Abstract
Based on more than a year of ethnographic field research in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO) in the Barents Sea region, as well as on a review of the literature existing in the field of Arctic medicine in Russia, this chapter focuses on the various discourses regarding adaptation to the Arctic of two groups who share the same ethnic background: the Russian settlers who arrived in the NAO to be involved in oil and gas prospecting, and the shift-workers – described as “oil nomads” in the chapter – who have been coming to the district since the mid-2000s from southern and central Russia to extract the oil discovered by their predecessors. This chapter examines the evolution of medical knowledge on adaptation to the Arctic from the Soviet period to the current day. I show that depictions of the bodies of settlers and oil nomads in both recent medical knowledge and popular discourses support the changes taking place in the organization of the workforce in the NAO, changes which appear to favor the oil nomads.
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Notes
- 1.
“Okrug” translates into “district” in English.
- 2.
Naryan-Mar was founded in 1929 and means“Red Town” in the language of indigenous Nenets.
- 3.
In this chapter I will not discuss the health issues nor the depiction in medical literature or popular discourses of the Nenets people, who are indigenous to the region and who represent 7000 of the okrug’s residents. I discuss these matters and, more generally, the consequences of the Soviet and post-Soviet projects of oil-related developments on the Nenets way of life elsewhere (see Rouillard 2013).
- 4.
“Arctic and Sea Oil and Gas Exploration”.
- 5.
“Southern-Khylchuyu,” named after the river called by the Nenets “Khylchuyu”.
- 6.
Naryanmarneftegaz (“Naryan-Mar Oil and Gas” in Russian). In 2010, ConocoPhillips sold back its shares in Lukoil to the Russian company. As a result, the assets and production sites owned by Naryanmarneftegaz were absorbed by Lukoil.
- 7.
The notion of “seasoning” referred to the idea that Europeans should adapt their bodies gradually to the tropical regions they were colonizing in order to avoid falling victim to tropical fevers (Lock and Nguyen 2010:43).
- 8.
This text was published in Medicine and Public Health in the Arctic and Antarctic (1963), the report stemming from the first conference organized by the World Health Organization on the Arctic and Antarctic in 1962.
- 9.
The Russian law “On government guarantees and compensation for persons working and residing in the regions of the Far North and equivalent areas” provides a range of benefits to the residents of regions situated in the Far North, such as the NAO (Federal Law RF 1993 [2014]). They are eligible to housing benefits, such as a subsidy to acquire a house or apartment, early retirement, longer vacations, and free transportation to any region of Russia every second year.
- 10.
I happened to stay at the main extraction site on Kolguev – that of Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka – in the winter of 2009, that is, at the lowest point of the global financial crisis. Due to the difficult financial situation, the company had asked its workers to remain on the island for 75–80 days instead of 52 in order to reduce the costs of transportation. This indicates that even companies which have served as the sites for research promoting shorter shifts may favor reducing the costs of their operations, at the expense of the health-related consequences on their workers.
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Rouillard, R. (2017). Foreign Bodies in the Russian North: On the Physiological and Psychological Adaptation of Soviet Settlers and ‘Oil Nomads’ to the Oil-Rich Arctic. In: Fondahl, G., Wilson, G. (eds) Northern Sustainabilities: Understanding and Addressing Change in the Circumpolar World. Springer Polar Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46150-2_13
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