Imagined and Vibrant Spaces

This paper surveys 100 years the co-production of landscape knowledge in Northern Europe and Siberia between indigenous hunters and herders, nascent geographers and ethnographers, and contemporary identity managers. Based on long-term fieldwork and archival work in Eastern Siberia, the paper surveys early cultural conversations between taiga dwellers and academicians on the topic of rational representation of spaces, and the more controversial topic of accounting for the vibrancy of special parts of the landscape. The paper will examine how landscape knowledge has become fragmented into discourses on shamanism and ritual - on the one hand - and cartographic notation, on the other. Looking forward the paper will speculate how bridging concepts, such as that of the ontology, have renewed this debate in the 21st century.

Among the historical ethnographic examples discussed are the status of vibrant ecogeographic zones known sometimes as niches but also as "living spaces" to Evenkis and Orochens. Among historical geographic colloborations will be the study of wayfaring and hydrological navigation which the geographer Kropotkin learned off his guide Maksimov.

The contemporary examples will examine the use of GPS locators and their interface with public and private mapping projects in the region - and how this corresponds to older narrative traditions of vibrant spaces within and under the surface.