Article Abstracts
Forthcoming “Land Use and Economic Change among the Dolgan and the Nganasan.” Proceedings of Postsocialisms in the Russian North, Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology.
This article analyzes changes in land use and tenure since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and analyzes these changes in terms of infrastructure, relations of production, and relations of distribution in the Ust Avam community. The situation in this Siberian community contrasts significantly with those in many native and rural communities around the world, where contact and integration with the global economy is increasing. The fragmentation of post-Soviet Russia has left the native peoples of remote Taimyr settlements at the edge of a depressed economy, where local social processes encourage subsistence foraging, food gifts, and communal land tenure. The development of local institutions that regulate resource use among native hunters in the Taimyr, a process running counter to the global trend, is a topic of applied and fundamental importance to anthropology, native rights, and environmental policy.
2001 “Traditsionnaia Pishcha i Pitanie Dolgan i Nganasan” [“Traditional Food and Nutrition of the Dolgan and Nganasan.”] Pp. 152-156 in David G. Anderson (ed.) Sel’skoe Zdravookhranenie u Malochislennykh
Narodov Severa Kanady i Rossii, Chast’ 2, Narodnaia Medistina. [Village Health Care among the Small-Numbering Peoples of the Canadian and Russian North, Part 2, Folk Medicine.] Novosibirsk: Sibprint Agency.
This article summarizes my initial findings on the nutritional traditions of the Dolgan and Nganasan, as well as some of their beliefs regarding food and health. English text.
2001 “Land Use and Social Change among the Dolgan and Nganasan of Northern Siberia.” Pp. 47-66 in David G. Anderson and Kazunobo Ikeya (eds.) Parks, Property, Power: Managing Hunting Practice and Identity within State Policy Regimes. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 59. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.
This paper, originally presented at the 8th International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, explores changes in land use in the central Taimyr Autonomous Region. The strategies that native people in the Siberian Arctic are employing in response to the collapse of Socialism and the planned economy in Russia are described. Two types of households--those that maintained use-rights to state enterprise lands and those that claimed family/clan holdings--are compared. From the regional perspective, family/clan holdings, part and parcel of the newly developing capitalist economic system, involve the members in the regional economy as producers of traditional products and rational users of the tundra. Ironically, the other strategy--maintaining use-rights to state-enterprise lands--involves decreasing contact with the regional economy.
1999 “Survival Economy and Core-Periphery Dynamics in the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Russia.” Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review 17(2):59-65.
This article discusses the return to a subsistence, or "survival economy," in which Dolgan and Nganasan hunters reduce risk by limiting their involvement in the emerging market economy of Russia. The ecological, economic, and political factors related to this recent change in a remote and strategically important region of the Russian Arctic, the Taimyr Autonomous Region, are discussed. I present the viewpoints of indigenous residents on recent changes in Russia, elaborate on their idea of survival economy, and develop ideas for the relationship between individual actors and the Russian economic transition.
1998a “Land Tenure and Economic Collapse in Northern Siberia.” Arctic Research in the U.S. Volume 12, pp. 73-80. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee.
This article discusses how recent economic and political changes in Russia have affected indigenous peoples in Siberia. Ethnographers in the former Soviet Union have observed an expansion of self-interested strategies among a variety of groups, and have associated negative social effects with these behaviors. Despite the negative effects of rapid financial and infrastructure changes, as well as the lack of involvement in land claims, a large number of native Siberians are maintaining social and economic traditions. While the transition period is creating hardship, in some respects this hardship keeps the community together.
1998b “Kinship and Exchange Among the Dolgan and Nganasan of Northern Siberia.” Pp. 191-238 in Barry Isaac (ed.) Research in Economic Anthropology, Volume 19. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
This paper reviews theoretical perspectives on social change among indigenous northern peoples, provides data on changes in rural enterprise productivity in the Taimyr Autonomous Region (1981-1997), summarizes interview data on capital distribution and distribution of locally-produced flesh foods, and reports interview results for general socio-economic standing and various forms of exchange in a remote native community (79 heads of households).
1997 (in Russian with Ivan Shmetterling) “Robinzony i Pyatnisty, Odnako.” [“Robinsons and Fridays, You Don’t Say.”] Ekspert 48:82-85, 15 December 1997.
This article provides an overview, in Russian, of my research in the Taimyr Autonomous Region and reports interview results for socio-economic standing and various forms of exchange in a remote native community (79 heads of households). The article is my first attempt to make some of my research results available to the Russian public.
