Hugh Beach

Hugh Beach

My research interests have been dominated by two major experiences: 1) a serendipitous childhood encounter with Sámi reindeer herders in the Swedish mountains which launched me into an anthropological career, and 2) an inspirational travel/study year around the world during my BA program at Harvard led by anthropologist and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson.  As a result, my scholarly production has grown from a concentration on Sámi culture and livelihoods to embrace comparative aspects of reindeer economies throughout the circumpolar area.  This in turn has caused me to immerse myself in studies of indigenous rights, ethnicity and political ecology in general.

I have lived among Sámi reindeer herders for extensive periods of time in Sweden, Norway and the Kola Peninsula of Russia, have studied the determinants of change in reindeer herding practices and also the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, have worked as a reindeer herder in Alaska with the Inuit NANA Regional Corporation herd, and been chairman of the Swedish Minority Rights Group and expert advisor on Sámi affairs to Sweden’s first two ombudsmen against ethnic discrimination.  Because of a general systems perspective inspired by Bateson, my work has been devoted to jerking the studies of reindeer herding away from a dominance of descriptive “culturology” of traditional ways with accompanying historical categorizations into analytical forms of study based on the recognition of embedded hierarchies of resource/consumer relationships and property regimes to enable comparative work across time and space.

I have recently retired to become Professor Emeritus, but continue work to complete both my long-term project on the social effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster for the Swedish Saami and the international CLUE project noted above concerning the situation of the small (indigenous) peoples of northern Russia in Post-Soviet times.

As I gradually free myself from academic writing, I hope to return more frequently to my Saami fieldwork home in the Jokkmokk area and write for a more general readership about experiences “up north”—all the while indulging my desires to practice the Eskimo Roll in my kayak, to play the saxophone, and to pursue my new fascination with Taichi.

Contact information: Hugh.Beach@antro.uu.se

Selected publications:

The list below is only a selection. For a complete list of publications, see the attached document.

Monograph

2001 (1993)monographA year in Lapland: guest of the reindeer herders. Seattle: University of Washington Press. With a new afterword by the author.

Anthology

2009Post-Soviet Transformations: politics of ethnicity and resource use in Russia. Uppsala: Acta Univ. Ups., Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 46.

Journal (editor)

2009Humans and Reindeer on the Move, eds. Hugh Beach and Florian Stammler. Special edition of Nomadic Peoples, Volume 10, Issue 2/2006.

