SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

This study examines the social organization and meaning of time, work and leisure to explain some of the fundamental differences between northern indigenous communities nd modern industrial nation states with respect to the perception, use, value and management of fish and wildlife.
In industrial nation states, the meaning and organization of work and leisure tend to be separated into opposite institutions of human actions and values, that are bound by clock time. It is suggested that this dichotomy between work and leisure helps to explain the recent emergence of an animal protection movement, which values and advocates the non-consumptive use of wildlife in opposition to the way work is viewed and practiced within advanced industrial nation states. In industrial society people value wildlife primarily for leisure, and they also enjoy a much higher social and economic standing compared to northern indigenous populations.
Amongst northern natives, despite the recent changes that have occurred since encapsulated within nation states, the value and meaning of wildlife harvesting is that itis for primarily subsistence purposes. As such, although work and leisure is an ubiquitous part of the subsistence lifestyle, they are not separated into a dichotomy of human actions and values. A further distinction is that although the clock has become an important mode of reckoning time since northern natives have lived in permanent settlements, time continues to be reckoned according to the ecological processes and phases of nature, that are part of the environment a hunting people uses and occupies. In this regard, the study describes how wild foods contribute to the human diet of an Inuit community, by examining the way they are produced and consumed as part of the seasonal round of subsistence activities.
In view of the current conflicts between the northern indigenous users of wildlife and the animal protection movement, it is argued that the movement represents the latest stage of a colonial and eurocentric attitude towards the north. A primary reason for this conclusion is that animal protection advocates view and explain northern indigenous wildlife harvesting according to the work and leisure dichotomy in industrial society. The study concludes by suggesting that the northern human ecological situation will only begin to be understood when we cease to take industrial biases about time, work and leisure as axiomatic for northern native communities.'