THE GEOCULTURAL SPACE OF THE ARCTIC: LANDSCAPE VISUALIZATION AND ONTOLOGICAL MODELS OF IMAGINATION
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2021-1-48-94
The geocultural space of any region is formed as a result of the interaction of two weakly separable elements – geocultures developing in the given territory and cultural landscapes. The full development of a geocultural space involves the formation of a unique ontology of imagination, which creates a cognitive “foundation” for the construction of appropriate models. Ontological models of imagination characterize the possibilities of an expanded representation and interpretation of the cultural landscapes of a region. The visuality of a cultural landscape is a complex formation in which visual reactions and reflections are the result of multiple imaginations – both personal and group. The geocultural space of the Arctic, in its visual-discursive dimension, is complex, since the tradition of the “colonial view”, coupled with the tendencies to analyze postcolonial practices and to decolonize various Arctic discourses, creates an ambivalent discursive field of relevant visual practices and policies. The existential situation of post-exoticism, typologically characteristic of the Arctic regions, is a field of ontologization of multiple visual practices that consolidate rhizomatic procedures of geocultural distinctions. As a result of a field study of the coastal territories of North-Eastern Chukotka, the most visually intensive key landscape assemblages have been identified: 1) sea hunting, 2) traditional holidays of sea hunters, 3) “pristine” nature. Landscape assemblages are represented by various visual dispositives. Visual dispositives are understood as consistently reproducing and phenomenologically fixed visual landscape (geocultural) images that characterize the specifics of certain landscape assemblages. As a result of the study, five key visual dispositives have been identified that determine the specific forms of the reproduction and development of both geo-cultures themselves and the corresponding cultural landscapes of these territories: 1) the dispositive of sea hunters, the most borderline and fractal; 2) the dispositive of holidays of the traditional culture of sea hunters; 3) the dispositive of destruction and ruin associated with both the extreme natural conditions of the region and the era of the Soviet and post-Soviet development; 4) the dispositive of the “natural”, “pristine” space associated with the low development of the territory, and 5) the dispositive of multi-naturalism, manifested in the features of the visual environments of Chukchi settlements (villages, urban-type settlements, small towns). These dispositives, intertwining and interacting, create multiple, constantly transforming landscape assemblages. Within the framework of the presented visual dispositives, the phenomena of Arctic post-exoticism and internal exoticism are formed, which fix the impossibility of returning to the pre-colonial “landscape optics”.
Keywords: geocultural space, Arctic, geoculture, cultural landscape, landscape visualization, ontological models of imagination, landscape assemblage, visual dispositive, post-exoticism
References:
Aamold, S., Haugdal, E., Jørgensen, U. A., & Phillips, R. B. (Eds.) (2017). Sámi Art and Aesthetics: Contemporary Perspectives. Aarhus University Press.
Alloa, E. (2015). Iconic Turn. A Plea for Three Turns of the Screw. Culture Theory and Critique, 57(2), 1–24.
Bachmann-Medick, D. (2017). Kul’turnye povoroty. Novye orientiry v naukakh o kul’ture [Cultural Turns. New orientations in the study of culture]. Translated from German. NLO.
Bartmanski, D. (2015). Modes of seeing, or, iconicity as explanatory notion: Cultural research and criticism after the iconic turn in social sciences. Sociologica, 9(1), 1–34.
Bateson, G. (2000). Ekologiya razuma: Izbrannye stat’i po antropologii, psikhiatrii i epistemologii [Steps to an ecology of mind: Selected articles on anthropology, psychiatry, and epistemology]. Translated from English. Smysl.
Baudrillard, J. (2000). Simvolicheskiy obmen i smert’ [Symbolic exchange and death]. Dobrosvet.
Baudrillard, J. (2015). Simulyakry i simulyatsii [Simulacra and simulation]. Translated from French by A. Kachalov. POSTUM.
Benediktsson, K. (2007). Scenophobia, geography and the aesthetic politics of landscape. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 89(3), 203–217.
