaspora" (p. 23), discusses the correlation of racial and social aspects of the formation of identity of black communities in the United States (p. 30 et seq.), analyzes the sources and factors of the formation of mutual positive/negative/neutral images of cultures. These factors include social factors (level of education, class, age and gender), cultural factors, and racial factors.

Dmitry Bondarenko's remark about the desire of Africans to become part of the "white" social mainstream is very important, which African-Americans consider a "betrayal" of their race. Meanwhile, the fact that highly educated Africans (and they make up the bulk of migrants from Africa to the United States) are socioculturally much closer to the "white" environment is a natural fact. One cannot ignore the religious factor, the role of the church and mosque, which unite and divide the black communities of the United States at the same time. The author also notes the existence of a "tribal tendency" in the settlement of black Americans: people concentrate in a particular area according to the tribal principle (pp. 42-43).

It is important to note that the respondents themselves identify social factors as the main ones in the formation of mutual images of cultures and believe that in order to establish mutual understanding between representatives of different black communities, it is necessary to educate them about each other's history (p. 46, 50). However, the inevitable resurrection of past events and phenomena that accompany this process, their changing interpretation, and the revival of historical memory do not always have a beneficial effect on the formation of relations between communities, nor are they always constructive for unity in the struggle for civil rights and solving pressing problems. The following section of D. M. Bondarenko's monograph provides material for reflection on this topic.

The second chapter of the book examines historical memory as a factor of interaction between African-Americans and African immigrants in the United States. D. M. Bondarenko analyzes modern scientific concepts of historical memory with its mechanisms of selection, memorization, remembering, and forgetting. The author considers historical memory as a factor in the formation and maintenance of group identity and - through this prism-determining attitudes to other communities. He is looking for an answer to the question of whether there is a common "black history"in the minds of Africans and African-Americans.

Exploring the historical memory of black communities in the United States, D. M. Bondarenko touches on the following topics: Africa before the era of the slave trade and colonialism; the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and its abolition in the United States; colonialism and anti-colonial struggle in Africa; the civil rights movement in the United States; the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The study shows that black communities in the United States do not have a "common history": significant differences are found not only in the perception of their historical past by African-Americans and recent immigrants, but also the key events for these groups are not the same events, phenomena and facts (p.90).

The author notes that the projection of the past onto the present is a characteristic feature of the consciousness of African-Americans, but it is not typical of Africans (p. 70); the place of the "racial layer" in the collective identity of Africans is much more modest than that of African-Americans (p. 87); the situation of "black-and-white dualism" is critically important for maintaining D. M. Bondarenko dwells on such a modern phenomenon as the" return " of black natives of the New World to Africa in the form of permanent residence, investment in the economy of African states, or tourist trips "home", "to the roots" (pp. 76-79).

The third chapter focuses on cultural images and their impact on the relationship between African-Americans and migrant Africans in the United States. The author stops at

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the question of the impact of the trauma of slavery and colonialism on the cultures and mentality of black communities, as well as on the ideas of "punchery" unity and the opposition of "blacks" to "whites" as its source: it was Europeans, "whites" who tore the single fabric of "black history" and "black culture", and separated Africans physically and psychologically. As a result, according to the majority of African migrants, African-Americans have lost "African" social values and cultural traditions, and instead have acquired "American" and "Western" values, and "deafricanized" (pp. 94, 95, 104 et seq.). D. M. Bondarenko examines the content of these fundamental values, analyzes manifestations of "diaspora identity", the relationship between collectivist and individualistic principles, as well as the place of religiosity and community in modern black cultures.

The situation, according to the interview materials, looks ambiguous. On the one hand, many similarities can be found in the views of people representing different cultural communities, but similar in social characteristics. Moreover, the persistence of racism and economic problems in American society creates a rapprochement between native Africans and black Americans (p.101). On the other hand, both of them consider the cultures of black communities in the United States to be essentially different, and they see the origins of differences in history. And all this happens in conditions of mutual prejudice (p. 97), when cultural boundaries between people are consciously created and automatically maintained, because people attach importance to differences (p.127).

