In the current situation we do not get any more new research evidence from our Siberian field sites, unfortunately. Nonetheless Siberia remains THE place in the Arctic where human cultural diversity, a multiplicity of livelihood, languages, subsistence strategies and...
In the current situation we do not get any more new research evidence from our Siberian field sites, unfortunately. Nonetheless Siberia remains THE place in the Arctic where human cultural diversity, a multiplicity of livelihood, languages, subsistence strategies and mobilities remains best preserved. One very interesting case are the Khanty in West Siberia, who have endured the oil and gas industry in their area since the 1960s, and nonetheless have a culturally very specific lifestyle, as we know from the works of our team member Stephan Dudeck, and scholars such as Peter Jordan, Andrew Wiget and others.
Yuka Oishi’s book cover of her Khanty fishing ethnography
Now we have the chance to find out about a research work among the Khanty focusing on their fishing. Yuka Oishi, anthropologist from Kobe University has written her PhD about this, and just published a book in Japanese on this. For those of us who do not know Japanese, this is a nice chance to find out about her research results.
Welcome to Arctic Centre on 6 September, 14:00 (2 pm), in the coffee room on the second floor. If someone wants to join on teams, feel free to do so
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Yuka has published some earlier version of this work in a chapter in English here . Really nice there are the details about Khanty territoriality on the Synia, where in the specific fishing hamlets you still find specific family surnames (clans), e.g. the map on p 175. This reminds of Peter Jordan’s work who also mapped that sort of fishing territoriality among a more southerly group of Khanty, by the Yugan River. But Oishi’s work is very different from that because she also shows the link between fishing and reindeer herding among the Synia Khanty. In her Japanese book she has a more detailed reindeer herding / fishing ethnography (see e.g. map on p 142 of Yuka’s book) than the little study on reindeer herding obshchina (community) territoriality that I wrote myself on the basis of my short Synia fieldwork more than 20 years ago (p 260-268 in Stammler 2005). This reminds us that fishing and reindeer herding are closely intertwined, and sometimes we forget this when we read literature on Arctic pastoralism, or fishing livelihoods as if these are separate spheres. Among the Khanty this is maybe most expressed, but most reindeer herders in the Arctic also fish, or have relatives or family members providing the fish for the household. Fish is always an important staple food! And it’s worrying when it disappears like documented by Yuka Oishi, or when people are restricted to fish even for their own subsistence, like in some protected areas not only in the Synia area, but also further North on the Yamal Peninsula (see here) or the Teno River between Norway and Finland (see here).