Herds of the Tundra: A Portrait of Saami Reindeer Pastoralism [Hardcover]

Robert Paine (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian; illustrated edition edition (June 17, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560982713
• ISBN-13: 978-1560982715
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,956,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A 'Novel'?? Solid fieldwork plus updates through 1989!, June 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Herds of the Tundra: A Portrait of Saami Reindeer Pastoralism (Hardcover)

"I wrote this book around the herd as the indispensable first step toward understanding a pastoral society." Thus does Paine justify the wealth of charts, graphs and tables compiled as a result of his accompaniment of a herder and his companions through the seasons, so as to impart "the contexts of the accidents and contingency plans and disagreements that belong to reindeer pastoralism".

Why the earlier reviewer found this work off-track, so to speak (it is after all a Smithsonian ethnographic study), is a mystery to me. Two of the study's four sections are titled "Cultures of possession and production, 1962" and "Pastoralism by authorization, 1979-1989". This is a solid and absorbing work!

3.0 out of 5 stars A Review of Reindeer Identification Rather than Pastoralism, March 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Herds of the Tundra: A Portrait of Saami Reindeer Pastoralism (Hardcover)

Robert Paine had this book published in 1994. Granted it was published by the Smithsonian, but the fieldwork was done in 1962. The entire focus was on the reindeer and not so much on the Sami pastoralist traditions. While I feel that the book was worth reading, it just didn't accomplish what I thought it was going to. I expected a more in depth look at the Sami instead of their reindeer. To say that this novel is without merit is to be unfair to the author. Paine has written a nice peace of work, just not what the title said it was.