Comments on: Pilipinas muna! Philippines first of all: To the 80th anniversary of Gennady E. Rachkov / Ed. and comp. by M. V. Stanyukovich. St. Petersburg: MAE RAS, 2011. 648 p.; fig. (Maklaevsky collection. Issue 4).

Why is the Philippines first? The fourth issue of the Maklaevsky collection of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) is dedicated to the Philippines. But why one country and not several? And why the Philippines? After all, previous issues of the series covered the entire Asia-Pacific region. The answers to these two questions are worth a little consideration.

If you ask an ordinary person to name a country or some significant place in this region, they will most likely think of China, Vietnam, or Thailand. The answers to the question about the islands will be New Guinea with its exotics and "living primitive people" or Indonesia-the land of exotic animals and Stone Age sites. It is the search for exotics that distinguishes shallow works from well-founded ones. The very fact of the appearance of a collection dedicated to a country that not every modern student can show on a map deserves approval and admiration. This means that a truly scientific, painstaking research work is being carried out. It is obvious that a number of articles will turn out to be monographs that will be included in the golden fund of world science.

Why is the book dedicated specifically to the Philippines? The answer can be found in the article by M. V. Stanyukovich, which opens the publication. Russian naval officers and travelers began collecting collections in the Philippines in the late 19th century. In particular, N. N. Miklukho-Maklay visited the islands several times. L. A. Mervart and R. F. Barton became the founders of the School of Philipine studies in Leningrad at the beginning of the 20th century. American Barton - an employee of the MAHE in the 1930s, an extremely interesting person, a brilliant field ethnographer who published many works on the culture of the peoples of the archipelago. In the 1940s and 1950s, there was a lull in the Philippine survey, but in the 1960s, the Philippines was still being explored. they were resumed under the leadership of Gennady Rachkov.

The study of the Philippines at the beginning of the XXI century is not a newfangled trend in our country. M. V. Stanyukovich's field research among the mountain tribes of the archipelago continued the more than two-century-old scientific tradition. Currently, the fingers of one hand are enough to count the number of Russian scientists who carry out long-term expedition trips outside of Russia. The collection editor is one of them.

Another" final "work is M. Y. Medvedev's article" Symbols of the Sultanate of Sulu: legacy, context, reforms". It is written on the basis of an analysis of a huge number of sources and research materials that were already available at the beginning of the third millennium in the archives and libraries of St. Petersburg. Medvedev, a specialist in European heraldry, was awarded the title "datu" (a high noble title of the sultanate) for a series of works on the symbolism of Sulu.

The collection is a comprehensive study of the languages, cultures and historical events of the peoples of the Philippine Archipelago, although not without a focus on linguistics. The predominance of linguistic topics is noticeable in all five sections, although only one of them is devoted to linguistics proper. Since I need to introduce the book primarily to readers-ethnographers (social anthropologists), I will focus on a number of articles that, in my opinion, will be most interesting to representatives of our workshop.

It is advisable to start the acquaintance with the work of L. Reed "Indigenous peoples - who are they? "(translated from English), written on the basis of a speech to students from the indigenous peoples of the Philippines. The author analyzes in detail the content of the term "indigenous peoples", which is extremely relevant for Russian ethnographic science, and comes to the conclusion that none of the formulations can reflect the full diversity of the concept - always a certain group of the population does not fit the criteria put forward. In the second part of the article, L. Reed provides an overview of the history of settlement in the Philippines and Oceania in general. This information can also be useful for a wide range of ethnographers.

Very interesting materials about the modern culture of Filipinos, or rather, residents of its capital Manila and surrounding towns, are contained in the article by E. G. Frolova "Some aspects of the modern language situation in Greater Manila". The author analyzes the life of the Filipino language and its interaction with English, which is the only truly national language. It is noteworthy that the analysis was carried out not only in the speech field.-

Andrey Vladimirovich Tutorsky-Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Ethnology, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University; e-mail: tutorski@mail.ru

You can also use your own practices and newspaper notes, but also TV ads and short text messages (SMS). The author states that despite legislative efforts to develop Filipino, the government creates privileges for the English language with its own circulars. However, in the scientific community there is a peculiar Tagalog-English koine - "Taglish", which may later replace English.

