Paper Short Abstract:

In my talk I want to analyse difficulties of studying informal norms and social control mechanisms in Arctic communities. Moreover, I want to discuss why the state withdraws its right on the power monopoly on its territory. In my paper I want to highlight another side of the discussion in the panel or how the absence of the participatory research and applied projects helps the community to deal with crime.

Paper Abstract:

In 1973 a legal anthropologist Sally Falk Moore coined a term ‘semiautonomous social field’ that ‘can internally generate customs and symbols and has rule making capacities’. In this talk I focus on my studies in the Russian Arctic in remote indigenous communities. These were so-called lawless villages. The reality was opposite – such villages had very well regulated social control system. The problem was that their laws differed from the state laws and the the police officer was not present. The vacuum caused by absence of the law enforcement institutions was filled with traditional social norms and informal social control structures.

In my talk I want to analyse difficulties of studying these informal norms and social control mechanisms. Moreover, I want to discuss why the state withdraws its right on the power monopoly on its territory. In my paper I want to highlight another side of the discussion in the panel or how the absence of the participatory research and applied projects helps the community to deal with crime. In the final part of the talk I want to enlarge my scope and discuss how the decolonial movement of the Arctic indigenous people in Canada, USA and in Scandinavian states hinders outside research with the aim to help indigenous communities to solve their problems caused by drug use, crime and violence and how such policy helps indigenous communities to control crime and criminal behaviour of people through the legak recognition of the native semiautonomous social field.