Mobility as a reflexive process: pragmatic use of infrastructure and the landscape in the northern Baikal and Zabaikal’e

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera)

Mobility can be analyzed in a broader context which includes not just their starting and final destinations of particular movements, but the relations of different locations in a set of movements involving multiple actors. This paper suggests that movements between these points are not just a mechanical change of location; they can be seen as the results of a process which leads to transformations of material objects and surrounding landscape. It approaches mobility as both creative and reflexive process rather than a result.
The constructions, as well as their parts, can be moved from place to place and can serve for intensification of movements. If we look at the same place over time, we can see how local people constantly add new structures and rearrange, dismantle old ones. Moreover, they intensively use infrastructure and constantly modify and adapt it for current needs. These are not only the buildings that are changing, but also the landscape itself. Therefore, there is no ontological difference between the structures people built themselves (dwellings, fences, storage platforms) and the infrastructure introduced by development projects (houses, buildings, bridges, roads) – local adapt and modify everything that can support their mobility.
I will address the question of pragmatic use of infrastructure and landscape by indigenous hunters and reindeer herders by providing examples from the recent fieldwork in northern Baikal region and Zabaikal’e and comparing it with the data gathered in Southern Yakutia and Taimyr.

Dr. Vladimir N. Davydov is head of the Siberian ethnography Department, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia). He holds a PhD from the University of Aberdeen (2012). His thesis entitled ‘People on the Move: Development Projects and the Use of Space by Northern Baikal Reindeer Herders, Hunters and Fishers’ examined the change of Evenkis’ mobility patterns in the context of numerous development projects and innovations and analyzed local people’s engagement with living in the world through the structures they build and use.

Page on academia.edu:
https://kunstkamera.academia.edu/VladimirDavydov

Kunstkamera’s web page: http://www.kunstkamera.ru/index/museums_structure/research_departments/department_of_siberia/davydov/