ABSTRACT
The article presents the challenges of the Indigenous peoples' interplay with the key actors (Indigenous communities, Indigenous associations, regional governments, corporate businesses, and scientific institutions) in the Russian Arctic. Invoking actor–network theory offered knowledge to analyse how the effectiveness of this collaboration may lead to Indigenous peoples' social adaptation in the COVID-19 times. It revealed the main problems increasing their vulnerability and making barriers to meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs). The primary sources included the data collected from expert interviews in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and the Murmansk region in 2020–2021. The main findings proved the gaps in the interplay of Indigenous peoples with key actors in the Russian Arctic due to insufficient interregional and international cooperation, indirect communication of governments with Indigenous peoples via Indigenous associations and communities focused mostly on supporting elites, and the lack of systematic feedback of all key actors. This collaboration must be focused on meeting SDGs and guaranteeing their economic, social, and cultural rights to maintain a traditional lifestyle and livelihoods, involving them in natural resource management, improving quality of life and well-being, increasing access to ethnocultural education, reducing inequality, and promoting Indigenous peoples' self-government.
ABSTRACT
Purpose This paper aims to consider how the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic questions the neoliberal project of ageing, based on a notion of a healthy, active, working older person. A long-term struggle to include older people has been (temporarily) replaced with a struggle to exclude them. This seems to be one of the most sensitive sore spots of the coronavirus crisis and one of the most serious challenges to social policy and welfare systems the world over. The purpose of this paper is to consider where the concepts of ageing and the action on ageing were at right before the crisis and what their further development may look like. Design/methodology/approach This paper provides a critical overview of main conceptions based on the neoliberal project of ageing. Findings The main principle of the neoliberal project of ageing, which had been formed on the crossroad of social theory and policy through decades, became vulnerable in the face of COVID-19 pandemic. The new forced ageing reveals its repressive nature through ensuring seniors' safety from exposure, their removal from work and isolation. The theory now faces new challenges of meshing a neoliberal actor - active, independent and productive - with an older person in isolation, who needs safeguarding, of re-conceptualizing social exclusion of seniors in a situation where exclusion is equated with safety, of resolving a dilemma between isolation and respect of human rights and of keeping progress in anti-ageism. Research limitations/implications This paper presents an overview of the main conceptions, underlying the neoliberal project of ageing. It aims to designate the vulnerabilities of the project, which were revealed under the situation of pandemic. Further development of the discussion needs detailed analysis of theoretical conceptions of ageing. Practical implications Theoretical debate reflects policy of ageing. Discussion of theoretical problems of ageism, social exclusion, safeguarding of the elderly and compulsion are necessary for improvement of social policy of ageing. Social implications When the neoliberal project of ageing comes into collision with the reality with the reality, the authors recognize it as a crisis. It moves the society, and especially the elderly, to the situation of uncertainty. This paper calls for discussion and search for a new balance among the generations in a society. Originality/value This paper relies upon the current debate on neoliberal project of ageing and responds immediately to the situation of pandemic. Now conceptual problems in theories of ageing and policy projects became visible, and the authors suppose it is time to initiate this discussion.
ABSTRACT
This article presents the challenges facing reindeer herding as being both a profitable business and part of the traditional culture of the nomadic Indigenous peoples in the Arctic zone of Western Siberia which addresses substantial needs of the local population. Reindeer herding products are used as traditional nutrition, and as effective preventive means and remedies for adapting to the cold and geomagnetic activity in the High North. Export trends of traditional reindeer products have decreased local Indigenous peoples' access to venison and had a negative impact on their health. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is especially urgent for the Indigenous peoples to have sufficient access to traditional food and be involved in policy decision-making to maintain this traditional business. We aim to analyze the dependencies of Indigenous peoples on the reindeer produce-exporting "food value chain" and explore how (1) the independence of reindeer herders could be increased in these export chains and (2) how provision of their products to local communities could be secured. The study takes a multidisciplinary approach based on policy and socioeconomic analyses with input from medical research. Primary sources include data collected from interviews and surveys of Indigenous peoples during expeditions to the Nyda settlement, the Nydinskaya tundra, the Tazovsky settlement, the Tazovskaya tundra, the Nakhodka tundra, the Gyda and Gydansky settlements, the Yavai-Salinskaya tundra, the Seyakha settlement, the Seyakhinskaya and Tambeyskaya tundras located along the southern coast of the Ob Bay, the northeast coast of the Yamal Peninsula, the Tazovsky and Gydansky Peninsulas, and the Shuryshkarsky district. Data were collected during the summers and winters of 2014-2020.