Within the Russian Federation there are nearly 200 recognized "nationalities," approximately 130 of which could claim to be "indigenous." However, only 45 peoples are officially recognized as "indigenous small-numbered peoples of the Russian Federation" and thereby qualify for the rights, privileges, and state support earmarked for indigenous peoples. This status is conditioned upon a maximum group size of 50,000. While experts insist that this numerical criterion is provisional and without serious political implications, our fieldwork demonstrates that it has become a social fact that cannot be ignored, especially in light of the 2002 All-Russia Census and the release of its results in 2004. This numerical benchmark forces a dichotomization into small-numbered versus non-small-numbered peoples and creates a peculiar type of identity politics based on ethnic-group size. The "indigenous small-numbered" status is also conditioned upon a set of overlapping but often contradictory residency requirements. Using case studies from southern Siberia and the north of European Russia, we document the dynamic interplay between these dimensions of identity and the opportunities for maneuvering in the competition for the benefits that attach to certain categories. However, indigenous peoples who engage in such identity politics run the risk of becoming "incarcerated" within the confines of those categories.

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Political secularism can be defined as a kind of political philosophy that sees the secular state as setting the terms of encounter between the secular and the religious. However, religion and religious organisations are not necessarily seen as oppositional to the secular state; there can be myriad forms of coexistence between secular and religious authorities. The argument forwarded in this article is based on ethnographic research focussing on the presence and social significance of religious materiality in the region considered to be one of the most secularised worldwide—the north-eastern part of contemporary Germany. I investigate the strategies of actors socially recognised as either religious or secular towards each other, looking at how secular actors assign a place to religious symbols, materiality, theological concepts, organisations, and communities; on the other hand I investigate strategies that religious actors adopt in a context of political secularism. Even if political secularism presupposes supremacy of the secular state over religious actors and the right of the former to make legally binding decisions concerning the latter, those religious actors are not passive—they react to secular initiatives and they try to carve for themselves a space in a public sphere, while at the same time the secular or rather nonreligious actors mobilize religious elements for a variety of reasons.

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