Florian Stammler
I am an anthropologist of the North, having spent most of my fieldwork in the Russian Arctic, living with reindeer nomads, hunters, fishermen, and oil and gas workers. I have travelled in many Arctic regions, but from in-depth fieldwork I know best the North West Siberian Yamal-Nenets and the European Nenets Districts of Russia.
Fieldwork has led me to theoretical interests mostly in the topics of human movement and settlement, nomadism, human-animal relations, social and cultural impacts of industrial development, and of technological change.
I have published on these topics, most notably my book 'Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market', which captures the life of Nenets nomads in the short period they had after the Soviet Union and before the big run on Russia's largest gas deposits started. It attempts an explanation of why Yamal-Nenets nomads have faired so well after the end of the Soviet Union, while most of Russia’s other reindeer people heavily suffered from the collapse. The main conclusion was that it is for two reasons:
• because they readily take on innovations from outside their own society and creatively reinterpret them for their own use
• because the Soviet Union as well as the post-Soviet Russian state let them do so without too much intervention into their own domestic affairs in the tundra.
I strongly believe in the value of doing comparative analysis of general topics across various regions of the globe. The relations of humans to their animals and their environment among pastoralists is one such topic which fascinates me a lot. How do people define themselves as part of a community through the animals they manage, with whom they move and interact daily? A whole universe of diverse social significance unfolds if we analyse this in different societies. Together with Hugh Beach we have tried to do so across the North for reindeer societies in a guest-edited volume of the journal Nomadic Peoples (vol. 10.2).
From my early days of studying anthropology I was interested in finding out what happens if incomers arrive at places that seem unknown and hostile to them, such as the Arctic, to build up industry. On the one hand, those indigenous people who live there are affected, and on the other hand those incomers build their own communities. These processes of social and cultural change are far reaching and deserve to be analysed on a broad comparative basis, because industrial development happens all over the world in remote regions. We have set up for that purpose an Extractive Industries Working Group (EIWG) at the International Association of Social Sciences in the Arctic (IASSA) for which I was elected council member in 2008. I have also co-edited a journal volume of Sibirica (vol 5.2)on that topic, jointly with colleague Emma Wilson from Cambridge.
From 2006-2010 I lead a component in a circumpolar research project on relocation and migration, analysing community viability of cities in the Russian Arctic that started either as labour camps or as settlements for workers in the Soviet industry (http://www.arcticcentre.org/innocom). This topic is interesting also because in anthropology we sometimes are preoccupied with the indigenous people living ‘close to the land’, the remoter the better. However, relocation of millions of non-indigenous people to the North has had tremendous effects in the 20th century, and the consequences of this today are a very promising field of analysis that has not been covered sufficiently by anthropologists so far.
Text written in 2008
Address: Florian Stammler
Research Professor
coordinator anthropology research team
Arctic Centre, University of Lapland
PL 122
96101 Rovaniemi, Finland
http://arcticanthropology.org
Fieldwork has led me to theoretical interests mostly in the topics of human movement and settlement, nomadism, human-animal relations, social and cultural impacts of industrial development, and of technological change.
I have published on these topics, most notably my book 'Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market', which captures the life of Nenets nomads in the short period they had after the Soviet Union and before the big run on Russia's largest gas deposits started. It attempts an explanation of why Yamal-Nenets nomads have faired so well after the end of the Soviet Union, while most of Russia’s other reindeer people heavily suffered from the collapse. The main conclusion was that it is for two reasons:
• because they readily take on innovations from outside their own society and creatively reinterpret them for their own use
• because the Soviet Union as well as the post-Soviet Russian state let them do so without too much intervention into their own domestic affairs in the tundra.
I strongly believe in the value of doing comparative analysis of general topics across various regions of the globe. The relations of humans to their animals and their environment among pastoralists is one such topic which fascinates me a lot. How do people define themselves as part of a community through the animals they manage, with whom they move and interact daily? A whole universe of diverse social significance unfolds if we analyse this in different societies. Together with Hugh Beach we have tried to do so across the North for reindeer societies in a guest-edited volume of the journal Nomadic Peoples (vol. 10.2).
