КОНТРОЛЬ НАД ПРОСТРАНСТВОМ: ЛОКАЛЬНЫЕ СООБЩЕСТВА СИБИРИ В ЗОНАХ СОВРЕМЕННОГО СЕВЕРНОГО ФРОНТИРА
Authors: Е.А. ЕРОХИНА 
Published: November 2024

Статья посвящена способности локальных сообществ в зоне северного фронтира влиять на воспроизводство условий своего существования. Это свойство описано через метафору «северной модерности» как особой связи населения с пространством, сформированный устойчивыми институтами (родовыми структурами, не рыночными способами обмена, советским патернализмом) и подвижными практиками (полифункциональным использованием материальных объектов, изобретением новых видов деятельности, конструированием новых объектов). Обосновывается тезис о высокой степени автономности локальных сообществ в условиях взаимодействия с экстремальной окружающей средой и современной индустриальной цивилизацией, что осуществляется благодаря кочевому модусу существования, способности достигать энергетической автономии и коммуникативной связности. На основе анализа конкретных практик, зафиксированных исследователями на Ямале, в Якутии и на Чукотке, сделан вывод о гибкой адаптации локальных сообществ к изменяющимся природным и социокультурным условиям. Показано, что традиционный и индустриальный модусы существования человека на Севере не являются взаимоисключающими, однако их полная комплиментарность в настоящее время не достигнута.

Modern Russia is the country with the largest territory. Among the strategic regions of its development, a special role is assigned to the Arctic and the North. Not least of all, this is influenced by research aimed at studying the experience of remote and peripheral local communities. There is a consensus among scientists regarding their characteristic features, such as the adaptive capabilities of their members in terms of acquiring and spending resources, unique exchange practices that allow for redistribution of energy, and the ability to violate and redefine the boundaries of natural and infrastructural objects. Residents of ethnically mixed settlements in the northern and Arctic regions are undoubtedly members of such communities. The frontier theory remains the most adequate methodology describing their reproduction. The interest in its heuristic capabilities is caused by the fact that it allows to evaluate social changes as a response to “challenges” from the environment and competing cultures (the industrial development of the North in this context) in conditions of a moving border between inhabited and uninhabited space. The key problem of the study is the ability of local communities to independently reproduce the conditions of their existence. This work reveals certain aspects of their autonomy in the sphere of “man-space” relations. Its key thesis is to advocate a high degree of such autonomy. The purpose of this article is to analyze the stable (such as social institutions) and changeable (such as social practices and technological innovations) aspects of “northern modernity”. The latter is a special form of connection between the population and a space that is extreme in the natural and sociocultural conditions of human existence due to special methods of establishing control over it, life support technologies, and the acquisition of symbolic kinship with the territory. The ability to conduct economic activities associated with nomadism, to achieve energy and food autonomy, and to ensure transport and communication connectivity is identified as an indicator of such a connection. The empirical material of the study is the research of Russian anthropologists and sociologists who carried out field work in Yamal, Yakutia, and Chukotka, including the author’s own observations during expeditions in the Ob North (Tazovsky district of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Surgut district of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug).