The realities of law in the Russian North : examining the human right to cultural heritage among the Izhma Komi people

Abstract

This dissertation examines how the Izhma Komi people of the Russian North perceive and engage in cultural heritage, ethnic culture, and nature-based livelihoods that are governed by diverse normative systems. While the explicit language of human rights was absent among the Izhma Komi I encountered, the aim of this dissertation is to share implicit local perspectives on human rights, in particular rights to cultural heritage. I delve into the pluralistic understandings of human rights as values, ideals, and moral principles that are present in the everyday lives of many Izhma Komi people.

In Russia, indigenous populations that are not recognised as Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East (KMNS) have a substantially limited scope of the rights that are legally applicable to them. However, in the Russian context, rights should not be blindly taken as tools that will unequivocally strengthen the legal standing of vulnerable groups. In this regard, the dissertation argues that not being a subject of rights, as in the example of Izhma Komi, can be a practical advantage for people. Consciously sidestepping the legal and political structures may allow a group of people to avoid laws that create not only legal but also identity categories, leading indigenous populations to self-instrumentalise.

In this respect, the dissertation reveals that the everyday realities of many of the Izhma Komi are governed not exclusively by state structures and codified laws, but also by other (informal) regulatory systems comprising customary norms and taboos, tacit agreements, and ad hoc informal practical solutions. Those uncodified normative structures function within the ‘shatter zone’, which is a space that exists despite and alongside the presence of the state, and that particularly may emerge in geographically isolated societies.

In questioning the category of indigenous small-numbered peoples as functioning to subjugate indigenous populations under state domination, this dissertation claims that, within the shatter zone, Izhma Komi hold some room to exercise their self-governance and self-determination in matters that undoubtedly relate to their internal and local affairs, like their cultural survival.

Conceived as a legal-anthropological inquiry, the study draws on in-depth ethnographic field research among the Izhma-Komi of the North of the Komi Republic and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Taking the regulatory systems seriously as a subject of ethnographic research allowed for redirecting the focus towards individuals as creators of cultures, societies, and normative systems.

The dissertation contributes to participant observation-based legal ethnography in the Russian North beyond disciplinary boundaries.