Arctic Disequilibrium: Shifting Human-Environmental Systems

Introduction

Attendees at the “Forging of cultures in the circumpolar North” symposium hosted by Aarhus University’s Arctic Research Center in 2015 at Moesgård Museum in Denmark asked, “What key factors; past, present, and future, continue to shape the fabric of social life in Arctic communities?” Bringing together a diverse group of researchers from anthropology and genetics to politics and zoology, the aim was to improve our understanding of the ongoing mechanisms (natural, social, and historical) shaping Indigenous peoples stretching across the circumpolar North.

The symposium was organized around four central themes, designed to encourage interdisciplinary inquiry: (a) arctic disequilibrium dynamics, (b) arctic resource strategies as adaptive and cosmological mechanisms, (c) arctic cultures: health and well-being, and (d) global and long-distance connectors—ecological and cultural networks. Evidently, the thematic frameworks covered a wide range of topics ranging from prehistoric adaptive patterns to contemporary social anthropology, paleo-Inuit archeology, and ecological change studies.

The papers in this special issue of Cross-Cultural Research have been selected for their particular appeal to the overarching themes of natural and cultural disequilibria. In contrast to many papers on the Arctic, which focus on adaptation alone, we take as starting point evidence of disequilibrium between humans and their environment.

Each paper addresses the question from a different comparative perspective, encompassing the views of anthropology (Hastrup, 2019; Ziker and Fulk, 2019), ecology (Vestbo et al., 2019), and archeology (Walsh et al., 2019). The resulting issue embraces a wide scope of methodological techniques ranging from cross-cultural comparative analysis and socioecological change studies to macro-level social economics, all of which address challenges facing arctic communities today.

Research in the Circumpolar North

The arctic research community has an enduring tradition of cross-cultural comparisons across the region commonly referred to as the circumpolar North (see, for example, Berkes & Jolly, 2001; Crate, 2008; Krupnik, 2000; Willerslev, 2009). Indeed, these comparisons often hint at close parallels across cultural identities in the circumpolar North. Examples include the respectful relations associated with prey and around the everyday conduct of subsistence-based economies and livelihoods, strong human-animal relationships, continued belief in reincarnation and rebirth, and an animistic view of the world. Nevertheless, notable socioeconomic differences exist. For example, subsistence strategies range from the relatively egalitarian Inuit hunters to more hierarchical Evenki reindeer herders. Further connecting the various autonomous and nonautonomous states in the circumpolar North is the shared—albeit manifested differently from place to place—experience of the decolonizing trend in recent history instigated by former colonial rules in the area (Cameron, 2012).

The author contributions for this special issue are organized in such a way as to better convey the message that contemporary arctic research and studies can and should perhaps seek to address disciplinary gaps given the interconnected dynamics of natural and social forces in the region. More importantly, arctic socioecological research would benefit greatly from the incorporation and acceptance of knowledge and views held among Indigenous groups. This is especially important when it is difficult to reconcile Indigenous cosmologies with the demarcated confines of traditional academic disciplines (see, for example, Huntington, 2000).

Given the relatively rigorous distinctions between philosophy, history, biology, and anthropology in modern academic circles, it is worth noting that early (and indeed some contemporary) arctic explorations were, by their very nature, interdisciplinary research endeavors. The disciplinary boundaries go well beyond being an academic shortcoming; they become a real problem on the ground, as it were, when individual academic disciplines conduct research in collaboration with Indigenous stakeholders who hold an interconnected knowledge map. One result being that traditional disciplines, unlike traditional knowledge, will often be burdened by silo-thinking that is subsequently and perhaps somewhat inadvertently also being applied to the arctic as a field site. In assessing the merits of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Pierotti and Wildcat (2000) emphasize the importance of a holistic approach to understanding cultural practices, one in which all things are connected and related, situated solidly within a single socioecological community. Arctic research is inherently multidisciplinary, linking the human and nonhuman. The earliest publications to come out of Greenland are part of a colonial enterprise, for example, those by naturalist and explorer Otto Fabricius (1780), and consisted of works on intermingled subjects ranging from flora to fauna and from studies of animal migratory patterns to human settlement, hunting techniques, and mobility practices. They did recognize that it is insufficient to document human cultural practices or settlement patterns without simultaneously discussing the flora and fauna of the wider arctic environment. Similarly, the authors of this special issue offer a detailed examination of arctic life cycles that avoid polarization toward generic adaptive patterns or selective historical mechanisms.

Does Arctic Connectivity Improve Livelihoods or Put Them at Risk?