The prospect of improving relations between the two communities is naturally seen in the search for a common language "over" cultural differences (p. 102). By the way, about language: the author could not ignore the problem of language as a factor of intercultural communication. Here we should pay attention not only to the "white" and "black" versions of American English, but mainly to the accent with which "inevitably and incorrigibly speak all Africans who moved to the United States at a conscious age" (p. 141).

Dialogue between people is necessary. Otherwise, as in the situation of multiculturalism, which denies the principle of "blindness to (cultural) differences" (Barry, 2001, p. 12), contradictions between individuals who are "indigenous" and "non-native" (Malakhov, 2007) turn into a "conflict of cultures" and a "clash of civilizations"; social relations between individuals who are "indigenous" and "non-native" (Malakhov, 2007). relations begin to be viewed "through the prism of an ethnically encoded 'culture', and the question of whether 'reality' itself or the way it is described has changed is not discussed" (Radtke, 2002, p. 103).

Considering the racial and class components of group and individual identity, the author does not dwell in detail on the analysis of the economic basis of relations between representatives of black communities among themselves and with other Americans. The economy would also include such areas as the distribution of material and symbolic resources, policies of "positive discrimination" and "affirmative action" in favor of so-called minorities, the creation of a most-favored-nation regime for African Americans, and competition between different groups of blacks with their "specific interests" (p. 85) for access to the Internet."American pie", "which may not be enough for everyone" (p. 86).

It is important to note by Dmitry Bondarenko that black migrants at the official level, in the census, fall into the same category as black "autochthonous" - all of them are classified as "black or African-American" (p. 146). But to understand the situation, it is necessary to take into account the author's labor market statistics, which distinguish between black immigrants and native-born African-Americans. The figures show that the highest unemployment rate in the United States is indeed among black Americans, but it is higher among natives of Africa than among "native" black Americans. Thus, the belief of African-Americans that migrants from Africa take away their jobs is essentially a myth (p.148).

However, as the book shows, black Americans, while noting the varying impact of economic problems on different communities, continue to see themselves as a discriminated group, oppressed not only by the dominant whites in American society, but even by their "brethren" from Africa. So should we equate race and class in the case of black Americans? Some attribute the" fatal failure " of African Americans to the degradation of their culture, to the "slave mentality" that allegedly turned them into an "aggressive and destructive antisocial mass" (p.138).

For example, Afrocentrists suggest that African-Americans should revive their "Africanism" and restore their "black consciousness" as a way out of the situation, but they do not offer

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change the social conditions. "You need to change yourself, not break the system," they say (p. 139). But is it not within the framework of this "system" (cf. pp. 130, 131: "It is the social system that makes them so!" or are black Americans themselves "corrupted by social benefits" and do not seek to use the opportunities available in the United States to achieve social and material well-being), with its principle of "divide and rule" conditions were created for the marginalization and stigmatization of individuals and groups, for economic inequality, cultural and any other nationalism, for the establishment and preservation of social distance between people? Capitalism and colonialism are the source of disunity among peoples and the cause of conflicts not only on the African continent (p. 83), but also on a global scale.

This book is a well-founded anthropological study that can be interesting and useful for Orientalists, historians, political scientists, anthropologists, Africanists and Americanists. According to the author's fair observation, the uniqueness of human individualities is not absolute, since people are exposed to socio-economic and cultural factors that set a broad but quite clear framework for their worldview and behavior, and due to this, sociological typing is both possible and scientifically justified (p.46). D. M. Bondarenko's monograph offers a certain social typology of American society and allows us to understand the current socio-cultural situation in the United States, in the relationships of representatives of various communities and "hear voices" - not abstract, abstract, homogeneous, monolithic "cultures", but specific people, black residents of the United States of American and African descent.

list of literature

Malakhov V. S. Ponaal'shi here...: Ocherki o nationalizme, rasizme i kul'turnom pluralizme [Essays on nationalism, racism and cultural pluralism]. Moscow: UFO, 2007.

Radtke, F. O., Varieties of multiculturalism and its uncontrolled consequences, in Multiculturalism and Transformation of Post-Soviet Societies, Moscow: IEA RAS, 2002.

Barry B. Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism. Camb., 2001.

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