Between the state and the market: informal practices in the use of wildlife resources in Siberian villages
The article discusses the issues of informal use of wildlife resources by communities of small isolated villages with a significant share of the indigenous population. The author used field materials for three villages, one of which is located in the tundra on the Pacific Ocean, and two in the East Siberian taiga, as well as new publications on informal resource use. The informal use of wildlife resources includes both illegal activity and hidden use, not registered by the state. It can be interpreted as “run away from the state”, but in fact it represents a special system of relations that is different from both the state and the market economy. The terms “nonpolar” economy (T. Shanin) and “labor economy” (A. V. Chayanov) are also applicable. A typical example of informal resource use is “forced poaching” explained by the fact that residents of northern villages cannot observe all the nuances of the formal regulation and can't even figure out how it works. The author argues the cultural and anthropological nature of this problem, the origins of which are in the fundamental difference in the moral foundations of what use of resources should be considered as legal. Author shown that informal relations in the resources use, together with traditional hunting and fishing practices inherited from the past, are the main conditions of sustainability of northern local communities.