When the connectivity is lost: infrastructural uncertainty and reaction to it amongst the tundra nomads of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

• Published in: VESTNIK ARHEOLOGII, ANTROPOLOGII I ETNOGRAFII
• Main Author: Istomin K.V.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Russian
• Published: Tyumen Scientific Centre SB RA 2023
• Subjects: satellite phones; infrastructural failure; uncertainty; reindeer herding; nenets; Archaeology; CC1-960; Arctic; Nadym; Nenets Autonomous Okrug; Tundra; Yamalo Nenets; Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.20874/2071-0437-2023-62-3-16; https://doaj.org/article/62fcc03616c44eebb9c08463656428c3

The present paper contributes to the study of ‘infrastructural failures’ as one of the rapidly developing in recent times areas of the anthropology of infrastructure. In the focus of the research is a ‘failure’ of the satellite telephone communications in Russian Arctic, which occurred as a result of the decision of one of the providers, Globalstar inc., to withdraw from the Russian market in March 2022. This provider was particularly popular amongst the groups of the native population of Russian Arctic due to low prices for the service and equipment. In the paper, the ethnographic data collected during a fieldwork amongst reindeer herding nomads of Nadym District of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia, are used, on the basis of which the study is carried out on how the tundra nomads were adapting to the failure and overcoming its consequences. The paper starts with a short historical review of the development of long-range communications in tundra and the social norms, strategies, and behavioural patterns formed at different times amongst the reindeer herders in respect to these communications. This review, the materials for which comprised published literature and fieldwork records of the author collected in the late 1990s — early 2000s, demonstrates that up until the arrival of mobile and satellite telephones in tundra during the second decade of the 21st century, radiocommunications of the reindeer herders were, firstly, public and, secondly, relied in messaging on the social networks and mutual obligations of the nomadic groups with regard to transferring information. The review is followed by the description and analysis of the field data collected by the author during the fieldwork in August 2022. It is shown that the loss of the satellite connectivity in the spring of that year disturbed the reindeer herders very much and even caused a change in the movement routes of some of their groups. However, the herders soon managed to adapt to the new conditions. For that, the mobile phones, which were ...