Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:05:28.319Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In alliance with a nocturnal landscape: memory and water law in the north Baikal, Siberia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Veronika V. Simonova
Veronika V. Simonova*
Affiliation:
European University at St. Petersburg, Gagarinskaia Street 3, 191187 St. Petersburg, Russia ([email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the ethnography of nocturnal fishery and relationships with water, relevant for Evenkis occupying the northern coastal area of Lake Baikal, Siberia. The material arises from Evenkis of Kumora village who live near Lake Irkana and from archival sources. Although the nocturnal fishery is declared illegal in official legislation, local residents invoke memories to mark that practice as traditional and important for the local community since it is not merely a subsistence activity but also an emotional experience and long-term relationships with the landscape. This paper argues that local social memory devoted to this practice serves as a kind of fishing tool and a tool for supporting local ideas of how fishing should be governed. The collision between memory and water law is not discussed in terms of antagonism between local groups and authorities but as ignorance between memory-gifted people and the landscape, and memory-disabled official approaches to nocturnal fishing and its histories. Finally, memory-gifted human landscape relationships termed as ‘alliance’ are approached as a powerful conglomerate that ‘consumes’ authorised visions of fishing patterns in their own way.

Type
Northern fisheries
Information
Polar Record , Volume 50 , Issue 4: Northern Fisheries , October 2014 , pp. 414 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acheson, J.M. 1981. Anthropology of fishing. Annual Review of Anthropology 10:275–316.Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G. 2004. Reindeer, caribou and ‘fairy stories’ of state power. In: Anderson, D.G. and Nuttal, M. (editors) Cultivating Arctic landscapes. Knowing and managing animals in the circumpolar north. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books: 1–17.Google Scholar
Argentov, A. 1887. Pervyi Den’ na Ledovitom More i Pervaia Noch. Putevyie Zametki [The first day and the first night with Ledovitoe Sea. Fieldnotes]. Irkutsk: GAIO (State Archive of Irkutsk Region).Fond 239–1–610 [1887].Google Scholar
Assies, W. 2003. David versus goliath in Cochabamba: water rights, neoliberalism, and the revival of social protest in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives 30 (14): 14–36.Google Scholar
Bruns, B.R. and Meinzen–Dick, R.. 2005. Frameworks for water rights: an overview of institutional options. In: Bruns, B.R., Ringler, C. and Meinzen–Dick, R. (editors). Water rights reform: lessons of institutional design. Washington: Food Policy Research Institute: 3–27.Google Scholar
Cleaver, F. 2000. Moral ecological rationality, institutions and the management of common property resources. Development and Change 31: 361–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charles, A.T., Mazany, R.L. and Cross, M.L.. 1999. The economics of illegal fishing: a behavioral model. Marine Resource Economics 14: 95–110.Google Scholar
Davydov, V.N. 2011. People on the move: development projects and the use of space by Northern Baikal reindeer herders, hunters and fishermen. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen.Google Scholar
Georgi, G. 1777. Opisanie vsekh v Rossiiskom gosudarstve obitaiushchikh narodov, takzhe ikh zhiteiskikh obriadov, ver, obyknovenii, zhilishch i prochikh dostoprimechatel’nostei [The description of all the folks inhabiting Russian State and their way of livings, beliefs, rites and other specific features]. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia Veibrekhta i Shnora.Google Scholar
Grigorovskii, N. 1890. Poezdka na Verkhniuu Angaru [The trip to upper Angara]. Izvestiia Vostochno–Sibirskogo Otdela Russkogo Geographicheskogo Obshchestva 21: 1–29.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, M. 1992. On collective memory. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammer, L. 2004. Indigenous peoples as a catalyst for applying the human right to water. International Journal of Minority and Group Rights 10: 131–161.Google Scholar
Hendriks, J. 2002. Water rights and strengthening users’ organisations: the art of negotiations assisting community irrigation in the Andes. In: Bodenes, R. and Hoogendom, P. (editors). Water rights and empowerment. Assen: Van Gorcum: 52–75.Google Scholar
Jackson, S. and Morrison, J.. 2007. Indigenous perspectives in water management, reforms and implementation. Managing Water for Australia. In: Hussey, K. and Dovers, S. (editors). The social and institutional challenges. Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing: 23–43.Google Scholar
Karjalainen, T.P. and Habeck, J.O.. When ‘the environment’ comes to visit: local environmental knowledge in the far north of Russia. Environmental Values 13:167–186.Google Scholar
Kuftin, B.A. 1927. Tungusy I. Kratkii Epizodicheskii Dnevnik Tungusskoi Ekspeditsii Antropologicheskogo Instituta Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta [Episodic diary of Tungus expedition leaded by Moscow Institution of State University]. St. Petersburg: Archive of Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of Peter the Great (Kunstkamera). Fond 12–1–38 [192K7].Google Scholar
McCay, B.J. 1978. Systems ecology, people ecology, and the anthropology of fishing communities. Human Ecology 6 (4): 397–422.Google Scholar
Mackinnon, A. 2007. River memory: narratives of generation, hope and amnesia. In: Potter, E., Mackinnon, A., Mackenzie, S. and McKay J, J. (editors). Fresh water: new perspectives on water in Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press: 73–90.Google Scholar
Nora, P. 1989. Between memory and history. Les liux de mémoire. Representations (Special issue: memory and counter–memory) 26: 7–24.Google Scholar
Orlove, B. 2002. Lines in the water: nature and culture at lake Titicaca. Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ringhofer, L. 2010. Fishing, foraging and farming in the Bolivian Amazon. On local society in transition. Viena: Springer.Google Scholar
Sheehan, J. 2001. Indigenous property rights and river management. Water Science and Technology 43 (9): 235–242.Google Scholar
Sheehan, J. and Small, G.. 2007. Aqua nullius. Fremantle,WesternAustralia (13th Pacific–Rim real estate society conference, 21–24January 2007) URL: http://www.prres.net/Papers/Sheehan_Small_Aqua–Nullius.pdf (accessed 27 July 2010).Google Scholar
Shchukin, N.S. 1848. More ili ozero Baikal? [Is Baikal Lake or Sea?] Zhurnal Ministerstva Vnutrennikh Del 23: 229–244; 383–409.Google Scholar
Sibiriak (pseudonym) 1928. V lunnuiu noch’ na medvedia [Hunting bear under the moon]. Okhotnik i Pushnik Sibiri 5: 81–82.Google Scholar
Simonova, V.V., 2013. Living taiga memories: how landscape creates remembering among Evenkis in the North Baikal, Siberia. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen.Google Scholar
Ten Bos, R. 2009. Toward an amphibious anthropology: water and Peter Sloterdijk. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27 (1): 73–86.Google Scholar
Vasilevich, G.M. 1969. Evenki. Istoriko–Etnograficheskie Ocherki (18– 20 veka.) [Evenki. A historical and ethnographic notes from 18–20 centuries]. Leningrad: Nauka.Google Scholar
Tugolukov, V.A. 1969. Sledopyty Verkhom na Oleniakh [Riding reindeer pathfinders]. Moskva: Nauka.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. 2002. Est’ zakon, est’ i svoi zakony: legal and moral entitlements to the fish resources of Niski Bay, North–Eastern Sakhalin. In: Kasten, Erich (editor). People and the land. Pathways to reform in post–Soviet Siberia, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag: 149–168.Google Scholar