Pamela Stern - Böcker

The Inuit World is a robust and holistic reference source to contemporary Inuit life from the intimate world of the household to the global stage. Organized around the themes of physical worlds, moral, spiritual and intellectual worlds, intimate and everyday worlds, and social and political worlds, this book includes ethnographically rich contributions from a range of scholars, including Inuit and other Indigenous authors. The book considers regional, social, and cultural differences as well as the shared histories and common cultural practices that allow us to recognize Inuit as a single, distinct Indigenous people. The chapters demonstrate both the historical continuity of Inuit culture and the dynamic ways that Inuit people have responded to changing social, environmental, political, and economic conditions. Chapter topics include ancestral landscapes, tourism and archaeology, resource extraction and climate change, environmental activism, and women’s leadership.This book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers in anthropology, Indigenous studies, and Arctic studies and those in related fields including geography, history, sociology, political science, and education.

In 2001 the northern Ontario town of Cobalt won a competition to be named the province's "Most Historic Town." This honour, though purely symbolic, came as Cobalters were also applying for and winning federal and provincial development grants to remake this once important silver mining centre as a destination for mining heritage tourism.This book, based on extended ethnographic and multi-method research in Cobalt, examines the multiple ways that development proposal writing is intertwined with neoliberal citizenship. Under current forms of neoliberal governance, proposal making and applying for grants have become normalized activities for individuals, non-profit organizations, schools, and municipalities. The authors argue that the residents of Cobalt have become entrenched in a "proposal economy," a system that empowers them to imagine, engage, and propose but not to count on the state to provide certain services.The Proposal Economy makes an empirical and theoretical contribution to the literature on citizenship and neoliberal governance. In addition to the detailed and nuanced ethnography, it provides new perspectives on the ways that citizenship is produced and reproduced under conditions of neoliberalism.

Over the past decade, some of the most innovative work in anthropology and related fields has been done in the Native communities of circumpolar North America. Critical Inuit Studies offers an overview of the current state of Inuit studies by bringing together the insights and fieldwork of more than a dozen scholars from six countries currently working with Native communities in the far north. The volume showcases the latest methodologies and interpretive perspectives, presents a multitude of instructive case studies with individuals and communities, and shares the personal and professional insights from the fieldwork and thought of distinguished researchers. The wide-ranging topics in this collection include the development of a circumpolar research policy; the complex identities of Inuit in the twenty-first century; the transformative relationship between anthropologist and collaborator; the participatory method of conducting research; the interpretation of body gesture and the reproduction of culture; the use of translation in oral history, memory and the construction of a collective Inuit identity; the intricate relationship between politics, indigenous citizenship and resource development; the importance of place names, housing policies and the transition from igloos to permanent houses; and social networks in the urban setting of Montreal.Critical Inuit Studies is essential reading for students and scholars interested in today's circumpolar North and in contemporary Native communities.