The Law as a Source of Environmental Injustice in the Russian Federation

The Anthropology of Ontology in Siberia: A Critical Review

“…Contemporary anthropological research in Siberia covers a broad range of topics -human-animal relations (e.g., Anderson et al 2017;Stépanoff 2017); Indigenous rights (e.g., Gray 2005;Donahoe 2009); the anthropology of Christianity (e.g., Vaté 2009); extractive industries (e.g., Wilson and Stammler 2015); and climate change (e.g., Lavrillier and Gabyshev 2018). To date, however, the anthropologists of ontology seem to have had most success in moving Siberia from the margins toward the centre of discussion in our field.…”

“…Any thorough review of ontologically-oriented approaches to Siberia would also include, ideally, reflection on the degree to which common criticisms of the anthropology of ontology are applicable to research in this region. Just as some commentators have criticized the anthropological ontologists for neglecting colonial history and the political and economic situation of Indigenous people today (e.g., Heywood 2017, 8;Ramos 2012), so might one take exception to the relative dearth of references, in the corresponding research in Siberia, to the effects of Christianization or of Christian influences during the Tsarist era (e.g., Lambert 2007Lambert -08, 2009, to sedentarization and collectivization under the Soviets (e.g., Slezkine 1994;Ssorin-Chaikov 2003), and, starting in the 1990s, to economic privatization and the withdrawal of state services (e.g., Stammler 2005), the hindrance of political mobilization among ethnic minorities (e.g., Gray 2005), and unofficial efforts of officials to prevent Indigenous people from taking advantage of rights that exist largely on paper (e.g., Donahoe 2009).…”

Beyond Formal Environmentalism: Eco‐Nationalism and the “Ringing Cedars” ofRussia

“…Within the academic literature that currently considers human–nature relations in the post‐Soviet period, the primary subjects are the reorganization of state management of “nature,” and the foundations and impacts of formal, articulated environmentalism . Scholars like Donohue () problematize Russian law as “source of environmental injustice”; Mol () describes the process and the impact of environmental deinstitutionalization in post‐Soviet Russia; Oldfield () writes about the shifts in post‐Soviet environmental governance; Weiner (1988, 1991) proposes a historical typology of the forms of Russian environmentalism; Henry (, ) assesses the effectiveness of civil society environmental organizations in Russia; and Yanitsky () analyzes the emergence of ecological consciousness in Russia, also through a lens of “civil society.”…”

Abandoning Fish: The Vulnerability of Salmon as a Cultural Resource in a Post‐Soviet Commons

“…Although the early drafts of laws that established the obshchina as a formal institution were focused on specific provisions for land rights and access to resources, the laws that were eventually passed by the Russian Federation only defined these rights in principle, leaving the precise details to be determined through subsequent debates and disputes between indigenous activists and local, regional, and national government authorities (Novikova ; Koester ; Donahoe ). In Kamchatka, these debates have taken an interesting turn due to the importance of access to salmon fisheries.…”