Articles

2015How might gender matter? (With Rasmussen, R.) In: SLiCA: Arctic living conditions Living conditions and quality of life among Inuit, Saami and indigenous peoples of Chukotka and the Kola Peninsula, ed. Birger Poppel. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers.
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2015Survey design and sampling problems (with Lewis, D). In: SLiCA: Arctic living conditions Living conditions and quality of life among Inuit, Saami and indigenous peoples of Chukotka and the Kola Peninsula, ed. Birger Poppel. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers.
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2015The Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic (SLiCA) as deployed in Sweden – initial issues. (with Lewis, D., Rasmussen, R., Roto, J.). In: SLiCA: Arctic living conditions Living conditions and quality of life among Inuit, Saami and indigenous peoples of Chukotka and the Kola Peninsula, ed. Birger Poppel. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers.
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2014Nordic reindeer governance in the context of contemporary protected areas and species, in Resource Governance (with Forbes, B., Kofinas, G., et al). In Arctic Human Development Report II: Regional Process, Global Linkages, eds. J.N. Larsen and G. Fondahl. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 269-313.
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2013Linking Essentialist and Constructivist Ethnicity. In Acta Borealia, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1-25.
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2013Devitalization and Revitalization of Traditional Saami Dwellings in Sweden. In About the Hearth: Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North, eds. Robert Wishardt Virginie Vaté and David Anderson. New York: Berghahn books.
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2013Foreword, to Demant Hatt, E., With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman among the Sami, 1907-1908. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
2012Milk and Antlers: A System of Partitioned Rights and Multiple Holders of Reindeer in Northern China. In Who Owns The Stock? Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals, eds. Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee. New York: Berghahn Books.
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2012Nordic Reflections on Northern Social Research. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Europe, eds. Ullrick Kockel, Mairead Nic Craith, and Jonas Frykman. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
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2012Förord [Foreword], to Walkeapää, L., Lainiovuoma-samernas gamla renflyttningar till Norge: Om sommarbosättningar i Troms Fylke på 1900-talet. Uppsala: Centrum för Biologisk Mångfald (CBM).
2011Short Report – The 2011 Swedish Supreme Court Ruling: A Turning Point for Saami Rights (with A. Sasvari). In Nomadic Peoples. vol. 15, issue 2.
2011When Push Comes to Shove: The Political and Moral Discourse of Rapid Climatic Change. Remarks made at the IPY meeting in Oslo, June 2010, in Arctic Studies Center Newsletter, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, May.
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2011Reindeer Management, Resource Rights, and Ethnicity, in Arctic Studies Center Newsletter, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, May.
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2008Лукьянченко, Х. Бич (H. Beach), А. Ю. Карпухин, (редакторы), Шеффер И. (1673), ЛАПЛАНДИЯ. Перевод с латинского: В.С.Золотилова, А.Ю.Зверева. Published by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
2008Reindeer Ears: calf marking during the contemporary era of extensive herding in Swedish Saamiland. In Årsbok [Yearbook] 2007. Uppsala: Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala/Annales Societatis Litterarum Humaniorum Regiae Upsaliensis, 91-118.
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2007Self-determining the Self: Aspects of Saami Identity Management in Sweden. In Acta Borealia, vol. 24, No. 1, 1-25.
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2006Human-Animal Relations in Pastoralism (with F. Stammler). In Humans and Reindeer on the Move, special edition of Nomadic Peoples, eds. Stammler, F. and Beach, H, vol. 10, Issue 2/2006.
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2006The Challenges and Dilemmas of Concession Reindeer Management in Sweden (with J-L. Jernsletten). In Reindeer Management in Northernmost Europe: Linking Practical and Scientific Knowledge in Social-Ecological Systems, eds. B. Forbes, M. Bölter, L. Müller-Wille, J. Hukkinen, F. Müller, N. Gunslay, and Y. Konstantinov. Berlin: Springer, Ecological Studies: Analysis and Synthesis, vol. 184.
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2004The Long Walk VI: An Interview with Robert Paine in Three Acts. In Nomadic Peoples, vol 8, issue 1.
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2004Political Ecology in Swedish Saamiland. In Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North, eds. David Anderson and Mark Nuttall. Oxford: Berghahn Press.
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2003Chinese Dual-Ownership System – a Hopeful Model. Contribution to A Saga Unfolds: Reindeer Herding in China. In Cultural Survival Quarterly, Spring 2003, vol. 27. issue 1.
2002Ecological Man and the Laponia World Heritage Site. in The Roots of Peoples and Languages of Northern Eurasia IV, ed. Kyösti Julku. Oulu: Historica Fenno-Ugrica.
2001World Heritage and Indigenous Peoples – the Example of Laponia. In Upholders of Culture Past and Present, ed. Bo Sundin. Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.
