Critical Inuit Studies offers an overview of the current state of Inuit studies by bringing together the insights and fieldwork of more than a dozen scholars from six countries currently working with Native communities in the far north. The volume showcases the latest methodologies and interpretive perspectives, presents a multitude of instructive case studies with individuals and communities, and shares the personal and professional insights from the fieldwork and thought of distinguished researchers. The wide-ranging topics in this collection include the development of a circumpolar research policy; the complex identities of Inuit in the twenty-first century; the transformative relationship between anthropologist and collaborator; the participatory method of conducting research; the interpretation of body gesture and the reproduction of culture; the use of translation in oral history, memory and the construction of a collective Inuit identity; the intricate relationship between politics, indigenous citizenship and resource development; the importance of place names, housing policies and the transition from igloos to permanent houses; and social networks in the urban setting of Montreal.

"The A to Z of the Inuit describes how the Inuit - as a single people, citizens of separate nations, and residents of individual communities - deal with education, language rights, self-government and self determination, the militarization of their lands and their lives, climate change and pollution, and globalization."--Page 4 of cover.

This collection of 15 chronologically arranged papers is the first-ever definitive treatment of the intellectual history of Eskimology—known today as Inuit studies—the field of anthropology preoccupied with the origins, history, and culture of the Inuit people. The authors trace the growth and change in scholarship on the Inuit (Eskimo) people from the 1850s to the 1980s via profiles of scientists who made major contributions to the field and via intellectual transitions (themes) that furthered such developments. It presents an engaging story of advancement in social research, including anthropology, archaeology, human geography, and linguistics, in the polar regions. Essays written by American, Canadian, Danish, French, and Russian contributors provide for particular trajectories of research and academic tradition in the Arctic for over 130 years. Most of the essays originated as papers presented at the 18th Inuit Studies Conference hosted by the Smithsonian Institution in October 2012. Yet the book is an organized and integrated narrative; its binding theme is the diffusion of knowledge across disciplinary and national boundaries. A critical element to the story is the changing status of the Inuit people within each of the Arctic nations and the developments in national ideologies of governance, identity, and treatment of indigenous populations. This multifaceted work will resonate with a broad audience of social scientists, students of science history, humanities, and minority studies, and readers of all stripes interested in the Arctic and its peoples.

The approximately 150,000 Inuit are indigenous to four nations - Denmark (Greenland), Canada, the United States (Alaska), and Russia - and thus have had very different colonial experiences and participate as citizens of those nations in different ways. Far from being victims of colonialism, Inuit are actively involved in shaping their social environments. Nonetheless, modern social and political realities present Inuit with many of the same issues faced by distinct peoples around the world. This volume describes how Inuit as a single people, citizens of separate nations, and residents of individual communities deal with education, language rights, self-government and self determination, the militarization of their lands and their lives, climate change and pollution, and globalization. This work presents an overview of the Inuit peoples of the Circumpolar North. Unlike other works that focus on traditional Inuit cultures, this work documents the social, political, and economic history of Inuit as part of a globalized world. The work contains information on traditional Inuit cultures, but special emphasis is placed on the recent history of Inuit communities. More than 450 dictionary entries cover issues of society, economy, and politics; influential educators and writers, environmentalists, and politicians; and the many voluntary associations and governmental agencies that have played a role in Inuit history. The introductory essay, chronology, and well-developed bibliography make this an ideal reference source for the researcher or student.

"This ethnographic study examines two historical moments in the Canadian Arctic: the Inuit tuberculosis epidemic (1940s to the early 1960s) and the subsequent suicide epidemic (1980s to the present). The colonial Canadian North was imagined as a laboratory for a social experiment to transform Inuit into bona fide Canadian citizens by, among other things, reducing their death rate. This experiment demanded Inuit cooperation with the forms of anonymous care the state provided--including the evacuation of tubercular Inuit Southern Sanatoria, which left many Inuit families without the story or image of their loved one's death. A similar indifference to who lives or dies is manifest in the adoption of the "suicide hotline"--an explicitly anonymous form of care where caregivers exhort unidentified Inuit to live while simultaneously expecting them to die. Through attention to the images through which people think and dream, Stevenson describes a world in which life is "beside itself": the name-soul of a teenager who dies in a crash lives again in his friend's newborn baby, a young girl shares a last smoke with a dead friend in a dream, the possessed hands of a clock spin uncontrollably over its face. For the Inuit, life is "somewhere else," and Stevenson attempts to articulate forms of care adequate to that truth"--

This book is a pioneering effort in critical Arctic studies. The contributions identify and investigate some of the blind spots in human development in the Arctic that research in the social sciences had yet to broach. To this end, the authors tap a variety of critical approaches in fields spanning aesthetics, affect theory, biopolitics, critical geopolitics, Indigenous archaeology, intersectionality, legal anthropology, moral economy, narrative studies, neoliberal governmentality, queer studies and socio-legal studies. The chapters probe topics such as representations of the Arctic in contemporary art, the role of affects in postcolonial Greenland, Canada’s Arctic policies and China’s engagement with the Arctic. The book provides a rich knowledge base for researchers in Arctic social sciences and offers an absorbing textbook for students interested in Arctic issues.

In Critical Suicidology, a team of international scholars, practitioners, and people directly affected by suicide argue that the field of suicidology has become too focused on the biomedical paradigm: a model that pathologizes distress and obscures the social, political, and historical contexts that contribute to human suffering. The authors take a critical look at existing research, introduce the perspectives of those who have direct personal knowledge of suicide and suicidal behaviour, and propose alternative approaches that are creative and culturally sensitive. In the right hands, this book could save lives.