Northern Dimension of Housing and Communal Services: An Anthropological Perspective

Abstract

This article is an introduction to the issue’s special theme on “Housing and Communal Services in the North: Living Environment in the Conditions of Remoteness and Deficit”, featuring contributions by Nikolai Goncharov, Vasilisa Bobrova, Vladimir Davydov, and Olga Shulgina. The proposed selection of articles is aimed at the ethnographic study of public utility in the Arctic and Subarctic. The unifying goal of the publications is to determine the place of public utility in the system of subsistence of the communities of the Arkhangelsk Oblast’, Taimyr, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and Chukotka. Based on their own field materials, the authors study regional gaps and affordances of public utility, problematizing the very concept of this sector of the economy, considering the heterogeneity of sources of electricity, heat and water, studying the hybridization of local and centralized systems, and analyzing solid waste disposal strategies in the Arctic. The conclusions made in the article, reflecting the specifics of the relationship between people and public utility, allow us to reconsider the set of adaptive strategies and responses of the permanent population of the North to emerging socio-economic and ecological challenges.