Concept information
Preferred term
MOVE
Definition
- Short Title: MOVE Project URL: http://www.alaska.edu/boreas/move/ Proposal URL: http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=436 MOVE is an international, collaborative attempt to address a major shortcoming in conceptualizing northern histories, presents and futures. While the phenomenon of state-induced population movements in the circumpolar North in the 20th and 21st centuries is well-known, to date no comparative analysis of their local and regional contexts and impacts has been undertaken. Although the role of the state in shaping the North has received some belated attention in recent years, the local expressions of moving, coping, rebuilding and remembering remain to be understood. If seasonal and permanent population movements in the lives of circumpolar peoples were in the past responsive to the local conditions upon which subsistence life ways were based, population movements in the recent history of the North have been imposed by market and state logics of a conspicuously non-local character. Previous research on forms of relocation and resettlement sponsored by outside institutions has focused almost exclusively on the political motivations and repercussions, as well as demographic consequences of such movement. While these lines of inquiry are important, they provide few clues about local perceptions and impacts, or the persistent power of local agency to resist and condition projects of relocation. Similarly, while there is a long history of social science involvement with northern development planning and more recently with the sustainability of development -, there is a general failure to address the importance of social fabric within the context of resettlement and other population movements. Moved by the state refers to the commonality of having to cope with relocations and other population movements triggered by outside decisions. In analyzing a broad array of case studies (small and large, indigenous and non-indigenous communities, in free market and central command systems, ranging from the mid-20th to the early 21st century), the collaborative research project intends to test the extent of commonality. Demographic, political, social and cultural variables will be used to track the similarities and differences, both among communities facing being moved now and those that have been moved in the past. Extensive fieldwork, combining participant observation, various interview and survey strategies, and the recording of oral and life histories, as well as demographic and economic data collection and analysis, will form the methodological backbone of the project. Thus, the impact of past and present relocations will be addressed through a dual strategy. On the one hand, a series of regional analyses of aggregate economic and demographic data will provide an overall picture of the population movements in question. On the other hand, ethnographic fieldwork in selected villages and towns of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia will add local context and emic perspectives. In theoretical terms, the proposed research addresses the tension between the increasingly translocal and various senses of place. The question of how local identities, in or out of place (of origin) are constituted leads to a critical interrogation of the roles of cultural and practical engagements in creating and recreating place within a particular environment. The results of this research will become increasingly relevant in the ongoing negotiations between states and communities about location and relocation in the face of increasing social and climate change. (en)
Broader concept
- M - O (en)
URI
https://gcmd.earthdata.nasa.gov/kms/concept/cc9892f8-6575-4e52-90f5-5dc6af739253
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