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- Convenors:
-
Andrei Golovnev
(Kunstkamera (MAE RAS))
Nikolay Kradin (Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology, Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences,)
- Stream:
- Living landscapes: Nomadic and Sedentary/Paysages vivants: Nomadique et sédentaire
- Location:
- DMS 3105
- Start time:
- 2 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
How to understand a movement in personal and social behavior by means of science and arts? Rhythmic pattern of behavior combining stability and mobility, including strategies on spatial control, could be recorded in spatial-temporal dimensions
Long Abstract:
Anthropology of movement emerged in junction of science and art, anthropology and cinematograph, can hardly be framed as complete list of subjects and methods, since the phenomenon embraces variety of activity from gesture to geopolitics. Methodologically, the main focus on dynamic scenarios and sequences in anthropology and history suggests special attention to 'motive-decision-action' algorithm. Stability and mobility create rhythmic pattern of human behavior that could be viewed and recorded in spatial-temporal dimensions, or indiscrete spatial-temporal sequence. Individual and social tracks and trajectories provide new approaches for anthropological and historical interpretation, understanding strategies of spatial (including social) control, patterns of communications, personal schemes of activity, etc.
Movement (motion) in personal and social behavior requests adequate methods of recording, and visual anthropology, among others, is expected to share its experience. Perhaps, most evident protagonists on the scene are nomads with their explicit design of movement. Research agenda of the anthropology of movement comprises the issues of dynamics/statics, sustainability/changeability, drivers of activity and conveyance of signals in bio-, psycho-, and socio-dimensions. Visualization is a method of research and presentation of the matrix and scenarios of movement and navigation providing applied function of the anthropology of movement.
The penal solicits potential participants to bring into discussion the experiences and case studies including: (1) Patterns of spatial control; (2) Similarity and variety of settled and nomadic activity and mentality; (3) New approaches and tools to record and research the mobile behavior. Participants are encouraged to discuss the experience acquired and the ways of search ahead.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Andrei Golovnev (Kunstkamera (MAE RAS))
Paper short abstract:
Refocusing from still pictures to moving compositions provides new dimensions and agenda in anthropology. Recording and interpretation of movement/motion require an adequate technology and methodology as experience of the project “Mobility in the Arctic” demonstrates
Paper long abstract:
What is clear? That science should switch attention from solid forms (sometimes manufactured for scientific goals per se) to vivid moves often omitted in research due to their temporality and uncertainty. Refocusing from so called 'results', or still compositions, to motion and action (1) activates studying the 'motive-decision-action' link; (2) makes it preferable to acquire and describe any scene through a personality—protagonist's close up, rather than by common statistic or other means of impersonal observation; (3) urges to replace a habitual mental map with fixed temporal-spatial axes by transformer-type (or scenario-style) sequence merging spatial-temporal dimensions; (4) calls for figuring out various kinds of human movement including physical, mental, social ones, which mutual transition and conversion are of particular interest; (5) requires the adequate technologies for recording, studying and presenting human movement/motion.
What is uncertain? Who might be casted as an eloquent example of homo mobilis (man mobile), nomad-pastoralist, traveler, cyber-surfer, diplomat or anyone else? How rhythmic pattern of human behavior including strategies on spatial control could be recorded in spatial-temporal dimensions? Northern nomadic models studied by researchers on project "Mobility in the Arctic: ethnic traditions and technological innovations" funded by the Russian Science Foundation present an experience in recording and interpreting movement by visual and other technical means and methods
Maksim Nikitin
Paper short abstract:
Examination of the effects of anthropological movement in time.
Paper long abstract:
This research seeks to establish movement as one of the primary subjects of anthropological studies. Examination of the effects of anthropological movement, be it physical, cultural or as an agent of change in personal identity, may provide crucial insights in field work, but only if quantified scientifically. Recent findings in related scientific disciplines now require anthropologists to measure and articulate speed with a commensurate degree of precision and exactitude. Movement implies a destination over time, and both are of equal importance.
Zoia Vylka Ravna (University of Wyoming)
Paper short abstract:
The Nenets woman is in charge of her nomadic dwelling. She has to possess unique indigenous knowledge in order to create, to build, to maintain the dwelling. She also has to transfer this knowledge to her children. This is an ethnographic description of the indigenous knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
The official policy of the Soviet state towards nomadic population was to change their way of life, by implementation of the collective property on reindeer, boarding school education and displacement of women to settlements. This policy, however, never succeeded on the territories of Jamal Nenets people; they have always been and remain to be a hundred percept nomads. After the Soviet regime collapsed, Nenets reindeer herders managed to re-build the private ownership to their reindeer. Today they face another challenges. The globalization in the form of modern technologies, massive industrial development, exploration of underground resources, construction and building of infrastructure and climate changes are affecting the life of tundra inhabitants. Now the space around and inside of the nomadic dwelling is going through many changes, whether the nomads want it or not. This paper is based on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2015-2016 on the area of Yamal Peninsula, Northern Russia. The territory of the Yamal Peninsula (Yamal is "the end of the world" from Nenets language) is a home and summer pasture for more than 700.000 reindeer and approx. 13.000 nomads. Their dwelling has been marginally changed and is in use in all the areas of the Nenets. In addition, only in the symbiotic connection of the work of Nenets women and men the "successful" dwelling can be made. So, the tendency of forced or voluntary removing/ displacing the Nenets women from the nomadic camps as it is indoctrinated in the policy and education of the Russian Federation can have devastating consequences for this culture.
Svetlana Belorussova (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera))
Paper short abstract:
Nagaibak people, ethnic minority in Urals, Russia, are descendents of steppe nomads, but nowadays conduct sedentary lifestyle. The turbulent trajectory has guided Nagaibak from spatial mobility to ethno-building activity.
Paper long abstract:
Nagaibak people, ethnic minority in Southern Urals (Russia) numbered ca 8 000, speak a Tatar dialect, keep Orthodox religion, and identify themselves as descendants of Cossacks who protected the border against steppe nomads in the time of Russian Empire. Their ancestors were mobile warriors; but today Nagaibak are villagers. Last time Nagaibak have moved in 1842, when they were ordered to relocate from a fortress in Bashkiria to the new military line in Orenburg area. Oral history still preserves that event as ethnic drama reflected in songs, proverbs and folk tales. Since then Nagaibak retained their places of dwelling as persistently as if they guarded them from outside infringements. Being professional borderguards they succeeded in protecting both borderline and their own social status.
In the years of Soviet power Nagaibak have been deprived of their ethnic name and ascribed to Tatars; that time they were hidden or "introvert" community. After Soviet collapse, in the 1990s, they have experienced a boom of ethnicity and gained an official status of indigenous minority of Russia. That was decisive turn to ethno-cultural openness, "extrovert" self-representation. They have built four ethnic museums and organized more than a dozen folk groups in their villages.
The turbulent trajectory has guided Nagaibak from spatial mobility (in the past) to ethno-building activity (nowadays). They still live at the crossroads of different cultures — nomadic and settled, Muslim and Christian, and they preserved mobility and maneuverability of their forefathers as well as contributed it with receptive and adaptive qualities generated in complex ethnohistory.