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2000Reindeer-Pastoralism Politics in Sweden: Protecting the Environment and Designing the Herder. In Negotiating Nature, eds. Alf Hornborg and Gísli Pálsson. Lund: Lund University Press.
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2000Social and economic aspects of climate change in Arctic regions. Keynote address to the Arctic Science Summit Week 5 April, Joint Science Day, IASSA & IASC. Cambridge, UK.
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2000The Saami. In Endangered Peoples of the Arctic: Struggles to Survive and Thrive, ed. Milton Freeman. London: Greenwood Press, Endangered Peoples of the World series.
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1997Negotiating Nature in Swedish Lapland: Ecology and Economics of Saami Reindeer Management. In Contested Arctic: Indigenous Peoples, Industrial States, and the Circumpolar Environment, ed. Eric A. Smith. University of Washington Press.
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1994The Saami of Lapland. In: Polar Peoples: Self-determination and development, ed. by Minority Rights Group, Minority Rights Publications, London. (An expanded update of Minority Rights Group report nr. 55 by the same author, published 1988).
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1994Saami Life and Handicraft. In: Swedish Folk Art: All Tradition is Change, eds. Barbro Klein and Mats Widbom. New york: Harry N. Abrams.
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1994Shots Heard Round the World. In: Beslutet om Småviltjakten - En studie i myndighetsutövning, ed. Agneta Arnesson-Westerdahl. Utgiven av Sametinget.
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1993Samepolitiken i Sverige: Kränkande politik. In: Invandrare och Minoriteter, nr. 5-6, December.
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1993Straining at Gnats and Swallowing Reindeer: the Politics of Ethnicity and Environmentalism in Northern Sweden. In: Green Arguments and Local Subsistence, ed. G. Dahl. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology.
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1992Den Svenska Samepolitiken. In: Invandrare och Minoriteter, ed. D. Schwarz. Nr. 2, April.
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1992Reindeer Herding on the Kola Peninsula: Report of a Visit with Saami Herders of Sovkhoz Tundra. In: Readings in Saami History, Culture and Language III, ed. R. Kvist. Center for Arctic Cultural Research, Umeå University.
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1990Perceptions of Risk, Dilemmas of Policy: Nuclear Fallout in Swedish Lapland. In: Social Science & Medicine. Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 729-738.
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1990Comparative Systems of Reindeer Herding. In: The World of Pastoralism: Herding Systems in Comparative Perspective, ed. John Galaty and Douglas Johnson. Guilford Publications.
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1990Coping with the Chernobyl disaster: a comparison of social affects in two reindeer-herding areas. In: Rangifer, Scientific Journal of Reindeer and Reindeer Husbandry. Special Issue No. 3, pp. 25-34. (From a paper presented at the 5th International Reindeer/Caribou Symposium in Arvidsjaur, August 1988.)
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1989En samisk forårsvandring set fra venstre. In: Jordens Folk. Nr. 1. produced by the Danish Ethnographic Society in cooperation with the Institute for Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.
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1986The Phase-Out Clause in Minority Rights Legislation: A Comparison of the Swedish and Alaskan Methods. In: Nordisk Tidsskrift for International Ret. Vol. 55, Fasc. 1-2. Copenhagen.
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1986The Saami in Alaska: Ethnic Relations and Reindeer Herding. In: Contributions to Circumpolar Studies, ed. Hugh Beach. Uppsala Research Reports in Cultural Anthropology. No. 7. Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala Univ., Sweden.
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1985The Reindeer-Caribou Conflict in the NANA Region of Alaska: A Case Study for Native Minority Rights Issues. In: Nomadic Peoples. no. 17, February, ed. Philip C. Salzman, Commission on Nomadic Peoples. McGill Univ., Canada.
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1985Moose Poaching or Native Minority Right: a Struggle for Definition in Swedish Saamiland. In: Nord Nytt, Nordisk Tidskrift for Folkelivsforskning. Nr. 26, Kulturer i Norr. Udgivet af NEFA-Norden. Special-Trykkeriet Viborg a-s, Denmark.
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1984Developing Spirit in Northwest Alaska. In: Ethnos. Vol. 49:III-IV. The Ethnographical Museum, Stockholm.
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1983A Swedish Dilemma: Saami Rights and the Welfare State. In: Production Pastorale et Société, bulletin de l'équipe écologie et anthropologie des sociétés pastorales. Supplément à MSH Informations, Publié avec le concours du CNRS. No. 12 printemps. Paris.
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1982The Place of Women in the Modern Saameby: An Issue in Legal Anthropology. In: Antropologisk Forskning, Ymer, årgång 102, ed. Margareta Elg. Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geographi. Borgströms Tryckeri AB, Motala.
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1981Reindeer-Herd Management in Transition: The Case of Tuorpon Saameby in Northern Sweden. Acta Univ. Ups., Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 3. Uppsala.
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