Hello everybody, In this post I would like to share briefly yet another pile of work in the field of ‘Arctic-based’ design research. My personal fascination with mobility of Arctic nomads, coupled with professional interest in experimentation in the field of design education have recently resulted into the project “Visualizing Arctic Mobility”, funded by Finnish …
Continue reading ‘Thinking by Hands’: Designers’ Field Trip to Yamal
My last summer entry from this Yakutia fieldwork finally brings me to the fieldwork PRACTICE there with the inhabitants of the Lena Delta and coastal area in Yakutia. As some of you may know, one of our crucial methodological approaches in the ORHELIA project is to marry intensive life-history interviewing with anthropological participant observation, which …
From Tiksi you go another 50 km by motor boat to the village of Cape Bykov (Bykov Mys), where 500 people engage at 72 degrees northern latitude and harsh climate engage in coastal fishing all over the Lena River Delta. Today the only still remaining proper kolkhoz (cooperative enterprise) in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) is …
Until last year it used to be very easy to get to this fieldsite in the Lena River Delta, because direct flights from Moscow brought you to Tiksi in 6 hours. But last year the Russian army who used to run the airbase in Tiksi closed it, and shipped out all the security equipment, so …
Continue reading New field site in East Siberia, Lena Delta and Tiksi
The Orhelia researchers in the anthropology research team are having an intensive fieldwork season. We collect material that allows us to compare how the inhabitants of Eurasia's Arctic shoreline were affected by and respond to different state policies designed in capital cities by governments that are very far from the centres of life of our …
Continue reading Oral History of the Arctic – along the shores of the ocean
In a small newspaper named LKAB Framtid Luleå [LKAB Future Luleå] with a special February issue this year published by the Swedish mining company Loussavaara Kirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB), can an article with the headline "Critics are wrong: 'We need more mines'" be found. That issue was a special one for the town of Luleå that is …
My book “The Sámi of the Kola Peninsula: About the life of an ethnic minority in the Soviet Union” has been recently translated into English and published on the internet within the publication series of the Centre for Sámi Studies at the University of Tromsø. Using extensive biographical interviews as a primary source, this oral …
Arctic Anthropology 