Susan Crate | George Mason University (original) (raw)
Papers by Susan Crate
Global Environmental Studies, 2017
This article examines the spiritual and utilitarian values of sacred practices related to cow car... more This article examines the spiritual and utilitarian values of sacred practices related to cow care among rural Sakha of northeastern Siberia, Russia. Founded upon a pre-Soviet animistic belief system, sacred practices relating to cows are not only important to post-Soviet Sakha identity and ethnic revival but also may make a difference in the productivity of a herd and in maintaining social cohesion within households and village communities in a period of continued socio-economic and moral decline. The article also draws parallels with the importance of reinstating the sacred in human-animal relationships globally.
Developing sociocultural, economic, and environmental strategies for sustainability is a major ch... more Developing sociocultural, economic, and environmental strategies for sustainability is a major challenge facing the world’s rural and urban populations alike. Rural areas lag severely behind their urban counterparts in addressing sustainability milestones yet, as nexuses of biological, cultural and ethnic diversity, they play a crucial role in planetary sustainability. Therefore, there is great need for rigorous research with rural communities to define issues, exchange necessary knowledge and synthesize nascent initiatives exploring rural sustainability. This paper lays a framework for one possible research approach by reflecting on insights from a comparative case, involving long-term research in two arctic contexts: Viliui Sakha settlements of northeastern Siberia, Russia and Nunatsiavut settlements in Labrador Canada. Despite their location on opposite sides of the Arctic, communities in both regions struggle with contemporary issues of a changing climate, an unpredictable econo...
Anthropology and Humanism
Current History
Northern Russia's physical vulnerability to climate change is at best severe, considering the... more Northern Russia's physical vulnerability to climate change is at best severe, considering the underlying permafrost and the threat that warming presents to that foundation.
Practicing Anthropology
Herein I respond to Baer and Singer's critique of our special issue on Storying Climate Chang... more Herein I respond to Baer and Singer's critique of our special issue on Storying Climate Change by citing the importance of engaging all the fields and subfields of anthropology and the diversity of approaches. I also discuss the importance of changing the narrative to mobilize more action and to develop approaches that resonate with people across the socio-cultural and political spectrum.
Anthropocene
In a context of scientific and public debates on permafrost degradation under global climate chan... more In a context of scientific and public debates on permafrost degradation under global climate change, this article provides an integrated review and analysis of environmental and socioeconomic trends in a subarctic region. It focuses on Sakha (Yakut) animal husbandry as an example of indigenous land use. Within Sakha-Yakutia's boreal forests, animal husbandry takes place in thermokarst depressions containing grassland areas (alaas) that formed in the early Holocene in a complex interplay of local geological conditions, climate changes, and permafrost dynamics. The current scale and speed of environmental change, along with shifting socioeconomic processes, increasingly challenges Sakha's adaptive capacity in use of alaas areas. The paper synthesizes information on the evolution of permafrost landscapes and on the local inhabitants' and scientific knowledge. It also probes land-use prospects for the near future. The imminence of challenges for alaas ecosystems requires a holistic understanding between researchers and stakeholder communities, which in turn depends on a comprehensive assessment of the dynamic interaction of physical and social drivers of change.
Annual Review of Anthropology
This review provides an overview of foundational climate and culture studies in anthropology; it ... more This review provides an overview of foundational climate and culture studies in anthropology; it then tracks developments in this area to date to include anthropological engagements with contemporary global climate change. Although early climate and culture studies were mainly founded in archaeology and environmental anthropology, with the advent of climate change, anthropology's roles have expanded to engage local to global contexts. Considering both the unprecedented urgency and the new level of reflexivity that climate change ushers in, anthropologists need to adopt cross-scale, multistakeholder, and interdisciplinary approaches in research and practice. I argue for one mode that anthropologists should pursue—the development of critical collaborative, multisited ethnography, which I term “climate ethnography.”
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 2154896x 2012 679560, Jun 1, 2012
This article explores the shifting dynamics of the utility of ice and snow in rural settlements o... more This article explores the shifting dynamics of the utility of ice and snow in rural settlements of two areas of the Arctic, northeastern Siberia, Russia, and Labrador/Nunatsiavut, Canada. In both areas, inhabitants, to a greater or lesser degree, continue historically based subsistence practices that depend on ice and snow. In northeastern Siberia, the main ice form is permafrost, which is
Arctic Anthropology, 2002
Page 1. VILIUI SAKHA ORAL HISTORY: THE KEY TO CONTEMPORARY HOUSEHOLD SURVIVAL SUSAN A. CRATE Abst... more Page 1. VILIUI SAKHA ORAL HISTORY: THE KEY TO CONTEMPORARY HOUSEHOLD SURVIVAL SUSAN A. CRATE Abstract. Recent field research in the Viliui regions of the Sakha Republic, Russia shows that post-Soviet ...