Bergin, J., & Price, C. (1994). The travel cost method and landscape quality. Landscape Research, 19, 21–23.
Bertolini, M. (2015). The “Pictorial Turn” as Crisis and the Necessity of a Critique of Visual Culture. Philosophy Study, 5(3), 121–130.
Bleiker, R. (Ed.) (2018). Visual Global Politics (Interventions). Routledge.
Bogoslovskaya, L. S., & Krupnik, I. I. (2013). Nashi l’dy, snega i vetry: narodnye i nauch. znaniya o ledovykh landshaftakh i klimate Vostochnoy Chukotki [Our ice, snow and winds: Folk and scientific knowledge about ice landscapes and climate of Eastern Chukotka]. Institut naslediya.
Bottici, Ch. (2014). Imaginal politics: Images beyond imagination and the imaginary. Columbia University Press.
Bussolini, J. (2010). What is a Dispositive. Foucault Studies, 10, 85–107.
Caborn, J. (2007). On the Methodology of Dispositive Analysis. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 1(1), 115–123.
Castro, E.V. de. (2017). Kannibal’skie metafiziki. Rubezhi poststrukturnoy antropologii [Cannibal metaphysics. Frontiers of post-structural anthropology]. Ad Marginem Press.
Chartier, D. (2017). Chto takoe voobrazhenie Severa? [What is the imagined North?]. In D. N. Zamyatin, & E. N. Romanova (Eds.), Geokul’tury Arktiki: metodologiya analiza i prikladnye issledovaniya [Geocultures of the Arctic: Methodology of analysis and applied studies] (pp. 13–28). Kanon+.
Chilingarov, A., & Sviblova, O. (2007). Arktika!!! Katalog [Arctic !!! A catalog]. Moscow.
Chlenov, M. A., & Krupnik, I. M. (2016). Naukan: glavy k istorii [Naukan: chapters to history]. In M. M. Bronshtein (Ed.), Spasti i sokhranit’. Kul’turnoe nasledie Chukotki: problemy i perspektivy sokhraneniya [Save and preserve. The cultural heritage of Chukotka: Problems and prospects for conservation]. Vol. I (pp. 38–73). Gosudarstvennyy muzey Vostoka; Departament obrazovaniya, kul’tury i sporta Chukotskogo avtonomnogo okruga.
Daniel, T. C. (2001). Whither scenic beauty? Visual landscape quality assessment in the 21th century. Landscape and Urban Planning, 1-4(54), 267–281.
Davidson, J., Bondi, L., & Smith, M. (Eds.) (2007). Emotional Geographies. Ashgate Publishing.
DeLanda, M. (2018). Novaya filosofiya obshchestva: Teoriya assamblyazhey i sotsial’naya slozhnost’ [A new philosophy of society: Assemblage theory and social complexity]. Translated from English by K. S. Mayorova. Hyle Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2008). Anti-Edip: Kapitalizm i shizofreniya [Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia]. Translated from French. U-Faktoriya.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2010). Tysyacha plato: Kapitalizm i shizofreniya [A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia]. Translated from French. U-Faktoriya; Astrel’.
Dybbroe, S. (2008). Is the Arctic really urbanising? Études/Inuit/Studies, 32(1), 13–32.
Dybbroe, S., Dahl, J., & Müller-Wille, L. (2010). Dynamics of Arctic urbanization. Acta Borealia, 27(2), 120–124.
Elie, S. D. (2012). The Production of Social Science Knowledge beyond Occidentalism: the quest for a post-exotic anthropology. Third World Quarterly, 33(7), 1211–1229.
Estok, S. C., White, J., & Wang, I-Ch. (Eds.) (2016). Landscape, Seascape, and the Eco-Spatial Imagination Landscape, Seascape, and the Eco-Spatial Imagination. Routledge.
Falk, J. H., & Balling, J. D. (2010). Evolutionary Influence on Human Landscape Preference. Environment and Behavior, 42(4), 479–493.
Flatley, J. (2008). Affective mapping: Melancholia and the politics of modernism. Harvard University Press.
