Configurations of Remoteness: Entanglement of Humans and Transport Infrastructures

The vast expanses of the globes Arctic and Subarctic are difficult to traverse enormous boreal forests, swamps and mountain ranges severely inhibit travel across these landscapes. Existing transportation networks from footpaths, roads, river and aviation routes to railway lines are few and far apart, thereby creating tracks of heightened human and non-human activity and mobility criss- crossing the land. Our starting assumption is that changes in transportation networks under northern conditions that is, physical remoteness, a harsh climate, low population density, paucity of tracks have tremendous consequences for human lives. We will concentrate on two dimensions of the interaction between humans and infrastructure: the social and the spatial. The latter dimension includes different forms of mobility, from short-term work-related commutes to permanent migrations. The social dimension includes the composition of human collectives, as well as the aspirations and practices of individuals. Our case study is situated in eastern Siberia, a remote region characterized by (still largely) untapped natural resources, which fuel the economic ambitions of its distant political center. The Baykal-Amur Mainline (BAM) and the Amur-Yakutsk Mainline (AYaM) define our broader study area. The BAM and AYaM are part of a railroad cluster constructed during the Brezhnev era, and about to be further expanded under Putins second presidency. Our overarching research question given the technosocial entanglement of people and infrastructure, how do changes in remote transportation systems affect human sociality and mobility? will be addressed by research teams consisting of Austrian and Russian scholars from anthropology and geography. Our mixed methods array encompasses qualitative and quantitative components, including GIS mapping. The intellectual merit of this proposal rests on bringing recent anthropological debates about human/non-human entanglements and infrastructure to bear upon northern discussions about resource and community development, mobility, and demographic shifts in remote regions. Geographic input as mediated through the spatial turn in anthropology will enable us to address spatial issues in addition to the social dimension of our research. At the same time, the applicability of our results will not be limited to arctic and subarctic regions. Any remote region and resource frontier around the globe can be primary targets of future research on changing configurations of remoteness. Notwithstanding the importance of theoretical insights, publicly funded science also needs to address societal concerns and stakeholder input. In our case, residents of eastern Siberia will be involved in planning, conducting and discussing the research. Local organizations and institutions, such as museums, BAM and AYaM builders associations, and NGOs, will be part of the process. In Austria, we will communicate the lived realities of eastern Siberians through public and academic events. Although the projects home base is far away from the study region, we are interconnected through rail lines and the goods they carry as well as through oil and gas pipelines.

The project "Configurations of Remoteness" (CoRe) dealt with the local impacts of a relatively recent East Siberian railroad line, built during the 1970s and 1980s. The fact that hardly any other modern transport infrastructures had been present in the region before made this railroad line - the Baikal-Amur Mainline or BAM - particularly interesting for scholarship, because it rendered its impacts more visible than in regions with ample transport infrastructures. Another specificity of our case study is the circumstance that some of the builders of the BAM - the so-called "bamovtsy" - settled in the region. This enabled the project to conduct interviews and other conversations with BAM builders, representatives of the indigenous population, and with newcomers to the region. Today, more than 30 years after the completion of the BAM, the region finds itself in a difficult socioeconomic situation. The ideological and economic foundations of this last socialist megaproject had disappeared by the early 1990s, and the post-socialist transformations of the following decade led to population decline and economic recession. It is therefore not surprising that especially the "bamovtsy", who had devoted their lives to building this railroad line and to colonizing the region, today speak with nostalgia about the "good old days" of late socialism. A life without the BAM is difficult to imagine for most other residents of the region as well. Paradoxically, this does not mean that all of our conversation partners use the railroad line much or regularly. Our studies have also shown that there are individual communities, who do not want to be connected to the transport network of the region. For example, we have documented a case in which an indigenous community has successfully resisted such attempts since the 1980s. On the other hand, we also have encountered settlements located far off the BAM, which seem to experience neither negative nor positive impacts. Finally, some communities might have become "more remote" than in Soviet times, because the BAM attracted and bundled resources, people and administrative attention. At the same time, the state modernisation program BAM-2 has picked up old (Soviet) promises and evoked new hopes. Overall, CoRe has provided an important contribution to the anthropological understanding of the interaction between built, social and natural environments. Transport infrastructures play a special role in this dynamic, because, most often, they are initiated and financed by external interests, while they can, at least potentially, serve local interests as well. This insight has led to the development of a larger, pan-arctic project (InfraNorth), which deals with all forms of arctic transport infrastructures. Recently, InfraNorth received funding from the European Research Council as an Advanced Grant. Without CoRe this success would not have been possible.