Peter Schweitzer

Arctic Social Indicators : A follow-up to the Arctic Human Development Report

This report is a result of and follow-up to the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), which appeared in 2004 and had been conducted under the auspices of the Arctic Council’s Sustainable De ...

Cultures and identities

The Arctic Human Development Report is a scientific assessment commissioned by the Working Group on Sustainable Development in the Arctic Council. It describes Arctic societies and cultures, econom ...

Who owns Siberian ethnography? A critical assessment of a re-internationalized field

Although Siberian ethnography was an open and international field at the turn of the 20th century, from about 1930 until the late 1980s Siberia was for the most part closed to foreigners and therefore to Western ethnographers. This allowed Soviet ethnographers to establish a virtual monopoly on Siberian field sites. Soviet and Western anthropology developed during that period in relative isolation from one another, allowing methodologies and theoretical approaches to diverge. During glasnost’ and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Siberian field was reopened and field studies were conducted by several Western ethnographers. The resulting encounter between Western and former Soviet ethnographers in the 1980s and 1990s produced a degree of cultural shock as well new challenges and opportunities on both sides. This is an experiential account of the mood of these newly reunited colleagues at the turn of the 21st century.

Arctic sustainability research: toward a new agenda

ABSTRACT The Arctic is among the world’s regions most affected by ongoing and increasing cultural, socio-economic, environmental and climatic changes. Over the last two decades, scholars, policymakers, extractive industries, local, regional and national governments, intergovernmental forums, and non-governmental organizations have turned their attention to the Arctic, its peoples and resources, and to challenges and benefits of impending transformations. The International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP) has now transpired three times, most recently in April 2015 with ICARP III. Arctic sustainability is an issue of increasing concern within the Arctic and beyond it, including in ICARP endeavors. This paper reports some of the key findings of a white paper prepared by an international and interdisciplinary team as part of the ICARP-III process, with support from the International Arctic Science Committee Social and Human Sciences Working Group, the International Arctic Social Sciences Association and the Arctic-FROST research coordination network. Input was solicited through sharing the initial draft with a broader network of researchers, including discussion and feedback at several academic and community venues. This paper presents a progress report on Arctic sustainability research, identifies related knowledge gaps and provides recommendations for prioritizing research for the next decade.

The Rotten Renaissance in the Bering Strait

Situated in the Bering Strait region of Russia and Alaska, the ethnographic documentation presented here elucidates the role of the olfactory aesthetic in shaping human attitudes toward food. The focus is on the practices connected with the use of marine mammal products and recipes prepared by means of aging and fermentation. Since recent times, the olfactory responses to these historically important foods have been changing to where their smell is becoming undesirable on the whole and particularly unacceptable in certain social contexts. The present attitudes range from genuine fondness to an array of aversions. For many contemporary consumers, the social implications of the smells associated with consumption of aged foods and marine mammal products pose a daily concern, which they address in part through extensive washing and laundering. The featured ethnohistorical reconstruction captures the story of Soviet-era near annihilation of certain products and recipes in Chukotka, followed by a partial revitalization in the post-Soviet period. Examples of the gustatory, olfactory, and social experiences connected with food on both sides of the Bering Strait are offered. Cumulatively, these experiences speak of the extent to which foodways and food security are shaped by the realm of senses.

Beyond wilderness: towards an anthropology of infrastructure and the built environment in the Russian North*

Abstract Public and academic discourses about the Polar regions typically focus on the so-called natural environment. While, these discourses and inquiries continue to be relevant, the current article asks the question how to conceptualize the on-going industrial and infrastructural build-up of the Arctic. Acknowledging that the “built environment” is not an invention of modernity, the article nevertheless focuses on large-scale infrastructural projects of the twentieth century, which marks a watershed of industrial and infrastructural development in the north. Given that the Soviet Union was at the vanguard of these developments, the focus will be on Soviet and Russian large-scale projects. We will be discussing two cases of transportation infrastructure, one of them based on an on-going research project being conducted by the authors along the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM) and the other focused on the so-called Northern Sea Route, the marine passage with a long history that has recently been regaining public and academic attention. The concluding section will argue for increased attention to the interactions between humans and the built environment, serving as a kind of programmatic call for more anthropological attention to infrastructure in the Russian north and other polar regions.

Polar anthropology, or why we need to study more than humans in order to understand people

While this issue of The Polar Journal is devoted to Polar Anthropology, the latter term is more a desideratum than reality. With “Arctic Anthropology” having been a label for at least half a century,1 “Antarctic Anthropology” seemed for a long time to be an oxymoron and not the description of a regional subfield of anthropology.2 The main reason for that was of course the absence of a resident population on the Antarctic continent until recently.3 Anthropological attention thus got often directed at tourists and other temporary visitors.4 Given this uneven distribution within an elusive Polar Anthropology, I will start with the status quo on the Arctic side of the discipline and will move towards future directions in northern and southern polar contexts alike.5 Given the intrinsic anthropocentric orientation of anthropology, it should not come as a surprise that anthropological research in circumpolar regions was for a long time defined exclusively by human life in the Arctic and Subarctic. While this included everyday social and cultural practices, as well as long-term patterns of engaging with social and natural environments, the emphasis was clearly on human-environmental relations, that is it often meant anthropological excitement about the ways in which (indigenous) people in the Arctic had managed to adapt to environments, which seemed hostile to visitors from the South.6 Likewise, the “religious” dimensions of how many Arctic peoples related to their environments – often labelled “animism” or “shamanism” – became an early specialisation of Arctic anthropology.7 More recently, climate change and the rising global demand for non-renewable resources have led to increased political and economic interest in and contest for the circumpolar North. The quarrels over exploitation and transportation routes evokes new questions of political power,

Fallstudie: Wer bestimmt über die Ressourcen der Arktis?

Die nicht-erneuerbaren Ressourcen der Arktis sind in den letzten Jahren in den Mittelpunkt vieler Interessen geruckt. Diese reichen von Staaten die dadurch ihre wirtschaftliche und politische Situation verbessern wollen bis zu Umweltschutzern die eine angeblich unberuhrte Wildnis zu retten versuchen und zu indigenen Gruppen die ihre eigenen Souveranitatsanspruche damit demonstrieren wollen. Der vorliegende Beitrag wahlt das Beispiel des Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska um die Komplexitat dieser Interessenskonflikte zu demonstrieren. Dabei geht es sehr stark um verbriefte und moralische „Rechte“ mit denen Teilnehmer an diesen Auseinandersetzungen argumentieren.

Tracking Change in Human Development in the Arctic

Communities in the Arctic, the peoples, cultures, and societies of the region, are today facing multiple stressors, the sources of which are by now fairly well understood. They reach far beyond Arctic local and regional contexts – with change experienced in terms of both increasing rates and magnitude. Rapid change – now broadly accepted as a fact, with its multi-faceted impacts and many complex interactions of social, natural and physical systems – manifests itself in the socio-economic transformations of daily living and at different geographical scales. Beyond doubt, change puts human wellbeing and community adaptability to the test in today’s Arctic.

Polarization and polar climate

International Polar Year 2012 Conference: From Knowledge to Action;Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 22–27 April 2012 As a follow- up to the 2007–2008 International Polar Year (IPY), more than 3000 international participants came together in April 2012 at a conference entitled “From Knowledge to Action.” The conference addressed a broad scope of topics beyond academic science to include challenges of globalization, climate change, and social and economic issues. Participants included researchers and others with expertise in multiple fields: policy and decision making, law, industry, nongovernmental organizations, circumpolar communities, and indigenous peoples. The challenge of translating academic and other forms of knowledge into societal benefits dominated the event.