Arctic Worlds: Communities, Political Ecology and Ways of Knowing
About the Book Series
This series aims to integrate research from across the circumpolar Arctic from across the humanities, social sciences, and history of science. This region – once exotised as a remote and unknown "blank spot"– is now acknowledged to be the homeland of a variety of indigenous nations, many of whom have won or are seeking home rule.
The Arctic was the central axis of frozen confrontation during the Cold War. At the start of the 21st century it is a resource hinterland offering supplies of petroleum and minerals for aggressively new markets with great cost and risk to the environment.
The indigenous nations of the region are unique for their "ways of knowing" which approach animals and landscape as alive, sentient entities. Many share cultural commonalities across the Arctic Ocean, sketching out a human community that unites disparate continents.
This series will take history seriously by bringing together archaeological work on ancient Arctic societies with ethnohistorical studies of the alternate idioms by which time and meaning are understood by circumpolar peoples, as well as science and technology studies of how the region is perceived by various scientific communities.
Submitting a proposal
The series invites proposals for both (co)authored and (co)edited books on these topics. Open Access projects are welcome.
Book proposals and enquiries should be sent to the Routledge editor: [email protected]
For guidance on how to structure your proposal, please visit: www.routledge.com/info/authors.
Editorial Advisory Board:
Dmitry Arzyutov, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology, Russia
Hiroki Takakura, Tohoku University, Japan
Per Axelsson, Umeå University, Sweden
Sacred Places in the Arctic and Beyond: Cultural and Existential Transitions
1st Edition
Edited
By Francis Joy, Patrick Dillon, Dawid Bunikowski
May 22, 2026
Sacred Places in the Arctic and Beyond brings together indigenous and non-indigenous scholars, rightsholders, and practitioners to explore the status and management of sacred places, which are important as both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. It acknowledges the critical functions and ...
Re-activating Indigenous Knowledge from Oral History: Landscape and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Greenland
1st Edition
By Asta Mønsted
September 11, 2025
This book focuses on Greenlandic oral history and how to better understand people, their cultural remains, and their landscape through their own stories. It offers a way to consult Inuit oral history that opens up a perspective on houses and landscapes that may otherwise be invisible to the barren ...
Reimagining Human-Animal Relations in the Circumpolar North
1st Edition
Edited
By Peter Whitridge, Erica Hill
May 27, 2025
This volume provides fresh insight into northern human–animal relations and illustrates the breadth and practical utility of archaeological human–animal studies. It surveys recent archaeological research in northern North America and Eurasia that frames human–animal relations as not merely ...
The Benefits of the Cold and Domestication: A New Understanding of Human–Animal Partnerships for Thriving in Extreme Environments
1st Edition
Edited
By Florian Stammler, Hiroki Takakura
April 28, 2025
This book explores cooperation between humans and animals in extreme environments and contends that understanding domestication is crucial to explaining how life is possible in such conditions. The chapters draw on work from anthropology, genetics, law, and geography, with a range of ethnographic ...
Why Sámi Sing: Knowing through Melodies in Northern Norway
1st Edition
By Stéphane Aubinet
August 26, 2024
Why Sámi Sing is an anthropological inquiry into a singing practice found among the Indigenous Sámi people, living in the northernmost part of Europe. It inquires how the performance of melodies, with or without lyrics, may be a way of altering perception, relating to human and non-human presences,...
The Sociality of Indigenous Dance in Alaska: Happiness, Tradition, and Environment among Yupik on St. Lawrence Island and Iñupiat in Utqiaġvik
1st Edition
By Hiroko Ikuta
January 29, 2024
This book explores indigenous dances and social relationships surrounding the dance activities among Yupik on St. Lawrence Island and Iñupiat in Utqiaġvik, Northern Alaska. Yupik and Iñupiat proudly distinguish their indigenous styles of dance, locally called ‘Eskimo dance’, from Western styles of...
Extracting Home in the Oil Sands: Settler Colonialism and Environmental Change in Subarctic Canada
1st Edition
Edited
By Clinton Westman, Tara Joly, Lena Gross
August 02, 2021
The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’s most important energy sources and the subject of global attention in relation to climate change and pollution. This volume engages ethnographically with key issues concerning the oil sands by working from anthropological literature and beyond to explore...
Reading Life with Gwich'in: An Educational Approach
1st Edition
By Jan Peter Laurens Loovers
August 02, 2021
This book is based upon more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork and personal experiences with the Teetł’it Gwich’in community in northern Canada. The author provides insight into Gwich’in understandings of life as well as into historical and political processes that have taken place in the ...
Dogs in the North: Stories of Cooperation and Co-Domestication
1st Edition
Edited
By Robert J. Losey, Robert P. Wishart, Jan Peter Laurens Loovers
August 14, 2020
Dogs in the North offers an interdisciplinary in-depth consideration of the multiple roles that dogs have played in the North. Spanning the deep history of humans and dogs in the North, the volume examines a variety of contexts in North America and Eurasia. The case studies build on archaeological,...
Negotiating Personal Autonomy: Communication and Personhood in East Greenland
1st Edition
By Sophie Elixhauser
August 14, 2020
Negotiating Personal Autonomy offers a detailed ethnographic examination of personal autonomy and social life in East Greenland.Examining verbal and non-verbal communication in interpersonal encounters, Elixhauser argues that social life in the region is characterized by relationships based upon a ...