Forsdick, Ch. (2001). Victor Segalen and the Aesthetics of Diversity: Journeys between Cultures. Oxford University Press.
Gerasimov, I. P., & Meshcheryakov, Yu. A. (1967). Ponyatiya “morfostruktura” i “morfoskul’ptura” i ispol’zovanie ikh v tselyakh geomorfologicheskogo analiza [The concepts “morphostructure” and “morphosculpture” and their use for geomorphological analysis]. In I. P. Gerasimov, & Yu. A. Meshcheryakov (Eds.), Rel’ef Zemli [Relief of the Earth] (pp. 7–13). Nauka.
Gibson, J. (1988). Ekologicheskiy podkhod k zritel’nomu vospriyatiyu [The ecological approach to visual perception]. Translated from English. Progress.
Gladden, M. E. (2019). Who Will Be the Members of Society 5.0? Towards an Anthropology of Technologically Posthumanized Future Societies. Soc. Sci., 8(5), 148. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8050148
Grovogui, S. N. (2013). Postcolonialism. In T. Dunne, M. Kurki, & S. Smith (Eds.), International Relations Theories – Discipline and Diversity (pp. 247–266). Oxford University Press.
Hanrahan, M. (2017). Enduring polar explorers’ Arctic imaginaries and the promotion of neoliberalism and colonialism in modern Greenland. Polar Geography, 40(1), 1–19.
Heleniak, T. (2017). Boom and Bust: Population Change in Russia’s Arctic Cities. In R. W. Orttung (Ed.), Sustaining Russia’s Arctic cities: Resource politics, migration, and climate (pp. 67–88). Berghahn Books.
Huggan, G. (2001). The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. Routledge.
Ivashchenko, Yu. (2018). Istoriya kitoboynogo promysla v Russkoy Arktike [History of whaling in the Russian Arctic]. https://goarctic.ru/live/istoriya-kitoboynogo-promysla-v-russkoy-arktike/
Jameson, F. (1988). Cognitive Mapping. In C. Nelson, & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 347–358). University of Illinois Press.
Kaganovsky, L. (2017). The negative space in the national imagination: Russia and the Arctic pages. In L.-A. Körber, S. MacKenzie, & A. Stenport (Eds.), Arctic environmental modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene (pp. 169–182). Palgrave Macmillan.
Kaymaz, I. C. (2012). Landscape Perception. In M. Ozyavuz (Ed.), Landscape Planning (pp. 251–276). IntechOpen.
Kelman, I. (Ed.) (2017). Arcticness: Power and Voice from the North. University College London Press.
Krivoshchekov, V. S. (Ed.) (2004). Orientiry razvitiya Beringii v XXI veke [Development guidelines for Beringia in the 21st century]. Chukotka Branch of the North-East Complex Research Institute, RAS.
Krupnik, I. I., & Mikhaylova, E. A. (2008). Eskimolog Aleksandr Forshteyn (1904–1968) [Eskimologist Alexander Forshtein (1904–1968)]. In L. S. Bogoslovskaya, V. S. Krivoshchekov, & I. I. Krupnik (Eds.), Tropoyu Bogoraza. Nauchnye i literaturnye materialy [By the Path of Bogoraz. Scientific and literary materials] (pp. 32–44). Institut naslediya – GEOS.
Krupnik, I., & Chlenov, M. (2007). The end of “Eskimo land”: Yupik relocation in Chukotka, 1958–1959. Inuit Stidies, 31(1–2), 59–81.
KTA INC. (2008). Socio-cultural impacts of aboriginal cultural industries. A Discussion Paper. http://kta.on.ca/pdf/SocioCulturalmpacts.pdf
Lash, S., & Urry, J. (1994). Economies of Signs and Space. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Leonova, V. (2014). Naukan i naukantsy: Rasskazy naukanskikh eskimosov [Naukan and Naukans: Stories of the Naukan Eskimos]. Dal’press.
Loftsdóttir, K. (2015). The Exotic North: Gender, Nation Branding and Post-colonialism in Iceland. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 23(4), 246–260.
