Nov 2024: Chapter by Peter Schweitzer in the Anthropos Special Issue “The Seasonal and the Material”
Cover of the Anthropos special issue “The Seasonal and the Material: Anthropology of Seasonal Practices,” co-edited by Sabina Cveček and Barbara Horejs (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2024).
Anthropos, the international journal of anthropology and linguistics, has just released the special issue “The Seasonal and the Material: Anthropology of Seasonal Practices,” co-edited by Sabina Cveček and Barbara Horejs. Among its contributions is a book chapter by Peter Schweitzer, titled “Seasons and Seasonality in the (Alaskan) Arctic: Human and More-than-human Cycles of Engagement.”
In this chapter, Schweitzer provides insights from his fieldwork of the last 30+ years and a literature review (focusing on Alaska) going back to Marcel Mauss’ Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo. The abstract reads:
While one could argue that life is always and everywhere seasonal and characterized by rhythms that change over the course of a year, the Arctic provides a very vivid illustration of that statement. Unlike tropical and moderate zones of the globe, the High North (like uninhabited Antarctica) oscillates between polar day and night, thereby providing extreme living conditions for plants, animals, and humans. Climate change research has added to that narrative by documenting significant shifts in Arctic ecosystem seasonality in recent years. However, the question remains whether human individuals and societies mirror these shifts. In other words, what is the relationship between social and environmental seasonal cycles in the Arctic?
The book chapter is open access and can be read online here. The contributions in this book were originally presented at a session at VANDA: Vienna Anthropology Days 2022, organized by the editors in Vienna.
On April 9, 2025, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM CDT (GMT-5), Philipp Budka will present a talk titled “Navigating Change: How Transport Infrastructure Shapes Life in Churchill” at the Theatre of the Town Centre Complex in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. As part of this community event, the InfraNorth researcher will explore how transport infrastructures both shape […]
InfraNorth researchers Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, Alexandra Meyer, Ria-Maria Adams, and Susanna Gartler will participate in the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025 (ASSW) from 20 to 28 March 2025 at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. This year’s summit, themed “Arctic Research Planning for the Next Decade,” will include the 4th International Conference on Arctic […]
InfraNorth researchers Philipp Budka and Katrin Schmid will present their work at the 46th Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries (GKS). Under the theme “The North: Changes, Challenges, Opportunities,” the conference will be held in Berlin from February 26 to March 1, 2025. Philipp Budka will participate in Panel 11, […]
Peter Schweitzer and Olga Povoroznyuk will participate in the 2025 Barents Spektakel, an annual art and culture festival in Kirkenes, Norway. In its 21st edition, the festival explores the theme “Remote Control,” fostering a cross-disciplinary exchange on the center-periphery model and the dynamics between central areas and peripheral (or remote) regions. On Friday, 21 February, […]
International Conference, September 22 – 24, 2025, at the University of Vienna. Deadline for submissions: April 6, 2025. Infrastructure is often seen as solid, fixed, and inevitable while shaping the way we move, live, and connect. But what about the infrastructures that remain unfinished, abandoned, or merely imagined? How do built, un-built, or non-built environments […]
Peter Schweitzer and Olga Povoroznyuk were recently invited as guest speakers of the RATIC Arctic Infrastructure Science Talks, a short series of online talks hosted by Jana Peirce (Alaska Geobotany Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks) in preparation for the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025 and the ICARP IV Summit. Each talk is followed by time […]
