Mobile Phone Revolution in the Tundra? Technological Change among Russian Reindeer Nomads

Abstract

Abstract:This contribution looks at the influence of technological change that nomads in the Russian North have undergone, using as examples two crucial innovations: the snowmobile and the mobile phone. I argue that the snowmobile did not have the same revolutionary impact on the Russian tundra as it did in Fennoscandia, for reasons connected to long distances, infrastructure, spare parts, availability of fuel, priorities of Soviet transport policy as well as the convenience of previously used practices of herd control using 'sitting transport'. Different from that, I argue that mobile phones have the potential for a greater penetration into nomadic societies. Because they encourage equality rather than stratification, they are low maintenance; they are small enough to be embedded into existing social contexts. Connecting not only neighbours but the whole world, in principle, mobile phones may entail a significant socio-cultural change. The article presents first fieldwork evidence of such change among tundra nomads and relates this to existing theoretical studies on how mobile communication changes societies. Attention is paid to the particularities of a mobile type of communication introduced in mobile communities, that is, among nomads. In doing so, I explore similarities and differences in how technological change influences sedentary and nomadic societies.

Cultural Resilience of Social-ecological Systems in the Nenets and Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, Russia: A Focus on Reindeer Nomads of the Tundra

“…It remains to be seen if there will be conflicts between privately managed and collective herds as territories are increasingly fragmented by infrastructure, rangelands inevitably contract and the competition grows for unlimited access to pastures and the most productive fishing lakes and rivers. These issues are likely to remain to the fore, relative to climate change, for the foreseeable future (Rees et al 2008, Forbes andStammler 2009). Although for Nenets significant environmental change from year to year is simply an accepted part of their nomadic existence on the tundra, funding and political institutions appear likely to continue focusing on 'change' in its different forms.…”

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“…Like other researchers (e.g. Horst and Miller, 2006;Jensen, 2007;Stammler, 2009;Tenhunen, 2008), Wallis found that mobile phones can indeed improve the livelihoods of people in the global South, but this potential is highly unevenly distributed. Following mobile phone research among rural migrants in Beijing, she argues that many ICT4D studies unwittingly further a neoliberal ideology in which "all that is needed is a mobile phone to let the market work its magic, and inequities and power differentials related to gender and class are rendered irrelevant ' (2011, p. 473).…”

Exogenous Cultural Change in the Background of the Generational Change: The Case from Papua New Guinea

“…The introduction of mobile phone reception became a factor creating yet another generation gap as in other communities in the world (see e.g. Stammler, 2009). The mobile signal has enabled the community to immediately reach people living outside the Uruwa Valley by phone, specifically those living in Lae, the town where young people study and the TKCP branch is.…”