1996 "Comments on the Draft Law of the Russian Federation on Fundamentals of Legal Status for the Native Peoples of the Russian North," Etnograficheskoye Obozreniye, Vol. 2, pp. 141-143 (In Russian).
I support the draft law of the Russian Federation on Fundamentals of Legal Status for the Native Peoples of the Russian North (F.L.S.). The F.L.S. law attempts changes that should provide some basic protections for indigenous Siberians and the need for ecological conservation in Siberia. My approach to this discussion is one of sympathetic criticism. The draft law passed by the Duma twice, but President Yeltsin refused to sign it into law.
1996 "Problems of the North: Aboriginal Rights or Industrial Development in the Siberian Arctic," Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, Vol. 12, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
In many northern and rural areas of European Russia and Siberia, there are ethnically distinct aboriginal populations sometimes called "small-numbering" peoples (malochislenniye narody). Russian-speakers usually use this term to refer collectively to the aboriginal groups of the far north, Siberia, and the far east. Russian imperial expansion and, more recently, large-scale industrial development in Siberia have resulted in severe ecological and social problems undermining the future of these indigenous people, their traditions, and languages. Nevertheless, many native individuals and a growing native movement are striving to re-establish their rights regarding territory, renewable resources, and cultural development.
Conference Paper Abstracts
2001 “The Raw and the Cooked in Arctic Siberia: Seasonality, Gender and Diet among the Dolgan and Nganasan Hunter Gatherers.” Paper presented to the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, November 28.
This article investigates recent changes in the diet of indigenous Dolgan and Nganasan householders in the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Northern Russia. Representing two of Russia's thirty numerically small peoples of Siberia, the Dolgan and Nganasan have had several centuries of interaction with Russian and Soviet administrations and a complementary history of social change. While grains and refined carbohydrates have been available for at least 200 years, they were present in abundance during the last 30 years of the Soviet era, when large remote settlements were constructed. Services that were once easy to access during the Soviet era are now dwindling--the variety and quantity of imported food items has decreased in recent years and subsistence hunting and gathering now provides the Dolgan and Nganasan with almost all protein and fat in the study communities. The Dolgan and Nganasan have a full complement of traditional food-processing techniques, several of which require uncooked meat and fish (sometimes frozen). A typology of food preparation techniques will be presented. Raw protein is consumed widely, a traditional practice that provides vitamins where access to fresh vegetable foods is limited. The role of women in diet breadth is discussed, as well as the importance of location and season in food preparation.
2001 “The Dolgan of Northern Russia: Native Language in School and Community.” Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Alaskan Anthropological Association, Fairbanks, AK, March 23.
The Dolgan are one of Russia's numerically small indigenous peoples of Siberia. Their language is a form of Yakut (Sakha), a northern Turkic language, with admixtures of Evenk (Tungus) and Russian. The study community (population 670) is also home to the Nganasan, whose language is part of the Samoyedic branch of the Ural-Altaic family. Native language is taught in school, but core classes are taught in Russian. Mixed marriages have increased in frequency since settlement in the 1970s, and Russian has become the lingua franca, especially among young people. Native-language curricula could benefit by borrowing techniques from foreign language instruction.
2001 “Clan Holdings, Assigned Territories, and Common Pool Resources: Land Tenure Developments in the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Northern Russia.” Paper presented to the 40th Annual Meeting of the Western Regional Science Association, Palm Springs, CA, February 28.
In the Taimyr Autonomous Region, an Arctic subunit of Krasnoyarskii Krai in central Siberia, a variety of property relations have developed since the fall of the Soviet Union. This article discusses three types of land tenure in indigenous communities in the Taimyr Region: assigned hunting territories maintained since the Soviet period, and clan holdings and common pool resources, two forms that have expanded in the 1990s.
2000 “Land Tenure and Economic Change among the Dolgan and Nganasan.” Paper presented to the “Postsocialisms in the Russian North” workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany, November 9.
This paper describes the interconnections between local social processes that encourage subsistence foraging and larger-level economic and political processes that make it difficult for native families in the rural Taimyr communities to pursue formal land claims.
2000 “Food Sharing among Indigenous Hunters of the Russian Arctic: Models and Preliminary Evidence.” Paper presented to the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Human Behavioral and Evolution Society, Amherst, Massachusetts, June 11.
