International Polar Year 2007-2008
To facilitate the submission of arctic social science and humanities proposals to the International Council for Science (ICSU) for prospective endorsement as IPY projects, IASSA has launched an initiative to create a vigorous exchange of ideas, discussion, and active communication. The following was submitted to IASSA on its form at IASSA IPY Facilitation Initiative:

Joachim Otto Habeck and Yulian Konstantinov: The herd's calendar: annual profile of a reindeer herd on Kola Peninsula
Email: habeck@eth.mpg.de

Outline of proposed activity
The primary objective of this project is to establish an innovative field methodology for a long-term observation of how social and climate change impact on the Human Rangifer bond, as well as how the latter is adapting to such impact. A parallel and equally important objective is to draw the attention of the wider public to the continuous adaptative process of Rangifer-dependent arctic populations to dynamically changing social, economic, and climatic conditions. The particular regional focus chosen for the project is a reindeer herd on Kola Peninsula (Herd Number Eight of the Tundra Co-operative, Murmansk Region, NW Russian Federation).

The innovation proposed in this project is to place an interdisciplinary team of researchers in steady contact with a migrating reindeer herd (i.e. the herd itself, not just the herders). From this vantage point the team will observe the interaction of the herd with humans (herders) in response to changing environmental conditions. By placing the reindeer at centre stage of the investigators' gaze, the method avoids the limitations of conventional approaches. These stem from sporadic and at times entirely absent contact between herders and herd (resulting from regional post-collective farm developments). Conventional research on the Human-Rangifer bond is done with the Rangifer being conspicuously absent, while human infrastructural limitations narrow the observation to village-centres, or at best tundra camps. At the same time the herd interacts with humans not only along the vector of semi-domestic herding, but also along one of predation by both poachers and animal predator species. These are increasingly vital aspects of the overall ecology, to which the investigator's gaze currently reaches only as a matter of rare and mostly chance encounters.

To extend in this way the research on Human-Rangifer interaction, we propose to carry out a 12-months uninterrupted field observation of a migrating reindeer herd (February 2007-January 2008). By using tents and vehicles, the team of natural and social scientists establishes a nomadic observation unit. Data gathered on a day-to day basis is proposed to be transmitted on a web-site of the project directly from the field. In this way the project will reach out to both a local and global audience, in the first instance practitioners and researchers. The video-documentary material obtained and transmitted shall offer itself for educational and research use and thereby increase the impact of IPY activities on a global scale.


Sincere thanks to the U.S. National Science Foundation for support for the IASSA IPY facilitation initiative.

Questions? Contact Anne Sudkamp at <fyiassa@uaf.edu>.

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 This page was last modified October 24, 2005 by Anne Sudkamp