Early Ethnography in the American Arctic

Tristes Arctiques

Kirsten Hastrup

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781032416328
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000952902
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book offers a portrait of early ethnographic work in the American Arctic, with a focus on understanding the mutual constitution of the Inuit and their early ethnographers. It draws mainly on a rich repository of written testimonies from the early twentieth century, the 'great ethnographic period' when new scholarly interest in the region took off. Supplementing the movements and observations of whalers, traders, and missionaries, the early chroniclers offered new knowledge of Inuit life. Although their descriptions of the Inuit bear the marks of their time, the texts have left a deep mark on later developments and contributed to a long-lasting view of human life in the Arctic. The chapters show the infiltration of lives and landscapes, of thoughts and materials, of Inuit and ethnographers. The book will be relevant to anthropologists as well as historians, geographers, and others with an interest the Arctic region and Indigenous studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue: The Great Ethnographic Period in the American Arctic
• 1 The New World: Anthropologists in the Wilderness
• 2 Late Arrivals: Strangers in the North
• 3 Moving Frontiers: Life in the Indeterminate Zone
• 4 Animal Companions: The Precariousness of the Hunt
• 5 Vital Materials: The Agency of Things
• 6 Human Terrains: A Mutable Landscape
• 7 Close Quarters: Intimacy and Travelling Theory
• 8 Emergent Subjects: Bodies in the Cold
• 9 Elusive Arctic: Ancient Steps and Future Traces
• Index