With the break-up of the Soviet command economy, the Dolgan and Nganasan, two of Russia's indigenous Siberian peoples, have returned to subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping. Informal distribution of the prey is reflected in a number of behavioral ecological models. This paper provides preliminary evidence for three models based on focal follow observations and self-report explanations. The models are: kinship resource transfer, buffering exchange, and immediate-return cooperation. Buffering exchange and immediate-return cooperation appear to be connected diachronically and may depend, in part, on patterns of prey distribution and migration. In the Dolgan and Nganasan communities where this research was conducted, the people are relatively isolated from potential sources of trade. The development of non-market distribution strategies among indigenous north Siberians is evidence of a basic human social and economic adaptation.
2000 “The Socio-Demography of a Native Siberian Village.” Paper presented to the Arctic Forum, Washington, DC, May 18.
In Blair Ruble's multidisciplinary study Fragmented Space, the effects of Russia's free market reforms have been described as a process of differentiation occurring on urban-rural continuums. Urban centers are where close to all of Russia's capital wealth has become concentrated. Vast territories of poverty and infrastructure decay surround these islands of prosperity. This process is intestified in remote areas of the Russian north where the larger Russian economy is so unpredictable that the Dolgan and Nganasan see little or no advantage in participating in it. I collected complete census information for the focal community of my research, Ust Avam, population 673. I also collected information on causes of death for registered mortalities in Ust Avam for the previous 11 years. These data provide a source of information about fertility and mortality in the community through time. I found a rapid drop in Ust Avam's fertility and a concomitant increase in mortality since 1993. Ust Avam's age-sex distribution shows many young people and fewer middle-aged and elderly people. In fact, one half of the population is under 19 years old. This pyramidal shaped distribution is typical for expanding populations or those with high adult mortality. In 1997, there were about one-half the number of 0-4-year olds than would be expected for the previous cohorts. Underlying Ust Avam's violent-death and fertility statistics are the fundamental problems of illegal alcohol distribution and unemployment (inactivity in the labor force).
2000 Challenges to Self-Determination Among the Siberian Dolgan and Nganasan. Association for the Study of Nationalities Conference, Columbia, New York, April 14.
This paper identifies three key challenges to sustainable development among the Dolgan and Nganasan of north-central Siberia: transition to a subsistence economy; structure of poverty; and demographic consequences of the dismantling of the planned economy. The data presented in this paper are evidence of a rapid decline in the demographic health of this native Siberian settlement during the 1990s: death rates have increased within the community, and the causes of death have changed as well. Fertility rates have fallen. The article identifies social and economic context of this apparently critical situation. Individuals, once employed to make traditional products for the Soviet economy, are now struggling to feed their families with little or no money. While some in Ust Avam still receive small salaries for civil service work or state pensions, their purchasing power has diminished by an order of magnitude in less than a decade. This disruption of the formal economy has brought about a demoralizing and depressing setting.
1999 “Survival Economy and Core-Periphery Dynamics in the Taimyr Autonomous Region.” Paper presented to Soyuz-99, Bloomington, Indiana, April 10.
This paper reports on the ways the Dolgan, Nganasan, and Nenets of the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Krasnoyarskii Krai, are dealing with the dissolution of state socialism. The central Taimyr's native population shared in an intense period of development beginning in the late 1960s when state-organized hunting, fishing, trapping was encouraged over reindeer herding, and permanent settlements were constructed. Standards of living for native hunters and workers were relatively high throughout the 1980s. After the Soviet Union's collapse, reform programs and market forces increased the costs of production and lowered the value of goods native workers produce-reindeer meat, fish, and pelts. As a result, native rural communities were propelled into severe economic depression. A few households established family/clan holdings (semeino-rodovoe khoziaistvo) based on a 1992 presidential decree by Boris Yeltsin. During 18 months of field research in the Taimyr region, I developed data to characterize, compare, and contrast two types of households-those with state-owned hunting territories and those with recently allowed, private holdings. This paper reports on indigenous explanations of their land claims activity and land use. I found variability in involvement in the land-claims process. I explore this variability in an ecological and holistic analysis.
1998 “Land Use and Social Change among the Dolgan and Nganasan of Northern Siberia.” Paper presented to the Eighth International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Osaka, Japan, October 29.
