Siberian Studies - Dietrich Reimer
Verlag Berlin
general editor: Erich Kasten| |
Erich
Kasten (ed.) People and the Land Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia 2002, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag 257 pp., 2 maps, 13,5 x 20,5 cm Euro 29,- (D) / sFr 49,- paper, ISBN 3-496-02743-6 While much has been written on post-Soviet change in Russian urban centres, we still know very little about how these changes have affected peoples' lives in rural communities. This is nowhere more true than in the vast regions of Siberia and the North. This volume fills this gap with in-depth studies of how people with different cultural backgrounds, often living in extreme natural environments, are coping with dramatic and rapid political and economic transformations. It shows how the fate of postsocialist reforms in the Russian North depends largely on striking the right balance between exploitation of the region's strategic natural resources and concern for environmental impacts and the survival of local people. The authors, among them many of the leading scholars of the Russian North, place their accounts within the context of wider, comparative enquiries into the nature of postsocialist societies. |
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Kasten, Erich (ed.) Indigenous groups are reshaping and claiming possession of symbols, not only in the Russian North and other circumpolar regions but worldwide. In addition to material objects and practices, knowledge itself is increasingly claimed as the exclusive heritage of a specific group, whose members then assert privileges on this basis. The commodification of culture as a form of property is a product of complex processes of identity construction. Native groups in the circumpolar North, although sharing similar natural environments, have experienced very different political histories. This book explores the consequences of this variation for the ways in which culture is nowadays celebrated, but also manipulated and reified. The main focus is on Siberia, but the studies will also be of interest to all those following the theoretical and practical debates concerning three key concepts of contemporary anthropology: culture, property and indigeneity. |
| Kasten, Erich
(ed.) Rebuilding Identities Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia 2005, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag 280 pp., 25 illus., 6 maps, index, 13,5 x 20,5 cm Euro 39,- (D) / sFr 67,50 paper, ISBN 3-496-02773-8 The dissolution of the Soviet Union has opened up new processes of building and rebuilding collective identities in the Russian North. Contests over identity have become highly politicised and are seen by many inhabitants of Siberia as an instrument to secure access to resources and cultural property. The mobilization strategies of activists often involve manipulation of the criteria for group membership and switching between criteria, while simultaneously cultivating ‘cross-cutting’ and multiple identities. The contributors to this volume explore these controversial trends by paying close attention to the diverse social backgrounds of the inhabitants. The underlying issues, particularly the importance of ‘ethnicity’ vis-à-vis other types of collective identity, are by no means peculiar to the Russian North and a comparative perspective is introduced through the inclusion of additional case studies from neighboring regions. This volume, the final in a series devoted to post-Soviet reform pathways, will therefore also be of interest to other Arctic specialists and to wider audiences in anthropology and related disciplines. Content |