Article ID: CBB042440470

The Walrus and the Bureaucrat: Energy, Ecology, and Making the State in the Russian and American Arctic, 1870–1950 (2019)

unapi

This article traces how ecological context shaped the actions and ambitions of the United States and the Soviet Union, through a comparison of their use of the Pacific walrus. Based in the shared environmental context of the Bering Strait, it examines how the two countries implemented opposing ideological projects in the Arctic, expecting to increase production and by doing so make Indigenous peoples into capitalist or socialist citizens. In an environment impossible for agriculture and difficult for industry, walrus-harvesting became one of the few productive options for these ambitions. Between the 1870s and the 1950s, both the U.S. and the USSR experimented with massive harvests of blubber and ivory to feed ideas of economic growth, before adopting mirrored conservation policies. This article argues that the reason stems from the inherently metabolic nature of modern states, which function by ensuring flows of energy through their economies and citizens. In the Bering Strait, that energy came in part from walrus, making environmental management and the economic practices it supported dependent on the species’ biological capacities. Not only do modern, growth-oriented states change nature; they function ecologically, emerging from and thus governed by the distributed agency of ecosystems.

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Authors & Contributors
Ashraf Wani, Mohd
Ken J. Caine
Bhat, Rouf Ahmad
Bockstoce, John R.
Bathsheba Demuth
Calverley, David
Concepts
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Hunting; trapping
Travel; exploration
Inuit Indians
Ecology
Arctic Ocean
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
21st century
18th century
20th century, late
Places
Arctic regions
Russia
United States
Soviet Union
Canada
Norway
Institutions
Hudson's Bay Company
Ford Motor Company
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