Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: A research study of local economies and decision making in Kamchatka, Russia.

University Of Alaska Fairbanks Campus, Fairbanks AK

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a doctoral dissertation research project that investigates the social and cultural effects of Post Soviet economic policies on indigenous communities in Kamchatka Russia. By comparing traditional modes of transportation (the dog sled) with the Soviet subsidized mode of transportation (the snow machine) the researcher will examine how policies made in Moscow and enforced in Kamchatka had an effect on contemporary local decision-making and the economies of indigenous communities. The project has the potential to increase our understanding of how 20th Century federal economic and social policies affect the trajectory of 21st Century local decision-making in a rapidly changing and globalizing economy. In addition, this project will contribute to the training of the next generation of social scientists. The research will compare the social, cultural, economic, and environmental implications of the choice between 'dogs vs. snow-machines' in subsistence and travel strategies by indigenous people. Combining local histories with larger global impacts to identify the meaning and decision making processes that led to a decline in the use of sled dogs as a mode of transportation concurrent with the rise in snow machine use in rural communities and to their return as fossil fuel costs rise. This project focuses on the socio-cultural and environmental implications of the choice between 'dogs vs. snow-machines' in subsistence and travel strategies in Kamchatka. The layers of social significance attached to these decisions is further emphasized by the fact that salmon is the "fuel" that powers both of those technologies. Salmon has two profoundly different uses in this regard: one as the protein/energy source ingested by dogs and the other as a commodity, where salmon roe is used to pay for fuel (often wasting the flesh). This project will increase knowledge in the field of anthropology on northern communities and the political economy of Post-Soviet era globalization. In addition, it will create a culture history of dog sledding in the north.