Lothian, A. (1999). Landscape and the philosophy of aesthetics: is landscape quality inherent in the landscape or in the eye of the beholder? Landscape and Urban Planning, 44(4), 177–198.
Lothian, A. (2008). Scenic perceptions of the visual effects of wind farms on south Australian landscapes. Geographical Research, 46(2), 196–207.
McIntosh, I. S. (2003). Reconciling Personal and Impersonal Worlds: Aboriginal Struggles for Self-Determination. In B. Dean, & J. M. Levi (Eds.), At the risk of being heard: Identity, indigenous rights and postcolonial states (pp. 293–324). University of Michigan Press.
Moxey, K. (2008). Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn. Journal of Visual Culture, 7(2), 131–146.
Muñoz-Pedreros, A. (2017). The visual landscape: an important and poly conserved resource. Ambiente & Sociedade, 20(1), 165–182.
Nohl, W. (2001). Sustainable landscape use and aesthetic perception preliminary reflections on future landscape aesthetics. Landscape and Urban Planning, 54(1-4), 223–237.
Nyseth, T. (2017). Arctic Urbanization: Modernity Without Cities. In L.-A. Körber, S. MacKenzie, & A. Stenport (Eds.), Arctic environmental modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene (pp. 59–70). Palgrave Macmillan.
O’Connor, D. (1997). Lines of (f)light: The visual apparatus in Foucault and Deleuze. Space and Culture, 1, 49–66.
Oparin, D. A. (2015). Variativnost’ sovremennogo ritual’nogo prostranstva Novogo Chaplino i Sirenikov [Variability of the modern ritual space of Novy Chaplino and Sirenikov] [History Cand. Sci. Dissertation, Lomonosov Moscow State University]. Moscow.
Petrova, E. G., Mironov, Yu. V., Aoki, Yo., Matsushima, H., et al. (2015). Comparing the visual perception and aesthetic evaluation of natural landscapes in Russia and Japan: cultural and environmental factors. Progress in Earth and Planetary Science, 2(1), 1–12.
Pijanowski, B. C., Villanueva-Rivera, L. J., Dumyahn, S. L., et al. (2011). Soundscape Ecology: The Science of Sound in the Landscape. BioScience, 61(3), 203–216.
Pratt, M. L. (1992). Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge.
Raffnsøe, S., Gudmand-Høyer, M. T., & Thaning, M. S. (2014). What is a Dispositive? Foucault’s Historical Mappings of the Networks of Social Reality. Copenhagen Business School.
Reisser, C. (2017). Russia’s Arctic cities: Recent evolution and drivers of changes. In R. W. Orttung (Ed.), Sustaining Russia’s Arctic cities: Resource politics, migration, and climate (pp. 1–25). Berghahn Books.
Ryall, A., Schimanski, J., & Wærp, H. H. (Eds.) (2010). Arctic Discourses. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Saxinger, G., Petrov, A., Krasnoshtanova, N., Kuklina, V., & Carson, D.A. (2016). Boom back or blow back Growth Strategies in mono-industrial resource towns – ‘east’ and ‘west’. In A. Taylor, D.B. Carson, P.C. Ensign, L. Huskey, R. O. Rasmussen, & G. Saxinger (Eds.), Settlements at the Edge: Remote Human Settlements in Developed Nations (pp. 49–75).
Shim, D. (2014). Visual Politics and North Korea. Seeing is Believing. Routledge.
Shokarev, S. Yu. (2016). Istoriya memoriala Semenu Dezhnevu na myse Dezhneva [History of the memorial to Semyon Dezhnev at Cape Dezhnev]. In M. M. Bronshtein (Ed.), Spasti i sokhranit’. Kul’turnoe nasledie Chukotki: problemy i perspektivy sokhraneniya [Save and preserve. The cultural heritage of Chukotka: Problems and prospects for conservation]. Vol. I (pp. 96–115). Gosudarstvennyy muzey Vostoka; Departament obrazovaniya, kul’tury i sporta Chukotskogo avtonomnogo okruga.
