WORLD ROUTES 2:
Arctic workshop of University of Tartu 27-28. May 2011, Tartu, Estonia
In 2010, the Department of Ethnology/Anthropology of University of Tartu launched its annual Arctic workshop series. The first workshop was called "World Routes" and was dedicated to the movement in the Arctic. Due the fact that the workshop was very successful, we plan to continue with the topic also in 2011.
The Arctic is often seen as an isolated empty area covered with snow. However, the Arctic has been inhabited not only for centuries but for thousands of years. These inhabitants have been in constantly moving. Start ing with the colonisation of the American continent via the Bering Strait to the migration of Filipino and Chinese people to remote Norwegian settlements in modern times. The Arctic has seen many different groups of people come and go. The movement of people in different regions of the Arctic is linked with various environmental factors, changes in the economy, political processes, state policy, and movement of ideas, to name but a few. Besides that, physical movement is often accompanied with identity shifts, creating of new identities, consolidation of existing ones or adapting to a new identity (sibiriaki in Siberia). These multiple factors and different modes of movement and identity change have - contrary to human movement in other continents of the world! - received little continuous attention by scholars. While the movement of hunters and herders in the Siberian Arctic is well studied, however different features/aspects of migration caused by the industrial expansion have found less attention than similar processes in the Scandinavian North. From Siberian history we know that there has been many waves of migration and immigration. Throughout history, there has been different migratory waves of people that became later known as indigenous', there is a migration of people from European Russia during Tsarist times, in the Stalinist era, Komsomol-led the appropriation (osvoenie) of vast uncivilised' territories. Later migratory waves included people who came for the big buck' and the post-Soviet migration from former Soviet republics, but also Kurds, Chinese, Mongols, etc. Similar movements have taken place in the Scandinavian and North-American Arctic.
While trade routes in the past have been studied by historians there is little syst ematic and comparative research on trade routes of con temporary entrepreneurs linking for example European Russia and Southeast Asia with different regions of Siberia. On the other hand, there exists little research on what impact for instance has there been on the Inuit cultures the fact that in the modern world that it is impossible to travel from one Inuit-inhabited area directly to another. Instead one has to fly via Copenhagen, Moscow or other regional or national centres. Moreover, the movement of people in the Arctic is often studied as the movement of two separate groups - native and incomer population, but we have to see it as interconnected on different levels.
The workshop wishes to explore these and other aspects of movement. The main theoretical framework of the workshop is that the movement of people in the Arctic, both past and present is multilayered, has complex background and content, and several initiators. We would like to discuss different levels and aspects of movement in the Arctic. Herewith we do not want to limit with one discipline, region, ethnic group or economic form (mode). Beside anthropologists we also encourage contributions from specialists in history, biology, sociology, management studies and so forth. Colleagues just working on their PhD thesis are also welcome to come and discuss their works. Please send your abstract (as a Word document) of maximum 300 words to Aimar Ventsel Данный адрес e-mail защищен от спам-ботов, Вам необходимо включить Javascript для его просмотра. at latest on 1st of December 2010.