An urgent challenge of the 21st century is to investigate understandings, perceptions and respons... more An urgent challenge of the 21st century is to investigate understandings, perceptions and responses of populations confronting the local effects of global climate change. This paper describes the most recent results of one such project working with rural native Viliui Sakha communities, Turkic-speaking horse & cattle breeders in northeastern Siberia, Russia. The research questions are: 1) What local effects of global climate change are Viliui Sakha communities observing, how are Viliui Sakha perceiving these changes and how are the changes affecting both their subsistence survival and their cultural orientations? 2) What local knowledge exists about past climate perturbations and how does that knowledge influence contemporary adaptation to global climate change? 3) How can anecdotal (local) knowledge and regional scientific knowledge about the local effects of global climate change be integrated to enhance both local adaptive responses and policy efforts? The four-village, three-yea...
Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994. Includes bibliographical refere... more Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-151).
Nature and Culture, 2013
This article is concerned with the way in which indigenous place-based knowledge and understandin... more This article is concerned with the way in which indigenous place-based knowledge and understandings, in a time of global climate change, have the potential to challenge researchers to self-reflexively shift the focus of their research toward those technological and consumer practices that are the cultural context of our research. After reviewing some literature on the emergence of self-reflexivity in research, the authors offer two case studies from their respective environmental education and anthropological research with northern indigenous cultures that clarifies the nature of a self-reflexive turn in place-based climate research and education. The global interconnections between northern warming and consumer culture-and its relation to everexpanding technological systems-are considered by following the critical insights of place-based knowledge. We conclude by examining the possibility that relocalizing our research, teaching, and ways of living in consumer culture are central t...
Global Environmental Studies, 2017
This article examines the spiritual and utilitarian values of sacred practices related to cow car... more This article examines the spiritual and utilitarian values of sacred practices related to cow care among rural Sakha of northeastern Siberia, Russia. Founded upon a pre-Soviet animistic belief system, sacred practices relating to cows are not only important to post-Soviet Sakha identity and ethnic revival but also may make a difference in the productivity of a herd and in maintaining social cohesion within households and village communities in a period of continued socio-economic and moral decline. The article also draws parallels with the importance of reinstating the sacred in human-animal relationships globally.
Developing sociocultural, economic, and environmental strategies for sustainability is a major ch... more Developing sociocultural, economic, and environmental strategies for sustainability is a major challenge facing the world’s rural and urban populations alike. Rural areas lag severely behind their urban counterparts in addressing sustainability milestones yet, as nexuses of biological, cultural and ethnic diversity, they play a crucial role in planetary sustainability. Therefore, there is great need for rigorous research with rural communities to define issues, exchange necessary knowledge and synthesize nascent initiatives exploring rural sustainability. This paper lays a framework for one possible research approach by reflecting on insights from a comparative case, involving long-term research in two arctic contexts: Viliui Sakha settlements of northeastern Siberia, Russia and Nunatsiavut settlements in Labrador Canada. Despite their location on opposite sides of the Arctic, communities in both regions struggle with contemporary issues of a changing climate, an unpredictable econo...
Anthropology and Humanism
Current History
Northern Russia's physical vulnerability to climate change is at best severe, considering the... more Northern Russia's physical vulnerability to climate change is at best severe, considering the underlying permafrost and the threat that warming presents to that foundation.
Practicing Anthropology
Herein I respond to Baer and Singer's critique of our special issue on Storying Climate Chang... more Herein I respond to Baer and Singer's critique of our special issue on Storying Climate Change by citing the importance of engaging all the fields and subfields of anthropology and the diversity of approaches. I also discuss the importance of changing the narrative to mobilize more action and to develop approaches that resonate with people across the socio-cultural and political spectrum.
Anthropocene
In a context of scientific and public debates on permafrost degradation under global climate chan... more In a context of scientific and public debates on permafrost degradation under global climate change, this article provides an integrated review and analysis of environmental and socioeconomic trends in a subarctic region. It focuses on Sakha (Yakut) animal husbandry as an example of indigenous land use. Within Sakha-Yakutia's boreal forests, animal husbandry takes place in thermokarst depressions containing grassland areas (alaas) that formed in the early Holocene in a complex interplay of local geological conditions, climate changes, and permafrost dynamics. The current scale and speed of environmental change, along with shifting socioeconomic processes, increasingly challenges Sakha's adaptive capacity in use of alaas areas. The paper synthesizes information on the evolution of permafrost landscapes and on the local inhabitants' and scientific knowledge. It also probes land-use prospects for the near future. The imminence of challenges for alaas ecosystems requires a holistic understanding between researchers and stakeholder communities, which in turn depends on a comprehensive assessment of the dynamic interaction of physical and social drivers of change.