It appears that capital-intense strategies are not succeeding in the heart of the Taimyr tundra. Family/clan holdings can not operate under current conditions: high cost of transportation of products to urban areas; and the highly bureaucratic nature of making land claims. Rather, hunters and their families have reoriented to a foraging economy with supplemental exchange. As part of the subsistence economy, reciprocal-buffering exchange and altruistic gifting of meat and fish occurs under the tundra code: "Give it if you have it."
1998 “Land Tenure and Kinship in Northern Siberia.” Paper presented to the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Human Behavioral and Evolution Society, Davis, California, July 10.
At the turn of the century the Dolgan and Nganasan were semi-nomadic reindeer herders occupying adjacent territories. During the 1960s the government settled these two groups into ethnically mixed permanent villages. State-organized hunting, fishing, trapping and wage labor replaced reindeer herding. At the time of settlement, the state assigned hunting territories to brigades, many of which were nuclear and extended families, or sets of co-descendants. Since the break-up of the USSR in 1991, some native households have established what are called family/clan holdings. During one year of field research among the Dolgan and Nganasan of the Taimyr Autonomous Region of Northern Siberia I collected information to characterize, compare, and contrast two types of households--those with use rights to state farm holdings and those with recently allowed, family/clan (private) holdings. I conducted my analysis in terms of land-use, local economy and social organization, and relationships with the macro-economy. The main question for my research was why some households had created family/clan holdings and others have stayed with the state farms. In this paper I will analyze one community's land tenure patterns. The paper will address the following: Were larger lineages assigned larger territories, territories with better accessibility, or territories with certain resources? Or was state territory distribution equitable regarding kinship and ethnic affiliation? What is the role of kinship in creating the new family/clan holdings?
1997 “Kinship, Economy, and Ethnicity Among the Dolgan of Northern Siberia.” Paper presented to the Ninety-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 23.
This paper discusses how aboriginal Siberians are dealing with the dissolution of State socialism and subsequent economic collapse. Yesterday, in the session on Confronting Poverty in the 21st Century (Recent Ethnographies from Russia, The Transcaucasus and Central Asia), Kuehnast stated that introduction of the market economy led to black marketing and speculation, while privatization of enterprises led to a host of other social problems such as prostitution, drug trading, begging and homelessness. Dudwick stated that the dissolution of socialism has led to atomization of social and economic life bringing on mutually reinforcing poverty and isolation. And, complementing Ssorin-Chaikov's conclusion that certain individuals are held up as icons of authentic lifestyle differing from reality, I have found through meticulous surveys and observational research that aboriginal Siberians are maintaining social and economic traditions in the face of tremendous technological and financial changes over the past 80 years. These traditions are facilitating a social safety net for remote community members despite continuing problems of alcoholism and unemployment.
1997 (In Russian) “Rodstvo, Obmen, i Etnos v Taimyrskoi Tundre: Rezultaty Issledovanii (1995-1997).” [“Kinship, Exchange, and Ethnicity in the Taimyr Tundra: Results of Investigations (1995-1997).”] Paper presented to the 60th Anniversary Conference of the Taimyr Regional Territorial Studies Museum, Dudinka, Krasnoyarskii Territory, October 17.
For Aristotle, the focus of attention is observed phenomena, which are grouped into classes on the basis of common attributes. Lawfulness or regularity is conceived historically, in terms of frequency of occurrence . . . Moreover, concepts in Aristotelian science often have a valuative character. There is, for example, the highest form of motion - circular - that occurs only in the heavens.
For Galileo, classification of observed phenomenon, historical frequency, and evaluative concepts are rejected in favor of dynamic, relational and empirical concepts. In Galilean science, "lawfulness is assumed to be, at once, more universal and more specific" (Batson 1991). Laws or relationships are invariant over different situations and apply to individual cases. These laws and relationships are defined by testing alternative, hypothesized, invariant relationships where exceptions are completely valid disproof.
With a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning, one translates and inducts real world phenomenon into logical theoretical models. The deductive process leads to formal hypotheses, and with interpretation, to operational hypotheses that are subject to empirical tests. Researchers then translate the test results into general terms and by induction modify theoretical models.
