Peter Schweitzer
Office: Eielson 304a
Phone: 907 474-5015
Email: ppschweitzer @ alaska.edu
I was born and raised in Austria, where I also received my anthropological education. During the 1980s, I became fascinated with the mysterious country that no longer exists, the Soviet Union. A student exchange program enabled me to study in Leningrad for one academic year in 1986/87 and to begin ethnohistoric research about the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian Far East, which led to Ph.D. degree awarded by the University of Vienna in 1990. Since 1990, I had several opportunities for longer and shorter field trips to Chukotka and, more recently, to the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Since 1992, I have also been conducting fieldwork in various communities on the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. I joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at UAF in 1991.
My topical interests, in addition to the above-mentioned historical inquiries, encompass social organization (kinship, gender, politics), hunter-gatherer studies, the history of anthropology, transnationalism and other forms of interethnic contact, as well as practices and ideologies of colonialism and their local impacts. I am currently working on two books exploring different aspects of the history of anthropology (one of them portraying the anthropology of Siberia as an international enterprise, the other summarizing the contributions of German-language anthropology). In addition, a recently completed grant on “mixed” communities in Northeastern Siberia will continue to inform my publications in years to come. A recently awarded interdisciplinary grant, about freshwater on the Seward Peninsula, will provide me with an opportunity to explore the interface between local and western scientific perceptions of global change
| 2003a | "Levels of Inequality in the North Pacific Rim: Cultural Logics and Regional Interaction," in Hunter-Gatherers of the North Pacific Rim, J. Habu, J.M. Savelle, S. Koyama and H. Hongo, Eds. (Senri Ethnological Series 63). Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology: 83-101. |
| 2003b | "Failing At Bering Strait? The Jesup North Pacific Expedition and the Study of Culture Contact," in Constructing Cultures Then and Now: Celebrating Franz Boas and the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. Laurel Kendall and Igor Krupnik, Eds. Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution: 49-61. |
| 2002 | "Jäger, Tierseelen und Umweltschützer. Indigene und europ&au ml;ische Umweltbilder auf der Tschuktschen-Halbinsel" [Hunters, Animal Souls, and Environmentalists: Indigenous and European Concepts of the Environment on the Chukchi Peninsula], in Metamorphosen der Natur. Ethnologische Studien zum Verhältnis von Weltbild und natürlicher Umwelt. [Metamorphoses of Nature: Ethnological Studies on the Relationship between Worldviews and Natural Environments], A. Gingrich, E. Mader, Eds. Vienna: Böhlau: 317-335 |
| 2001a | (together with Evgeniy Golovko) "Pamyat' o voyne: konstruirovanie vneshnego konflikta v kul'ture etnicheskikh obshchnostey Beringova proliva" ['Memories of Warfare: The Construction of External Conflict in the Indigenous Communities of the Bering Strait Area'], in Trudy fakul'teta etnologii Evropeyskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge. St. Petersburg: Evropeyskiy universitet v Sankt-Peterburge: 26-37. |
| 2001b | "Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore: Man the Hunter," in Hauptwerke der Ethnologie [M ain Works of Ethnology], Christian F. Feest and Karl-Heinz Kohl, eds. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag: 224-228. |
| 2001c | "Arctic: Sociocultural Aspects," in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. London: Elsevier. Volume 1: 649-652. |
| 2000a | (editor) Dividends of Kinship: Meanings and Uses of Social Relatedness. London: Routledge. |
| 2000b | (co-editor with Megan Biesele and Robert K. Hitchcock) Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World: Conflict, Resistance, and Self-Determination. New York: Berghahn Books. |
| 2000c | The Social Anthropology of the Russian Far North," in The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy. Mark Nuttall and Terry V. Callaghan, Eds. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers: 411-439. |
| 2000d | "Introduction," in Dividends of Kinship: Meanings and Uses of Social Relatedness. Peter Schweitzer, Ed. London: Routledge: 1-32 |
| 2000e | "Silence and Other Misunderstandings: Russian Anthropology, Wester n Hunter-Gatherer Debates, and Siberian Peoples," in Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World: Conflict, Resistance, and Self-Determination. Peter P. Schweitzer, Megan Biesele, Robert K. Hitchcock, Eds . New York: Berghahn Books: 29-51 |
| 2000f | (together with Patty A. Gray) "The Chukchi and Siberian Yupiit of the Russian Far East," in Endangered Peoples of the Arctic: Struggles to Survive and Thrive. Milton M. R. Freeman, Ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 17-37. |
| 1999 | "The Chukchi and Siberian Yupik of the Chukchi Peninsula, Russia," in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly, Eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 137-141. |