The most interesting field study is the work of M. K. Flores "Ox caravans in ancient Caboloan" (in English). The author gives a historical overview of the culture of ox caravans in the province of Pangasinan. Caravan routes appeared on the island of Luzon in the XVIII-XIX centuries. Over the course of three centuries, routes and goods changed, but the tradition remained relatively stable. Its unique renaissance took place in the 1960s and 1980s, when along with the growth of Manila, there was a need for inexpensive rattan wicker furniture, which was delivered by caravans. Currently, the caravan culture is experiencing a decline, but over time it may be revived in the wake of interest in so-called ethnic goods.

Certainly anthropological and extremely important for understanding modern ethnic processes in the Philippines is the article "Learning from the Masters..." by Adeline A. Umali, a researcher at the Center for International Studies at the University of the Philippines. The author compares two ways of teaching folk songs: academic-through lectures and presentations, and innovative, involving many hours of work with a native speaker of the tradition. The second method is much more effective, which is confirmed by numerous successful seminars and performances designed to popularize national arts - the epic tales of khudhud, "eagle dance" and others. The material contains a lot of "first-person replicas" of participants in these events, which makes it a living voice of a new national Philippine tradition. In fact, it is its formation that the author describes.

Of particular interest to ethnographers are the articles by A. A. Lebedeva " Traditional vessels of the Philippines "and Yu.Y. Krylov"Metal names: Austroasiatic-Austronesian parallels". They are good examples of the "thing in culture" type of research that the Leningrad School of Ethnography is strong in. K.'s English-language article is very similar to them. Stone " Philippines and Guatemala: the tale of the three fabrics". In three essays - about pinya (a fabric made from pineapple leaf fibers), Manila shawls (which were often made not in Manila) and ikat (by the way, a status fabric in Central Asia) - it tells about the historical ties between Latin America and the Philippines.

In addition, a wide range of humanist readers will be interested in the articles by R. T. Jose "The Russo-Japanese War and the Philippines" (in English), V. V. Noskov "From Pallas to Aurora: Russian Cruisers in Manila "and E. V. Shilova" Philippine Works of V. V. Vereshchagin". The first two contain a detailed account of the little-known pages of the history of the Russian navy, and the last one tells about the visit of the great Russian battlemaster to the archipelago and about his works of the Philippine series.

The review genre involves the ritual of making comments. I will also express them (I will repeat again that I do this from the point of view of an ethnographer and a university teacher). The main drawback of the book is its focus on a narrow audience of experts in various areas of Philippine history and culture. The community of Filipinists in Russia is not so large, almost all of them were authors of articles. Who are the other potential readers? On the one hand, due to the presence of an English-language table of contents, summaries of articles and information about authors, the publication is of interest to foreign colleagues (and they have already paid attention to it).

On the other hand, the collection should be - and inevitably will be - the book that begins the introduction to Filipino studies. It can be recommended in the supplementary literature section for history students studying the basics of ethnology (ethnography, social anthropology). From this point of view, the value of the collection would be significantly increased by propaedeutic articles. For example, the work of A. A. Kasatkina on Philippine photographs of the Russian Federation. Barton's work is very interesting as a study of one aspect of the scientist's activity, and this topic is completely justified for speaking at a scientific conference. At the same time, in a book of this kind about the Philippines, an article about the Petersburg period of Barton's activity as a whole would be more appropriate, or at least a longer introductory part that tells those who have not yet been initiated the basic information about the ethnographer.

An untrained reader drowns in an abundance of information and spends considerable time trying to understand the basics of the history and geography of the region. For ease of orientation, the book could be supplemented with a thematic and geographical index, as well as geographical maps. At the same time, it should be noted that the biographical data of the authors, completed by-

they make it easier for the student to get acquainted with the scientific community. In addition, the bibliographic collections compiled by A. A. Kasatkina, M. V. Stanyukovich and T. I. Shaskolskaya are extremely useful both for specialists and for beginners in science. Let's hope that the history and culture of the Philippines will interest the reader so much that they will find the strength to independently understand the geography of Luzon, understand the place of Hudhud in the spiritual culture of Ifugao, and understand how Taglish differs from Filipino English. If we avoid the thorns, we will discover extremely important and valuable knowledge, which should be "first of all".

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