Russian Reindeer Herding Landscapes: Landscape Zoning and Paths of Evolution of Reindeer Husbandry in the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries

The aim of the article is to examine the history of changes in the domesticated reindeer population in Russia in the context of the ethnolandscape approach. Ethnocultural landscape science is a relatively new and actively developed area at the intersection of ethnology and human geography, in which people and their activities are examined in geographical and historical contexts. Traditional reindeer husbandry has not yet been conceptualized in terms of a cultural landscape paradigm. In the first part of this article, the methodology of the landscape approach is examined in terms of its applicability to the study of reindeer husbandry. This is followed by a brief description of the author's scheme for the typological zoning of the ethnocultural landscapes of reindeer herding in Russia, which is carried out in the traditions of the Russian geographical school. The article concludes with an analysis of changes in the domesticized reindeer population according to the units of this zoning. The analysis uses the Federal State Statistics Service data in terms of municipal districts, the author's reindeer husbandry research materials in different regions of Russia and literary sources. Each landscape district represents a kind of geographical individuality. Its economic history finds its statistical expression in the peculiarities of reindeer population dynamics, which cannot be explained only by reference to general principles and regularities, but can be understood as a kind of narrative - a narrative of the sequence of events that shaped the given landscape. In practical terms, the landscape zoning scheme is a kind of 'inventory' of the various forms of traditional reindeer husbandry, which is needed for the development of regional policies to support it and preserve the cultural heritage of reindeer herding peoples.

Keywords

Authors

References