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| Settlers on the Edge |
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Identity and Modernization on Russia's Arctic Frontier
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Niobe Thompson
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$85.00 Hardcover
Release Date: 5/28/2008
ISBN: 9780774814676
$34.95 Paperback
Release Date: 1/1/2009
ISBN: 9780774814683
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| 304 Pages |
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About the Book
Deeply researched and eloquently written, Settlers on the Edge shines light onto hitherto unexplored territory in the literature of the Arctic, namely the tortured birth and mercurial fortunes of Russia's large arctic settler population. Thompson reveals how the orphan children of a grand Soviet project to “civilize” the North wrought from their post-Soviet misfortunes a new sense of themselves. The picture that emerges – of a people of the arctic landscape – makes an important and long-overdue contribution to our understanding of who belongs in the North.
Farley Mowat
Niobe Thompson's pioneering and sophisticated work makes an original contribution to the ethnography of settler colonialists in the Russian Arctic, and more broadly, to the anthropological theories of migrant communities and identities.
Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, author of The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia
Based on extensive research in the Arctic Russian region of Chukotka, Settlers on the Edge is the first English-language account of settler life anywhere in the circumpolar north to appear since Robert Paine's The White Arctic (1977), and the first to explore the experiences of Soviet-era migrants to the far north. Niobe Thompson describes the remarkable transformation of a population once dedicated to establishing colonial power on a northern frontier into a rooted community of locals now resisting a renewed colonial project. He also provides unique insights into the future of identity politics in the Arctic, the role of resource capital and the oligarchs in the Russian provinces, and the fundamental human questions of belonging and transience.
About the Author(s)
Niobe Thompson is a documentary filmmaker, a partner in Clearwater Media, and a research associate at the Canadian Circumpolar Institute. He also teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Part 1: The Soviet Years, 1955-91
2 Northern Settlement and the Late-Soviet State
3 Arctic Idyll: Living in Soviet Chukotka
Part 2: Transition to Crisis, 1991-2000
4 Idyll Destroyed
5 Surviving without the State
Part 3: Reconstruction, 2001-5
6 Modernization Again: The State Returns
7 Two Solitudes
8 Conclusion: Practices of Belonging
9 Afterword
Appendices
1: List of Informants
2: Glossary of Russian Terms
Notes
References
Index
Reviews
Deeply researched and eloquently written, Settlers on the Edge shines light onto hitherto unexplored territory in the literature of the Arctic, namely the tortured birth and mercurial fortunes of Russia’s large arctic settler population. Thompson reveals how the orphan children of a grand Soviet project to "civilize" the North wrought from their post-Soviet misfortunes a new sense of themselves. The picture that emerges -- of a people of the arctic landscape -- makes an important and long-overdue contribution to our understanding of who belongs in the North.
-- Farley Mowat
Niobe Thompson’s pioneering and sophisticated work … makes an original contribution to the ethnography of settler colonialists in the Russian Arctic, and more broadly, to the anthropological theories of migrant communities and identities.
Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, author of The Social Life of the State in Subarctic Siberia
This highly original work rises brilliantly to the challenge of an extraordinary historical moment in the harshest and most inaccessible region of the Russian North. Niobe Thompson's analysis of social identity, self, agency, and moral economy reveals how successive changes of regime have engendered an accumulation of distinctive identities in which each identity is reinforced by differences of origin, generation, and class.
Among many powerful insights, the author shows how white settlers have used their practical and spiritual engagement with the local landscape to appropriate the widespread northern Native identity marker of belonging, thereby explaining their resistance to programs of resettlement to the south. By following resettled northerners back to their apartment blocks in Central Russia, he shows how, even here, their strategy of survival involves recreating their northern sense of belonging.
This book is a landmark in the anthropology of Russia, of the circumpolar Arctic, and of migration studies.
Piers Vitebsky, author of Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia
Niobe Thompson examines a dynamic period in northeast Russia, spanning its abrupt decline immediately following the break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent period of massive investment under a new governor. This is a groundbreaking study done with great insight into the phenomenal changes in Arctic Russia in recent decades. It makes a major, novel contribution to our understanding of identity formation by looking at the region’s non-indigenous population.
Gail Fondahl, author of Gaining Ground? Evenkis, Land and Reform in Southeastern Siberia
An impressive achievement – among this book's greatest strengths are its solid ethnographic grounding, its thorough grasp of historical process, its lucid and incisive presentation, and its near-seamless integration of description and analysis. It gives a fascinating account of a virtually unknown social world in a sophisticated, yet unpretentious, style.
Finn Sivert Nielsen, author of The Eye of the Whirlwind, Russian Identity and Soviet Nation-Building
Between 2002 and 2007 Thompson was in a unique position to witness the wholly unexpected transformation of the nation’s poorest and most distressed region into a showpiece of the New Russia. Settlers on the Edge: Identity and Modernization on Russia’s Arctic Frontier is a description of the political, social and psychological factors that accompanied this revolution. It is also a fascinating historical account of Soviet society, and of the chaos of the 1990s resulting from the collapse of Soviet power, as seen from the most remote region of the Soviet Union. […] Clearly and well written, this is an important story telling how a contemporary people dealt with events beyond their experience and control.
- Robert McGhee, Literary Review of Canada, Vol.16, No.10, December 2008
Sample Chapter
Front Matter and Chapter One
Related Topics
Native Studies
Other Ways To Order
In Canada, order your copy of Settlers on the Edge from UTP Distribution at:
UTP Distribution
5201 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario
M3H 5T8
Phone orders: 1(800)565-9523 or (416)667-7791
Fax orders: 1(800)221-9985 or (416)667-7832
Email: utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca
Ordering information for customers outside Canada
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