Co-option in Siberia: The Case of Diamonds and the Vilyuy Sakha

• Autores: Susan Crate
• Localización: Polar geography, ISSN 1088-937X, Vol. 26, Nº. 4, 2002, págs. 289-307
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • A specialist on the Vilyuy Sakha, a native non-Russian people of northeastern Siberia, Russia, examines the public health and environmental challenges threatening the livelihood of the group. The paper presents a case study of political activism among the Vilyuy Sakha in the immediate post-Soviet period, as regional citizens were able to gain access to information on the pollution caused by diamond mining and other forms of industrial development. The demand for public health and environmental information, and mobilization against proposals for new mine development, emerged rapidly during the post-Soviet period, but disappeared almost as suddenly in the late 1990s. This paper explores the reasons for the disappearance of this evolving citizens' environmental movement, arguing that a major cause was co-option by elite diamond interests.