Annual Review of Anthropology
This review provides an overview of foundational climate and culture studies in anthropology; it ... more This review provides an overview of foundational climate and culture studies in anthropology; it then tracks developments in this area to date to include anthropological engagements with contemporary global climate change. Although early climate and culture studies were mainly founded in archaeology and environmental anthropology, with the advent of climate change, anthropology's roles have expanded to engage local to global contexts. Considering both the unprecedented urgency and the new level of reflexivity that climate change ushers in, anthropologists need to adopt cross-scale, multistakeholder, and interdisciplinary approaches in research and practice. I argue for one mode that anthropologists should pursue—the development of critical collaborative, multisited ethnography, which I term “climate ethnography.”
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 2154896x 2012 679560, Jun 1, 2012
This article explores the shifting dynamics of the utility of ice and snow in rural settlements o... more This article explores the shifting dynamics of the utility of ice and snow in rural settlements of two areas of the Arctic, northeastern Siberia, Russia, and Labrador/Nunatsiavut, Canada. In both areas, inhabitants, to a greater or lesser degree, continue historically based subsistence practices that depend on ice and snow. In northeastern Siberia, the main ice form is permafrost, which is
Arctic Anthropology, 2002
Page 1. VILIUI SAKHA ORAL HISTORY: THE KEY TO CONTEMPORARY HOUSEHOLD SURVIVAL SUSAN A. CRATE Abst... more Page 1. VILIUI SAKHA ORAL HISTORY: THE KEY TO CONTEMPORARY HOUSEHOLD SURVIVAL SUSAN A. CRATE Abstract. Recent field research in the Viliui regions of the Sakha Republic, Russia shows that post-Soviet ...
An urgent challenge of the 21st century is to investigate understandings, perceptions and respons... more An urgent challenge of the 21st century is to investigate understandings, perceptions and responses of populations confronting the local effects of global climate change. This paper describes the most recent results of one such project working with rural native Viliui Sakha communities, Turkic-speaking horse & cattle breeders in northeastern Siberia, Russia. The research questions are: 1) What local effects of global climate change are Viliui Sakha communities observing, how are Viliui Sakha perceiving these changes and how are the changes affecting both their subsistence survival and their cultural orientations? 2) What local knowledge exists about past climate perturbations and how does that knowledge influence contemporary adaptation to global climate change? 3) How can anecdotal (local) knowledge and regional scientific knowledge about the local effects of global climate change be integrated to enhance both local adaptive responses and policy efforts? The four-village, three-yea...
Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994. Includes bibliographical refere... more Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-151).
Nature and Culture, 2013
This article is concerned with the way in which indigenous place-based knowledge and understandin... more This article is concerned with the way in which indigenous place-based knowledge and understandings, in a time of global climate change, have the potential to challenge researchers to self-reflexively shift the focus of their research toward those technological and consumer practices that are the cultural context of our research. After reviewing some literature on the emergence of self-reflexivity in research, the authors offer two case studies from their respective environmental education and anthropological research with northern indigenous cultures that clarifies the nature of a self-reflexive turn in place-based climate research and education. The global interconnections between northern warming and consumer culture-and its relation to everexpanding technological systems-are considered by following the critical insights of place-based knowledge. We conclude by examining the possibility that relocalizing our research, teaching, and ways of living in consumer culture are central t...
by Libertad Chavez-Rodriguez, Silja Klepp, Celia Ruiz-de-Oña Plaza, Astrid Ulloa, Daniel Morchain (Oxfam-ASSAR), Ignacio Rubio Carriquiriborde, Susan Crate, Roy Smith, Salvador Aquino Centeno, Leigh-Anne Buliruarua, and Ruth Senikula
This edited volume brings together critical research on climate change adaptation discourses, pol... more This edited volume brings together critical research on climate change adaptation discourses, policies, and practices from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Drawing on examples from countries including Colombia, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Russia, Tanzania, Indonesia, and the Pacific Islands, the chapters describe how adaptation measures are interpreted, transformed, and implemented at grassroots level and how these measures are changing or interfering with power relations, legal pluralismm and local (ecological) knowledge. As a whole, the book challenges established perspectives of climate change adaptation by taking into account issues of cultural diversity, environmental justicem and human rights, as well as feminist or intersectional approaches. This innovative approach allows for analyses of the new configurations of knowledge and power that are evolving in the name of climate change adaptation.
This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental law and policy, and environmental sociology, and to policymakers and practitioners working in the field of climate change adaptation.