Our colleagues in Estonia will host a really interesting workshop this year - focusing on the role of gatekeepers. I think they are very right that these people are so important for any anthropologist (not only in the Arctic), but we know very little about them, yet we all have our own very diverse experiences …
Category: Theoretical Issues
Call for Papers: Arctic Workshop of Tartu University “Gatekeepers”
Arctic Workshop of Tartu University: Gatekeepers 3rd-4th of June 2016 It is well known that ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation are central to anthropological research. In practice, this means that the scholar lives in a particular community, participates, makes observations, and documents their findings. Therefore, the published research is usually associated with the scholar and …
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PhD / MA course extractive industires at the world’s biggest hole
The Uarctic Arctic Extractive Industries PhD programme organises its spring 2016 course, this time also open for M.A. students, eligibility for participation see below. The course is hosted by the North Eastern Federal University, Yakutia, Russia, February 16-22, 2016. Yakutia in Siberia is not a cheap, but fascinating place to go. Interested students can apply …
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X SIBERIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE – PASSION FOR LIFE, Emotions, Feelings and Perception in the North and Siberia
A really early announcement for a great conference on Arctic Anthropology! I hope to meet many of the readers of our blog in a years time in St. Petersburg in order to discuss an important theme in our field. As some of you might have guessed I would like to distract the participants' attention a …
Stereotypes die hard!
Last week, an advertising campaign by Visit Finland and Finnair produced images of Sàmi in traditional clothes dancing around the fire during a shamanic ritual in the tent. In discussions following the publication, many rejected the representation of Sàmi in that video, not least because Sàmi were depicted rather dirty-looking (“Likaiset lappalaiset”, YLE 17-09-2015, Supposedly, …
Anthropology beyond dichotomies? Thoughts after “Beyond Perception 2015”
The Symposium "Beyond perception 15" was organised in Aberdeen by the department postgraduate researchers and postgraduate students to celebrate the work of Tim Ingold. The aim was to explore the ways in which anthropologists can find new avenues of approaching the most fundamental questions that our discipline deals with: our relations to the environment and …
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New book: Before Boas – The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment
I would like to announce a newly published book exploring why the cradle of our discipline was to be found in ethnographic research in the Russian Arctic. The present book sums up the results of decades of research into early ethnographic scholarship during the exploration of Siberia in the 18th century and its links to …
Arctic Anthropology 