Community Participation in Research or Research Participation in Community, examples from Siberia and the Russian Far East.

David Koester, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Alaska Anthropological Association Meetings, April 2002

What does it mean for research to become a locally meaningful, social actor? What power does it embody and how are social relations refracted by or repelled from it as a social force. Does or can research have agency or is it a tool? This talk examines these questions in the context of research conducted in and for indigenous communities in Kamchatka, Russia, with some comparison to previous work in Iceland.