Therkelsen, A., & Halkier, H. (2004). Umbrella Place Branding A Study of Friendly Exoticism and Exotic Friendliness in Coordinated National Tourism and Investment Promotion. Discussion Paper No. 26/2004. Aalborg.
Thisted, K. (2014). Imperial ghosts in the North Atlantic: Old and new narratives about the colonial relations between Greenland and Denmark. In D. Göttsche, A. Dunker (Eds.), (Post-)colonialism across Europe: Transcultural history and national memory (pp. 107–134). Aisthesis Verlag.
Timofeev, D. A., & Ufimtsev, G. F. (Eds.) (2004). Morfologiya rel’efa [Morphology of relief]. Nauchnyy mir.
Tuan, Y. F. (1979). Thought and landscape: The eye and the mind’s eye. In D. W. Meinig (Ed.), The interpretation of ordinary landscapes: geographical essays (pp. 89–102). Oxford University Press.
Vallorani, N. (2016). Sidelong Thinking: Disobedient Geographies and Subaltern Cultures. Altre Modernità, 16, 120–133.
Voskopulos, G. (2001/2002). Western Europe and the Balkans: A Geo-Cultural Approach of International Relations? Perspectives, 17, 30–42.
Wallerstein, I. (1991). Geopolitics and geoculture: Essays on the changing world-system. Cambridge University Press.
Wallerstein, I. (1995). After Liberalism. The New Press.
Williams, P., & Chrisman, L. (Eds.) (1994). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory – A Reader. Routledge.
Yashchenko, O. (2016). “Smotri i uchis’”: molodye chukotskie i eskimosskie okhotniki sel Lorino i Sireniki 2010-kh gg. [“Watch and Learn”: Young Chukchi and Eskimo hunters from the villages of Lorino and Sireniki in the 2010s]. In I. I. Krupnik (Ed.), Litsom k moryu. Pamyati Lyudmily Bogoslovskoy [Facing the sea. In memory of Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya] (pp. 191–214). Moscow.
Zamyatin, D. N. (2002). Geokul’tura: obraz i ego interpretatsii [Geoculture: The image and its interpretations]. Sotsiologicheskiy zhurnal – Sociological Journal, 2, pp. 5–13.
Zamyatin, D. N. (2010). Humanitarian geography: Space, imagination, and interaction between contemporary human sciences. Sotsiologicheskoe obozrenie – Sociological Review, 9(3), 26–50. (In Russian).
Zamyatin, D. N. (2011). Geo-spacialism: An ontological dynamics of spatial images. Sotsiologicheskoe obozrenie – Sociological Review, 10(3), 21–28.
Zamyatin, D. N. (2017a). Geokul’turnoe prostranstvo Arktiki: ontologicheskie modeli voobrazheniya [Geocultural space of the Arctic: Ontological models of imagination]. In D. N. Zamyatin, & E. N. Romanova (Eds.), Geokul’tury Arktiki: metodologiya analiza i prikladnye issledovaniya [Geocultures of the Arctic: Methodology of analysis and applied studies] (pp. 28–37). Kanon+.
Zamyatin, D. N. (2017b). Arkticheskie geokul’tury: landshaft, soprostranstvennost’ i ontologicheskie modeli voobrazheniya [Arctic geocultures: Landscape, spatiality and ontological models of imagination]. In D. N. Zamyatin, & E. N. Romanova (Eds.), Geokul’tury Arktiki: metodologiya analiza i prikladnye issledovaniya [Geocultures of the Arctic: Methodology of analysis and applied studies] (pp. 81–92). Kanon+.
Zamyatina, N. Yu. (2018). Arkticheskie goroda mezhdu Stsilloy i Kharibdoy [Arctic cities between Scylla and Charybdis]. https://goarctic.ru/live/arkticheskie-goroda-mezhdu-stsilloy-i-kharibdoy/
( 1.29 MB ) 
( 1.26 MB )
Issue: 1, 2021
Series of issue: Issue 1
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 48 — 94
Downloads: 984