Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia
We start from a puzzle: in remote Arctic regions of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), why are many reindeer-herding families excluded from official 'nomadic family' benefits? The Republic's Nomadic Family Law is supposed to support indigenous minorities leading a 'traditional' l...
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crwhitehorsepr:10.3197/np.2022.260102 2023-05-15T15:04:47+02:00 Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia Khlinovskaya Rockhill, Elena Sidorova, Lena Vitebsky, Piers 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.3197/np.2022.260102 https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/nomp/2022/00000026/00000001/art00003 en eng White Horse Press Nomadic Peoples volume 26, issue 1, page 4-32 ISSN 0822-7942 Demography journal-article 2022 crwhitehorsepr https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2022.260102 2022-04-13T10:48:03Z We start from a puzzle: in remote Arctic regions of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), why are many reindeer-herding families excluded from official 'nomadic family' benefits? The Republic's Nomadic Family Law is supposed to support indigenous minorities leading a 'traditional' lifestyle, but it often fails. We identify three models of family structure at work, each matching the fluidity of the physical environment and productive process more or less realistically. While our fieldwork reveals a highly flexible and all-embracing indigenous understanding of relatedness, analysis of the urban officials' laws show them to be based on unexamined concepts of 'family' rooted in Russian terminology and based on narrow ideas of the nuclear family rather than on the complementary distribution of labour across a shared space. We suggest that legal initiatives should include a wider ethnographic basis to provide a better understanding of emic concepts, while also consulting the local people most directly affected. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Sakha Sakha Republic Tundra Yakutia Siberia White Horse Press Journals (via Crossref) Arctic Sakha Nomadic Peoples 26 1 4 32 |
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White Horse Press Journals (via Crossref) |
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crwhitehorsepr |
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English |
topic |
Demography |
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Demography Khlinovskaya Rockhill, Elena Sidorova, Lena Vitebsky, Piers Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia |
topic_facet |
Demography |
description |
We start from a puzzle: in remote Arctic regions of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), why are many reindeer-herding families excluded from official 'nomadic family' benefits? The Republic's Nomadic Family Law is supposed to support indigenous minorities leading a 'traditional' lifestyle, but it often fails. We identify three models of family structure at work, each matching the fluidity of the physical environment and productive process more or less realistically. While our fieldwork reveals a highly flexible and all-embracing indigenous understanding of relatedness, analysis of the urban officials' laws show them to be based on unexamined concepts of 'family' rooted in Russian terminology and based on narrow ideas of the nuclear family rather than on the complementary distribution of labour across a shared space. We suggest that legal initiatives should include a wider ethnographic basis to provide a better understanding of emic concepts, while also consulting the local people most directly affected. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Khlinovskaya Rockhill, Elena Sidorova, Lena Vitebsky, Piers |
author_facet |
Khlinovskaya Rockhill, Elena Sidorova, Lena Vitebsky, Piers |
author_sort |
Khlinovskaya Rockhill, Elena |
title |
Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia |
title_short |
Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia |
title_full |
Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia |
title_fullStr |
Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia |
title_full_unstemmed |
Where Is the Nomadic Family? Rigid Laws and Flexible Tundra Life in North-East Siberia |
title_sort |
where is the nomadic family? rigid laws and flexible tundra life in north-east siberia |
publisher |
White Horse Press |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.3197/np.2022.260102 https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/nomp/2022/00000026/00000001/art00003 |
geographic |
Arctic Sakha |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Sakha |
genre |
Arctic Sakha Sakha Republic Tundra Yakutia Siberia |
genre_facet |
Arctic Sakha Sakha Republic Tundra Yakutia Siberia |
op_source |
Nomadic Peoples volume 26, issue 1, page 4-32 ISSN 0822-7942 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2022.260102 |
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Nomadic Peoples |
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26 |
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1 |
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4 |
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32 |
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1766336506230734848 |