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Abstract
This article argues that in its enormous Northern and Eastern stretches, the geographical space of Russia was shaped by the fur trade. The essay follows the boom and depletion of the fur trade in the longue durée of Russian history. The fur trade brought many Northern tribes to the edge of extermination. Hunting and trapping was intrinsically violent, did not entail the long-term cycles that were characteristic for agriculture, and needed no participation from women. It also created the situation that some historians called the hyper-activity of the state. The resource-bound economy made the population largely superfluous. The essay also explores the historiography of the fur trade and the debates that this historiography saw in the 1920s. Finally, it draws an analogy between two resource-bound epochs, the pre-modern dependency of the Russian state on fur and its modern dependency on oil. Very little part of the population took part in the fur business, with the result that the state did not care about the population and the population did not care about the state. A caste-like society emerges in these conditions. The security apparatus becomes identical to the state. Due to a chance of history or geography, the same areas that fed the fur trade of medieval Novgorod and Moscow, have provided the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia with their means for existence.
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journal article
THE SABLE FRONTIER THE SIBERIAN FUR TRADE AS MONTAGEThe Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
Vol. 26, No. 2 (2006/2007)
, pp. 79-100 (22 pages)
Published By: Berghahn Books
//www.jstor.org/stable/23820842
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Journal Information
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology is an international, peer-reviewed journal committed to publishing leading scholarship in contemporary anthropology. Geographically diverse articles provide a range of theoretical or ethical perspectives, from the traditional to the mischievous or subversive, and aim to offer new insights into the worlds in which we live. The journal will publish challenging ethnography and push hard at the boundaries of the discipline in addition to examining or incorporating fields—from economics to neuroscience—with which anthropology has long been in dialogue. The original journal of this name was an in-house publication based at Cambridge University, with a remit to provide a space in which innovative material and ideas could be tested. The new Cambridge Journal of Anthropology builds on that tradition and seeks to produce new analytical toolkits for anthropology or to take all such intellectual exploration to task. - See more at: www.berghahnjournals.com/cja
Publisher Information
Berghahn Books is an award-winning independent scholarly publisher of distinguished books and journals in the humanities and social sciences, headed by a mother (books) and daughter (journals) team. Its program, which includes 35 journals to date and 100 new titles a year, is focused on History, Sociology & Anthropology, International Politics & Policy Studies, Cultural and Media Studies, Jewish Studies, and Migration & Refugee Studies. A peer-reviewed press, Berghahn is committed to the highest academic standards; its publishing program is widely recognized for the quality both of its lists and of the production of its books and journals.
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