Arctic Domestication -Humans and Animals across the NorthDavid G. AndersonUniversity of Aberdeen

Årshögtid, Umeå Universitet 18 oktober 2013

Arctic Domestication: •domestication classically defined as a sudden relationship of domination, which divides the world into ‘wild’ and ‘cultivated’ types

• in the history of the sciences, linked to colonialism and projects of improvement

• recent research calls into question older models

o Human-Animal relations in the Arctic traditionally are an awkward fito Among the ‘cradles’ and ‘hearths’ are new types of domestic animals, as well as puzzling ‘hybrids’

o These relations are often ‘emplaced’ in mindful landscapes.

Three Arctic species tell their stories:

o Fish although a ‘newly’ domesticated laboratory species have long supported complex relationships in Northern lands

o Dogs, said to the be the ‘first’ species to be domesticated, often participate in complex social networks both with people and other animals

o Reindeer/caribou, a classic ‘Arctic species’, have proven to come in and out of various forms of domestication with such intensity as to question the definition of the term itself.

• Across the circumpolar North one often finds a ‘triad’ of dogs, reindeer/caribou and fish

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What lies between ‘Trust’ and ‘Domination’?

Antler trimming, Bazarnaia River, Zabaikal Krai

Mobile Home with 8 reindeer Gorbiachin River, Taimyr

Caribou monitoring, NWT CanadaHunting dog with lead reindeer: В. Давыдов

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Exploring Ethnographies of ‘Tameness’

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Thank you!

arctidomus.org

ERC Advanced Grant 295458 ‘Arctic Domestication’

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Watching a herd take form, Bazarnaia River, Zabaikal Krai