scholarly journals Ethnocultutal identity of the indigenous people of the Arctic (a case study of Anabar district in Yakutia)

2021 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 00014
Author(s):  
Viktoriya Filippova ◽  
Liliya Vinokurova ◽  
Yana Sannikova ◽  
Natalya Zakharova ◽  
Akulina Mestnikova

The article presents the preliminary results of a comprehensive study on the social anthropology of the cultural landscape of the Khatango-Anabar region as an integral historical and cultural space, formed as a result of the interaction of man and nature, local ethnic communities and social institutions. The purpose of the article is to study the regional ethno-cultural identification of the population living in one of the Arctic regions of Yakutia - Anabar. The field research, including interviews, a sociological survey, and a psycholinguistic experiment revealed indicators for determining the ethnocultural identity. Three main criteria of ethnocultural identity of residents of Anabar district were identified. These are territorial, cultural and linguistic ones. It was found that the unifying indicator of the population living in this area is regional identity as Anabarians.

Author(s):  
Дмитрий Николаевич Замятин

Геокультурное пространство любого региона формируется в результате взаимодействия двух слабо отделимых друг от друга элементов – геокультур, развивающихся на данной территории, и культурных ландшафтов. Полноценное развитие геокультурного пространства предполагает формирование уникальной онтологии воображения, создающей когнитивный «фундамент» для построения соответствующих моделей. Онтологические модели воображения характеризуют возможности расширенной репрезентации и интерпретации культурных ландшафтов какого-либо региона. Визуальность культурного ландшафта представляет собой сложное образование, в котором зрительные реакции и рефлексии оказываются результатом множественного воображения – одновременно и личностного, и группового. Геокультурное пространство Арктики в его визуально-дискурсивном измерении является сложным, поскольку традиция «колониального взгляда» вкупе с тенденцией к анализу постколониальных практик и к деколонизации различных арктических дискурсов создаёт амбивалентное дискурсивное поле актуальных визуальных практик и политик. Экзистенциальная ситуация постэкзотизма, типологически характерная для арктических регионов, является полем онтологизации множественных визуальных практик, закрепляющих ризоматические процедуры геокультурных различений. В результате полевого исследования прибрежных территорий Северо-Восточной Чукотки были выделены наиболее визуально интенсивные ключевые ландшафтные ассамбляжи: 1) морской охоты; 2) традиционных праздников морских охотников; 3) «первозданной» природы. Ландшафтные ассамбляжи репрезентируются теми или иными визуальными диспозитивами. Под визуальными диспозитивами понимаются устойчиво воспроизводящиеся и феноменологически фиксируемые визуальные ландшафтные (геокультурные) образы, характеризующие специфику определённых ландшафтных ассамбляжей. В результате проведённого исследования выделено пять ключевых визуальных диспозитивов, обусловливающих специфические формы воспроизводства и развития как самих геокультур, так и соответствующих культурных ландшафтов данных территорий: 1) диспозитив морских охотников, наиболее пограничный и фрактальный; 2) диспозитив праздников традиционной культуры морских охотников; 3) диспозитив разрушения и руинирования, связанный как с экстремальными природными условиями региона, так и с эпохой советского и постсоветского развития; 4) диспозитив «природного», «первозданного» пространства, связанный с низкой освоенностью территории; и 5) диспозитив мультинатурализма, проявляющийся в особенностях визуальных сред чукотских поселений (сел, поселков городского типа, небольшого города). Эти диспозитивы, переплетаясь и взаимодействуя между собой, создают множественные, постоянно трансформирующиеся ландшафтные ассамбляжи. В рамках представленных визуальных диспозитивов формируются феномены арктического постэкзотизма и внутреннего экзотизма, фиксирующие невозможность возвращения к доколониальной «ландшафтной оптике». The geocultural space of any region is formed as a result of the interaction of two weakly separable elements – geocultures developing in the given territory and cultural landscapes. The full development of a geocultural space involves the formation of a unique ontology of imagination, which creates a cognitive “foundation” for the construction of appropriate models. Ontological models of imagination characterize the possibilities of an expanded representation and interpretation of the cultural landscapes of a region. The visuality of a cultural landscape is a complex formation in which visual reactions and reflections are the result of multiple imaginations – both personal and group. The geocultural space of the Arctic, in its visual-discursive dimension, is complex, since the tradition of the “colonial view”, coupled with the tendencies to analyze postcolonial practices and to decolonize various Arctic discourses, creates an ambivalent discursive field of relevant visual practices and policies. The existential situation of post-exoticism, typologically characteristic of the Arctic regions, is a field of ontologization of multiple visual practices that consolidate rhizomatic procedures of geocultural distinctions. As a result of a field study of the coastal territories of North-Eastern Chukotka, the most visually intensive key landscape assemblages have been identified: 1) sea hunting, 2) traditional holidays of sea hunters, 3) “pristine” nature. Landscape assemblages are represented by various visual dispositives. Visual dispositives are understood as consistently reproducing and phenomenologically fixed visual landscape (geocultural) images that characterize the specifics of certain landscape assemblages. As a result of the study, five key visual dispositives have been identified that determine the specific forms of the reproduction and development of both geo-cultures themselves and the corresponding cultural landscapes of these territories: 1) the dispositive of sea hunters, the most borderline and fractal; 2) the dispositive of holidays of the traditional culture of sea hunters; 3) the dispositive of destruction and ruin associated with both the extreme natural conditions of the region and the era of the Soviet and post-Soviet development; 4) the dispositive of the “natural”, “pristine” space associated with the low development of the territory, and 5) the dispositive of multi-naturalism, manifested in the features of the visual environments of Chukchi settlements (villages, urban-type settlements, small towns). These dispositives, intertwining and interacting, create multiple, constantly transforming landscape assemblages. Within the framework of the presented visual dispositives, the phenomena of Arctic post-exoticism and internal exoticism are formed, which fix the impossibility of returning to the pre-colonial “landscape optics”.


