Anthropology of the Northern Sea Route: introducing the topic

Abstract

A new research project Russian Harbors of Transarctic Route: Space and Societies of Russia's Arctic Coast on the Eve of a New Period in the History of Northern Sea Route is briefly outlined in this article. This project, planned for 2017–2019, is an attempt of social science approach to Northern Sea Route from an interdisciplinary, anthropological and historical, perspective. The focus of the project is on different practices of imagining NSR, in the last 100 years as well as today, from both local and broader political perspective. The team will explore the development of the concept of NSR through the lens of historical geography, as well as from social anthropological perspective through research in the coastal communities of the NSR, including ethnographic description of current economic situation, and local infrastructure.

Keywords:

• Russian Arctic
• Northern Sea Route
• Arctic infrastructure
• Russian Arctic policy
• emerging ocean
• NSR imaginary
• New Talassology

Notes

¹ From Tyumen University: Mikhail Agapov, Fedor Korandei, Sergei Kozlov; from EUSP: Alla Bolotova, Ksenia Gavrilova, Anastasia Karaseva, Yulia Kovyrshina, Elena Liarskaya, Nikolai Vakhtin (project coordinator), Valeria Vasilyeva.

² See (Dubravin, Kolymskii reis parohoda).

³ On the history of NSR see: (Belov, Nauchnoe i khoziaistvennoe osvoenie; Vize, Moria Rossiiskoi Arktiki; Pochtaryov and Gorbunova, Poliarnaia aviatsiia Rossii; Izucheniie i osvoenie).

⁴ Kuvatov, Koz’movskii, and Shatalova, Potentsial Severnogo morskogo puti, 3.

⁵ Strategiia razvitiia.

⁶ Kuvatov et al., Potentsial Severnogo morskogo puti, 4; see also: report by Ministry of the Transport: http://www.mintrans.ru/upload/iblock/e50/doklad_itog_2013.doc (2013); Government Statistics EMISS: https://www.fedstat.ru/indicator/51479

⁷ Interview with Vladimir Chabrov.

⁸ ASPOL is an international public organization which unites different Arctic actors, e.g. representatives of Artic regions’ administrations, industrial operators working in the Arctic, polar researchers, and etc.

⁹ There are four documents that regulate development of the Russian Arctic: (Osnovy; Strategiia; Ukaz, Gosudarstvennaia programma).

¹⁰ Strategiia.

¹¹ See, among others: Campbell, “Between the Material”; Harvey and Knox, The Enchantments of Infrastructure; An Anthropology of Infrastructure; Hetherington, “Surveying the Future Perfect”; Masquelier, “Road Mythographies”; Schwenkel, “Spectacular Infrastructure”; Weszkalnys, “Infrastructure as Gesture.”

¹² Larkin, “The Politics and Poetics.”

¹³ Simone, “People as Infrastructure.”

¹⁴ Larkin, ibid.

¹⁵ See: Law and Hassard, Actor Network Theory; Latour, Reassembling the Social; Alapuro et al., Infrastruktura svobody.

¹⁶ Foucault, “Pravitelstvennost.”

¹⁷ See Paasi, “Bounded Spaces.”

¹⁸ See: Bentley, “Sea and Ocean”; Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea; Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean; Lambert et al., “Currents, Visions and Voyages”; Anderson and Peters, Water Worlds.

¹⁹ «Imaginaries are … foundational myths that provide a framework and reference for everyday life and for future ambitions» (Steinberg et al., Contesting the Arctic, xii and 6.)

²⁰ Official term first used in Putin’s decree of May 2014 – see (Ukaz 2014).

²¹ Official site of the State Assembly of Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, http://iltumen.ru/node/12236

²² The choice of ports to work in has been determined by the probability that they will indeed become “base points” of NSR: the list has not been finalized yet. The ports we have chosen are frequently mentioned in official rhetoric when officials talk about developing NSR. See official Strategy for development of sea ports (Strategiia 2012); see also a paper by director of “NSR Administration” Alexander Olshevskii in which he describes regulations and limits of NSR usage, as well as functions of some of its “base points”: Dikson, Tiksi and Pevek (Olshevskii, “Organizatsiia plavaniia subod v akvatorii Severnogo Morskogo Puti”).

²³ An example of this approach is provided in: Kovyrshina, “Representation of Socio-economic Changes.”

²⁴ On the other hand, “port staff” includes not just captains and officials, but also sailors, porters, cleaners, cooks etc. In larger cities, we also plan to interview members of the families of “port stuff”, so that to some extent “a perspective from below” will also exist here, although not as detailed as in smaller settlements.

²⁵ We don’t want to sound as if we believed that the ideas behind all these (and some other) projects stemmed from the two-day workshop in St Petersburg. It is the other way round: the 2013 workshop managed to collect, identify and formulate some important tendencies and trends that were ripe in the international community of Arctic anthropologists working in Russia, and are now bearing fruit.

²⁶ “Configurations of ‘remoteness’ (CoRe) – Entanglements of Humans and Transportation Infrastructure in the Baykal-Amur Mainline (BAM) Region”, see: http://core.univie.ac.at/

²⁷ “Socioeconomic Significance of Developmental Projects in Northwest Russia: the Insiders’ Point of View”, see: http://site.uit.no/kurf/files/2011/03/INPOINT2-Description-April-2013.pdf

²⁸ “Children of the Nineties in Today’s Russian Arctic: Assessment of the Present and Plans for the Future”, see: http://grant.rscf.ru/prjcard?rid=14-18-02136

²⁹ “… infrastructure is also always about the future, or different futures. Departing somewhat from the science and technology studies literature that emphasizes infrastructure as substrate of processes in the present, infrastructure in these frontier spaces [Latin America] continues to be entangled with promise, hope, possibility, and fear” (Campbell and Hetherington, “Nature, Infrastructure, and the State,” 193).

³⁰ Vitebsky and Alekseev, “Siberia.”