From the Aristotelian side, family and clan holdings in the Russian north could be described under the rubric of "neotraditionalism" as Pika and Prokhorov have done (1994). They use neotraditionalism to describe a revival of traditional economies occurring side-by-side with modern technological and informational awareness. From a Galilean perspective, I should develop a number of alternative empirically testable hypotheses about why native Siberians are forming "neotraditional" family and clan holdings. Are formal or substantive economic principles primary? Are the new holdings a result of separatist politics or policies of forced integration? The results from empirical tests of alternative hypotheses about family and clan economy can be used to develop better understandings of core-periphery dynamics and local responses to commercial globalization, along with a refined definition of neotraditionalism. Group identities and collective territorial strategies are "group-level" phenomenon. But is analysis and explanation in the same terms the most fertile?
1997 Chagnon, N.A., Ziker, J., Thompson, B., Price, M. & Eerkens, J. “The Density of Kinship in Tribal and Peasant Communities.” Ninth Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, June 5.
The senior author has been quantifying kinship relationships within and between communities of Yanomamö Indians using genealogical data and a computer program called KINDEMCOM. Given relatively complete genealogies of a 'group,' KINDEMCOM searches for and quantitatively documents detectable kinship relatedness among communtiy members and makes possible the comparison of what kinds of kinship relationships exist in the community. Contact with missionaries has resulted in a conspicuous diminution of Yanomamö 'kinship density' due to the influx of new members. Recent studies of Siberian tribesmen, Cree Indians of the James Bay area, and Haitian peasants will be compared to Yanomamö data and the issue of "tests of kin selection theory" discussed.
1995 "Siberian Native Self-Determination: Neotraditionalism in a rapidly changing plural society." San Diego State University Social Science Graduate Student, March 25.
With the end of Communist Party rule in 1991, economic and social transformation in the Russian Federation has been rapid and uneven. Monetary and privitization policies have resulted in socio-economic depression among minority groups, as well the low-income classes. Accompanying this depression subsistence economies have gained significance and indigenous leaders from thirty or so different aboriginal groups across the Russian north and Siberia have formed a political confederacy. This confederacy is pursuing legislative affirmation of land claims and rights to cultural, economic, and political self-determination based on traditional lifestyles and ethnicities.
1995 "Ethnocentrism and Detection of Ethnicity." Seventh Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, June 28-July 1
Ethnocentrism is a facultative adaptation operating within human sociality. In this paper I propose necessary conditions for the activation of ethnocentric motiviations and for the calibration of ethnicity detection. That ethnocentrism can utilize hierarchical and rapidly changing definitions of ethnicity is the main problem in developing ultimate- and proximate-level hypotheses. In our evolutionary past, what we classify as ethnocentrism probably served to motivate individuals with common genetic interests in coalitional aggression and defense. Although ethnocentrism probably does not function to increase inclusive fitness when coalitions comprise non-relatives, it still can play a role in motivating individuals for warfare, conflict, sport and other factional ventures. I suggest that the role of kinship cooperation is not adequately considered in existing explanations of the ontogeny of ethnic representations.
1995 "Post-Soviet Siberia." Ninth Annual National Graduate Student Cultural Studies Conference, UC Santa Cruz, April 17.
The Russian bureaucratic and industrial core, along with Western corporations now, continues to penetrate and exploit peripheral regions and non-Russian peoples of the Russian Federation. Resistance to these exploitative powers is growing with local and regional cultural and political movements. As seen in Chechnya, these conflicts of interest can lead to war. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, cooperation with Russia on human rights, native rights, and environmental conservation has taken a back seat to U.S. and G-7 agendas of economic reform and monetary policy. Russia, a colonial power throughout its history, has become the object of Western capitalist colonization. This position is hard to take for many Russians and may be one of the fundamental reasons for current social and political instability in the Russian Federation.
1996 "Risk, Relatives, and Revolution: The Dulgaattar of Northern Siberia." The Brown Bag Lecture Series in Anthropology, UCSB, January 27.
I analyse the proposition that Siberian peoples are becoming more integrated with the Russian and global market economy. Although microeconomic theory and ethnographic reports support this hypothesis for many regions of the Russian Federation, there is reason to question it for the Siberian north. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, native people across Siberia are instituting what they call "family/ clan holdings". The Russian president decreed the family/clan land-use classification in 1992 in order to protect the traditional economic activities and living spaces of aboriginal Siberian peoples. I am researching whether family/clan farms are in fact focused on traditional economic activities or whether they are more like entrepreneurial enterprises. In addition, my research includes the many families still working in the State Farm system to characterize the economic and social changes they experienced in recent years.