People and the Land: Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia [Paperback]

Erich Kasten (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 14, 2002 | ISBN-10: 3496027436 | ISBN-13: 978-3496027430

While much has been written on post-Soviet change in Russian urban centers, little is known about how these changes have affected peoples’ lives in rural communities. This is nowhere more true than in the vast regions of Siberia and the North. This volume fills this gap with in-depth studies of how people with different cultural backgrounds, often living in extreme natural environments, are coping with dramatic and rapid political and economic transformations. It shows how the fate of postsocialist reforms in the Russian North depends largely on striking the right balance between exploitation of the region’s strategic natural resources and concern for environmental impacts and the survival of local people. The authors, among them many of the leading scholars of the Russian North, place their accounts within the context of wider, comparative inquiries into the nature of postsocialist societies.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Erich Kasten was the coordinator of the Siberia research group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany, and is currently based at the Museum of Ethnology, Berlin. He is the author of a number of monographs and editor of the volume Bicultural Education in the North.

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Reimer (June 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3496027436
• ISBN-13: 978-3496027430
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,242,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I grew up in Washington State and gained an early interest in the histories and cultures of Native Americans of the Northwest Coast. In 1989 I was fascinated by the comparison of Native Americans and Native Siberians in the Crossroads of the Continents exhibit when it visited Seattle. After finishing my undergraduate degree in anthropology at Reed College, I moved to eastern Berlin in 1991 to teach English. As I started graduate school in 1993 I chose to study indigenous Siberians because I am interested in the indigenous people of the Pacific Rim, especially Beringia, and the post-Soviet era was a particularly interesting time to begin research in Siberia.

My thinking is heavily influenced by my teachers, Richard Handler and Dell Hymes, as well as my friends in Kamchatka, especially Valentina Dedyk, Andrei Kosygin, and others.

My most recent trip to Kamchatka was in April-May 2011 to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and Palana, and things seem to have improved for most people over the dire economic situation of 1998 and 2001. I have spent over 27 months living in Kamchatka with Koryaks and other indigenous people over the course of 4 different expeditions. I work as senior lecturer of anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, where I have been teaching since 2003.

You can read general information about Kamchatka and Koryak people at my website www.koryaks.net.