Arctic Adaptations: Native Whalers and Reindeer Herders of Northern Eurasia / Edition 1

by Igor Krupnik, Marcia Levenson

Overview

The common view of indigenous Arctic cultures, even among scholarly observers, has long been one of communities continually in ecological harmony with their natural environment. In Arctic Adaptations, Igor Krupnik dismisses the textbook notion of traditional societies as static. Using information from years of field research, interviews with native Siberians, and archaeological site visits, Krupnik demonstrates that these societies are characterized not by stability but by dynamism and significant evolutionary breaks. Their apparent state of ecological harmony is, in fact, a conscious survival strategy resulting from "a prolonged and therefore successful process of human adaptation in one of the most extreme inhabited environments in the world." As their physical and cultural environment has changed—fluctuating reindeer and caribou herds, unpredictable weather patterns, introduction of firearms and better seacraft—Arctic communities have adapted by developing distinctive subsistence practices, social structures, and ethics regarding utilization of natural resources. Krupnik's pioneering work represents a dynamic marriage of ethnography and ecology, and makes accessible to Western scholars crucial findings and archival data previously unavailable because of political and language barriers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874516333
Publisher:	University Press of New England
Publication date:	06/01/2002
Series:	Arctic Visions Series
Edition description:	Expanded English ed.
Pages:	375
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Igor Krupnik is a cultural anthropologist and curator of the Arctic and Northern Ethnology collections at the Department of Anthropology in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

What People are Saying About This

William W. Fitzbugh

“A masterful study that will for the first time present English readers with cultures and environments of a totally unknown region. Krupnik is the most knowledgeable scholar of this subject in the world.”