Nomadic and Indigenous Spaces: Productions and Cognitions

This volume is devoted to aspects of space that have thus far been largely unexplored. How space is perceived and cognised has been discussed from different stances, but there are few analyses of nomadic approaches to spatiality. Nor is there a sufficient number of studies on indigenous interpretations of space, despite the importance of territory and place in definitions of indigeneity. At the intersection of geography and anthropology, the authors of this volume combine general reflections on spatiality with case studies from the Circumpolar North and other nomadic settings. Spatial perceptions and practices have been profoundly transformed by new technologies as well as by new modes of social and political interaction. How do these changes play out in the everyday lives, identifications and political projects of nomadic and indigenous people? This question has been broached from two seemingly divergent stances: spatial cognition, on the one hand, and production of space, on the other. Bringing these two approaches together, this volume re-aligns the different strings of scholarship on spatiality, making them applicable and relevant for indigenous and nomadic conceptualizations of space, place and territory.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Nomadic and indigenous spaces: paths and perspectives, Judith Miggelbrink, Joachim Otto Habeck, Nuccio Mazzullo and Peter Koch; A place off the map: the case for a non-map-based place title, Denis Wood; From nomadic to mobile space: a theoretical experiment (1976-2012), Denis Retaillé; Where is indigenous? Legal productions of indigenous space in the Russian North, Gail Fondahl; The Nellim forest conflict in Finnish Lapland: between state forest mapping and local forest living, Nuccio Mazzullo; Sámi-state relations and its impact on reindeer herding across the Norwegian-Swedish border, Peter Koch; Identity categories and the relationship between cognition and the production of subjectivities, Brian Donahoe; Learning to be seated: sedentarization in the Soviet Far North as spatial and cognitive enclosure, Joachim Otto Habeck; Shamanist topography and administrative territories in Cisbaikalia, southern Siberia, Joseph J. Long; From invisible float to the eye for a snowstorm: the introduction of GPS by Nenets reindeer herders of western Siberia and its impact on their spatial cognition and navigation methods, Kirill V. Istomin; Narratives of adaptation and innovation: ways of being mobile and mobile technologies among reindeer nomads in the Russian Arctic, Florian Stammler; From Inuit wayfinding to the Google world: living within an ecology of technologies, Claudio Aporta; Epilogue, Tim Ingold; Index.

About the Author :
Dr Judith Miggelbrink and Dr Peter Koch are both researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Germany, Dr Joachim Otto Habeck is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany and Dr Nuccio Mazzullo is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Germany and Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Finland. Judith Miggelbrink, Joachim Otto Habeck, Nuccio Mazzullo, Peter Koch, Denis Wood, Denis Retaillé, Gail Fondahl, Brian Donahoe, Joseph J. Long, Kirill V. Istomin, Florian Stammler, Claudio Aporta, Tim Ingold.

Review :
'Nomadic and Indigenous Spaces is an important collection which draws on the experience of both anthropologists and geographers to explore current ideas on land occupation and ownership in the traditional communities of the circumpolar North. ... this research is clearly vital in order to comprehend and assist in the rapid social transformation that is taking place in many Northern indigenous societies.' Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 'Nomadic and Indigenous Spaces is an important collection which draws on the experience of both anthropologists and geographers to explore current ideas on land occupation and ownership in the traditional communities of the circumpolar North. … this research is clearly vital in order to comprehend and assist in the rapid social transformation that is taking place in many Northern indigenous societies.' Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review