Sharing practices abound across the contemporary arctic, albeit in differing form region to region. In Greenland, for example, the age-old proximity to whales and role in the hunting of whales involves one boat and one corresponding sharing practice (Dahl, 2000; Tejsner, 2014). One of the central pillars of arctic microeconomies involves the role and maintenance of kinship relations in redistributive resource practices—and how these relate to the continued sustainability of Arctic Indigenous societies. Addressing the lack of research on the key adaptive instruments and the essence of connectivities which the symposium set out to explore (e.g., coping devices such as kin alliances), Ziker and Fulk’s research (2019) demonstrates the value of redistributive resource sharing practices in terms of the evolution of cooperative behavior, as well as what this looks like in cultural and practical terms today.

Particularly of note in Ziker and Fulk’s contribution is the contemporary reference to the soul of possible sharing partners. This testifies to the enduring and continuing practices embedded in cosmologies of sharing and exchange. In line with Ziker and Fulk’s review, Walsh and colleagues (2019) unpack the conditions by which community identities are transmitted across generations in the form of naming practices. Through their in-depth review of the soul-naming practices, they reveal how the application of rebirth concepts to the souls of animals expands the human–animal relationship as a network. These are used to navigate the moral and ecological implications of killing animals, as well as with a view to ensuring future hunting success.

In operating within certain global networks, other networks have to be “cut.” For example, when Indigenous hunters switch from subsistence hunting toward fur trapping (Müller-Wille, 2008). What are the implications when significant actors suddenly ‘lose’ their importance in an otherwise all-pervading network, such as when the fashion in hats changed from beaver skin to silk in Europe, causing the entire network formed around the trade in beaver to collapse? (see Tapper & Reynolds, 1996, for detailed discussion on fur-bearing species exploitation). Vestbo and colleagues take forward this perspective on Arctic connectivity using a network approach. They illustrate how the common eider (Somateria mollissima) acts as a lens on large and complex ecological networks. Like whales and fur-bearing animals, which are or have been commodities of global networks linking peripheral areas of the Arctic to global centers of trade, so too the eider has a role as a key actor in the Arctic. Unlike simple, binary models of human-game interactions, which frame interactions as isolated, local entities (e.g., human–bison, human–whale), the authors extend their scope to wider food webs, economic booms, and crashes, some precipitated by events thousands of miles away. Given the increasingly unstable ecology of the Arctic, threats to the eider have larger implication to both coastal ecological networks, where the eider feeds, as well as terrestrial ecological networks where it breeds.

Arctic Cultures: Health and Well-Being

Traditional Arctic child rearing practices continue to encourage children to “expect the unexpected” (Briggs, 1991; Nuttall, 1992). Many adults of subsistence-based households still encourage their children to pursue the traditional way of life in spite of the hardships so often heard of and faced by arctic communities today (Hansen & Tejsner, 2016). To some extent, this is proving to be a viable strategy, although high levels of addiction, depression, and suicide in combination with a new suite of health threats linked to climate change (see, for example, Bjerregaard, Kue Young, Dewailly, & Ebbesson, 2004; Parkinson & Evengård, 2009) continue to pose severe challenges for contemporary Arctic societies.

Identifying the key socioecological stressors faced by historic arctic cultures and their relevance to understanding present-day health and social patterns forms the basis of Hastrup’s contribution (2019). Taking the Thule community in north-western Greenland as starting point, Hastrup addresses social disequilibrium and global connections through the lens of epidemics, environmental change, and pollution. Combining her extensive field work experience in the region with historical data, she delves deep in a narrative that interweaves politics, disease, trade, technology, and war. Settlements persist or disappear unpredictably and variably, whether through local environmental changes, population booms, and crashes of prey or forced resettlement by external peoples. Hastrup’s account is particularly powerful in its ability to synthesize historical data and trace it to where the inhabitants of this region find themselves and their livelihoods in the 21st century. Hastrup’s paper illustrates, in particular, the role of disease as a unifying connector between centers of global trade and (seemingly) peripheral regions. Historical developments and contexts continue to shape the current health landscape in the Arctic and they remain relevant to any contemporary discussion of health disparities and health service deliveries in Greenland and elsewhere in the North.

Conclusion

By exploring new transdisciplinary pathways to finding answers to old questions about the key drivers forging Arctic cultures, this special issue reflects the complexities of untangling the effects of environmental and climatic change on human health and well-being. Common to all papers is the interconnected role of seasonality, animal migratory behaviors, and environmental change in driving cultural norms and human behavioral flexibility. Rather than simple polarizing debates on the dominant role of culture, ecology, or climate, analyzing the dynamic web of interactions between these factors and actors is a more productive way to understand and prepare for future demographic shifts.