Rain on snow – how do people and reindeer learn to survive?

This winter and spring we hear again disastrous news from sudden temperature rises and falls, leading to thick ice-crusts on reindeer pastures that block reindeer's access to their pastures. While the most famous of these events happened in 2014 in the Centre of the Yamal Peninsula, West Siberia, the phenomenon is known probably to reindeer …

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Trust Versus Paranoia: Can the Siberian fire spirit explain the spectacular failure of the UK Covid track and trace app?

Piers Vitebsky and Roza Laptander are going to give an interesting example on how to de-provincialise Arctic social sciences. This time on a topic that could hardly be more timely: they refer to their elaborate ethnographies of indigenous Siberians' communications with the fire spirit to explain why apps to track the corona virus may fail. …

Continue reading Trust Versus Paranoia: Can the Siberian fire spirit explain the spectacular failure of the UK Covid track and trace app?

Interview during pandemic: Anna Nerkagi

It has been one year since the coronavirus pandemic became a part of our life and changed it in a very radical way. We follow the rules of the government, we developed some rules for ourselves – and every one of these is made to stay safe and alive. From the beginning of the pandemic until today, people all around the world are shocked by the high number of …

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