ABSTRACT

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.

chapter 1|34 pages

Nomadic and Indigenous Spaces

Paths and Perspectives

chapter 2|20 pages

A Place Off the Map

The Case for a Non-Map-based Place Title

chapter 3|22 pages

From Nomadic to Mobile Space

A Theoretical Experiment (1976–2012)

chapter 4|14 pages

Where is Indigenous?

Legal Productions of Indigenous Space in the Russian North

chapter 5|22 pages

The Nellim Forest Conflict in Finnish Lapland

Between State Forest Mapping and Local Forest Living

chapter 8|26 pages

Learning to Be Seated

Sedentarization in the Soviet Far North as a Spatial and Cognitive Enclosure

chapter 10|18 pages

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

chapter 11|26 pages

Narratives of Adaptation and Innovation

Ways of Being Mobile and Mobile Technologies among Reindeer Nomads in the Russian Arctic

chapter 12|12 pages

From Inuit Wayfinding to the Google World

Living within an Ecology of Technologies

chapter 13|6 pages

Epilogue