Polar Record ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir

This article examines the impacts of burgeoning globalisation on small fishery-based villages in Iceland. With economic restructuring, new technologies in production, and changing labour migration, the inhabitants are not uniformly able to take advantage of current changes, and some have lost while others have gained. The paper examines the effects on people's lives and experiences and how they cope with these changes locally. The discussion is based on ethnographic field research in the 1990s. It takes a particular look at aspects of local identities that are related to gender and nationality. Since gender and ethnic differences are embedded in social institutions, they are integral parts of individuals' strategies to make better lives for themselves. Gender and nationality are constructed in the process of societal transformations. The primary goal of this paper is to shed light on gender in relation to current transformation. However, nationality is a new marker of difference within the localities — with the growing number of immigrants — that is important to consider. Combining attention to gender and ethnic constructions gives a broad picture of life in fishery villages in the Arctic and the various strategies applied by the inhabitants.


Author(s):  
Nikolay Terebikhin ◽  
◽  
Marina Melyutina ◽  

This article deals with the reconstruction of the ritual-mythological origins and interpretation of archaic semantics of a number of concepts, images, metaphors and symbols that constitute the corpus of Pomor cryosophy and anthropology of the cold. The research is based on the semiotic analysis and hermeneutics of traditional texts of Pomor culture and works included in the semantic circle of the Northern text of Russian literature. The concept of cryosophy was developed by the outstanding Russian geocryologist V.P. Melnikov, who viewed it as an “ontology of the cold world”, a system of philosophical and scientific ideas about the fundamental characteristics and principles of the cryosphere in all its forms. The conceptual and methodological framework of anthropology of the cold was articulated in the works of employees of the Laboratory for Comprehensive Geocultural Research on the Arctic (Arctic State Institute of Culture and Arts, Yakutsk). The study of traditional Pomor cryosophy is based on the author’s previous research in the field of geosophy, sacred geography, and semiotics of cultural landscape of the Russian North. It is fully compliant with the subject-problem field of the anthropology of the cold. Metaphysical cold pervades all aspects of the sophic arrangement of the Pomor ethnocentrum, whose sacred geometry is similar to the configuration of “cold” societies. The class of “cold” societies based on the mythological paradigm of eternal return includes the archaic and traditional communities of the Russian Arctic (Sami, Nenets, Komi, Russian Pomors). The ideology of Old Believers was one of the leading mechanisms aimed to “cool” and maintain the homeostasis of the structure of local and ethnic communities in Pomorye. It was reflected in the sacred geometry of monastic and local self-government in the Russian North. The “cold option” of Pomor culture, along with the preserving values of the old faith, included more archaic elements and “cooling” mechanisms going back to the shamanistic ritual-mythological complex. In Pomor society, the function of such a refrigerator, preserving the sacred knowledge of the structure of the universe and maintaining the eternal still of the northern world, was performed by the poet-storyteller. He used word magic to turn the icy silence of the North into the sounding mythopoetic cosmos.


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2019 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory H. Chu

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