Paper short abstract:

Liminality in the Mackenzie Delta emerges through combined sociocultural and material/spatial relations, where these combinations are historically specific and can make life in the same physical space more or less liminal.

Paper long abstract:

Geographically speaking, river deltas are liminal spaces par excellence - in between land and sea, saltwater and fresh water, wet and dry, upstream and downstream, sedimentation and erosion. The very existence and continual transformation of river deltas as landforms derive from this in-betweenness as they are shaped by the contrary forces of land turning into water and water turning into land. But are river deltas also liminal spaces anthropologically speaking? Does social and cultural life in river deltas afford experience of liminality, perhaps more so than in other places?

This presentation discusses instances of liminality in the Mackenzie Delta in the Canadian Arctic. It argues, first, that where people's lives are indeed liminal, this state emerges through simultaneously anthropological and geographical relations, i.e. it is grounded in sociocultural as much as material/spatial in-betweenness. Second, the presentation reviews some of the delta's history to indicate that these links between anthropological and geographical liminality must not be taken for granted. Instead, it traces how economic marginality, widespread substance abuse, but also flat hierarchies, ubiquitous humour, and ample improvisation have emerged in particular configurations of social and material relations. Depending on these historically shifting configurations, the same river delta can become a hub in a world market and a forgotten periphery, a space of lawlessness and of state focus, or an area of ethnic distinctions and a melting pot.