Abstract
This chapter is based on recurrent fieldwork in North West Greenland over the past nine years and on historical sources. The region is currently subject to rapid warming and to decreasing possibilities for subsisting on the living resources, notably marine mammals that have been basic to social life since prehistoric times. I shall discuss the concept of sustainability in three moves, corresponding to three phases in the history of the Inughuit. Firstly, we shall see how they embraced the opportunities offered by the foreign explorers, who ‘discovered’ them in the nineteenth century. Secondly, I shall discuss the effects of more permanent foreign presence in the first half of the twentieth century that forced them to disperse. Thirdly, I shall argue that the present climate changes in the Arctic contribute to a profound sense of dislocation in their homeland. These discussions point to some of the weaknesses of any abstract notion of sustainability. In the Anthropocene, all concepts and classifications are necessarily enfolded in insiders’ perceptions and practices, including the analytical practices of anthropologists.
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Acknowledgements
The author wants to acknowledge the European Research Council (ERC AdG no. 229459) and the Carlsberg and Velux Foundations for making recurrent fieldwork in North West Greenland possible. Thanks also to Jerome Lewis and Marc Brightman for organizing the conference of which this volume is a result and for their generous comments on this chapter.
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Hastrup, K. (2017). The Viability of a High Arctic Hunting Community: A Historical Perspective. In: Brightman, M., Lewis, J. (eds) The Anthropology of Sustainability. Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56636-2_9
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