Research agenda

The team of the first migration turns its attention to the following main issues:

1. the process of socio-economic change as expressed through sovkhoist activities. By sovkhoist activities we mean such activities on the part of legitimate reindeer users (herders) which are using the former state-farm collectives and current cooperatives as supporting structures for private economic activities (see Konstantinov and Vladimirova 2002, p. 2);
2. the current rate of this process, as well as the functioning of mechanisms of its management and control;
3. how the process is influenced and accelerated by increased infrastructural and general costs of living and demands for technological (mainly transport) replacement and improvement, by higher costs of fuel, as well as by other global market forces;
4. interaction of international tourism ("wild-nature tourism") with rangifers;
5. interaction of extractive and other industries with rangifers, as well as the impact of gas/oil pipe-lines on, especially, winter grazing range;
6. interface between socio-economic and climate factors revealed in specific human and rangifer behaviour -- particularly as regards calving, summer grazing and belated and prolonged harvesting activities.

This agenda is used to guide research activities and help new members of the team -- especially students and school teacher(s) -- to get a grasp on the main influences, reflecting on human-rangifer behaviour and how they may be expected to reveal themselves ethnographically in the field and in the course of the migration. The agenda does not restrict research interests only along the lines presented above, and is expected to be continually renewed and sophisticated, following new insights and findings.

(Yulian Konstantinov, August 2006)

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