From my early days of studying anthropology I was interested in finding out what happens if incomers arrive at places that seem unknown and hostile to them, such as the Arctic, to build up industry. On the one hand, those indigenous people who live there are affected, and on the other hand those incomers build their own communities. These processes of social and cultural change are far reaching and deserve to be analysed on a broad comparative basis, because industrial development happens all over the world in remote regions. We have set up for that purpose an Extractive Industries Working Group (EIWG) at the International Association of Social Sciences in the Arctic (IASSA) for which I was elected council member in 2008. I have also co-edited a journal volume of Sibirica (vol 5.2)on that topic, jointly with colleague Emma Wilson from Cambridge.
From 2006-2010 I lead a component in a circumpolar research project on relocation and migration, analysing community viability of cities in the Russian Arctic that started either as labour camps or as settlements for workers in the Soviet industry (http://www.arcticcentre.org/innocom). This topic is interesting also because in anthropology we sometimes are preoccupied with the indigenous people living ‘close to the land’, the remoter the better. However, relocation of millions of non-indigenous people to the North has had tremendous effects in the 20th century, and the consequences of this today are a very promising field of analysis that has not been covered sufficiently by anthropologists so far.
Text written in 2008
Address: Florian Stammler
Research Professor
coordinator anthropology research team
Arctic Centre, University of Lapland
PL 122
96101 Rovaniemi, Finland
http://arcticanthropology.org
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Books by Florian Stammler
– Bruce Forbes, research professor in global change, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland
“A unique study which goes beyond 'culture' to give a detailed socio-economic explanation for the exceptional resilience and continuing nomadism of the Yamal Nenets. Essential reading for anyone interested in northern pastoralism, the anthropology of land and movement, or the diversity of local responses to the state.”
– Piers Vitebsky, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, author of “Reindeer people: living with animals and spirits in Siberia”
Abstract:
‘Yamal’ translates as the ‘end of the land’ in the language of its native Nenets population. The setting of this anthropological monograph, Yamal is home to the world’s largest domestic reindeer herds. The region also accounts for almost 90% of Russia’s gas production, and extraction of huge untapped deposits started transforing vast expanses of tundra pastures into an industrial landscape. This book gives a valuable insight into nomadic life in the context of post-Soviet transformation at the onset of gas extraction. Stammler meticulously analyses relations between reindeer nomads and their social, political and natural environments. Their high level of social adaptability is combined with a sense of belonging to their animals and their land. This study makes a significant contribution to debates about nomadic pastoralism and to anthropological studies of human-animal relations, territorialityof, barter and property . The book is also recommended to those with an interest in background information on the regions that fuel the global economy in the 21st century.
Papers by Florian Stammler
We argue that including traditional oral historical knowledge helps managing responses to epizootic disease outbreaks and prevent them in the future.
– Bruce Forbes, research professor in global change, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland
“A unique study which goes beyond 'culture' to give a detailed socio-economic explanation for the exceptional resilience and continuing nomadism of the Yamal Nenets. Essential reading for anyone interested in northern pastoralism, the anthropology of land and movement, or the diversity of local responses to the state.”
– Piers Vitebsky, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, author of “Reindeer people: living with animals and spirits in Siberia”
Abstract:
‘Yamal’ translates as the ‘end of the land’ in the language of its native Nenets population. The setting of this anthropological monograph, Yamal is home to the world’s largest domestic reindeer herds. The region also accounts for almost 90% of Russia’s gas production, and extraction of huge untapped deposits started transforing vast expanses of tundra pastures into an industrial landscape. This book gives a valuable insight into nomadic life in the context of post-Soviet transformation at the onset of gas extraction. Stammler meticulously analyses relations between reindeer nomads and their social, political and natural environments. Their high level of social adaptability is combined with a sense of belonging to their animals and their land. This study makes a significant contribution to debates about nomadic pastoralism and to anthropological studies of human-animal relations, territorialityof, barter and property . The book is also recommended to those with an interest in background information on the regions that fuel the global economy in the 21st century.
We argue that including traditional oral historical knowledge helps managing responses to epizootic disease outbreaks and prevent them in the future.