Dorais, Louis-Jacques

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Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec àMontréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documentsscientifiques depuis 1998.Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit : info@erudit.org Compte rendu Ouvrage recensé : STERN, Pamela and Lisa STEVENSON (eds), 2006 Critical Inuit Studies. An Anthology ofContemporary Arctic Ethnography, Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 302 pages. par Louis-Jacques DoraisÉtudes/Inuit/Studies, vol. 30, n° 2, 2006, p. 233-234.   Pour citer ce compte rendu, utiliser l'adresse suivante : URI: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/017578arDOI: 10.7202/017578arNote : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir.Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politiqued'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/Document téléchargé le 10 février 2017 02:15RASMUSSEN, Knud 1929 Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, Copenhagen, Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, Report of the Fifth Thule Expédition, 1921-24, 7(1). 1930 Iglulik and Caribou Texts, Copenhagen, Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, Report of the Fifth Thule Expédition, 1921-24, 7(2-3). Christopher G. Trott Native Studies Department St. John's Collège, University of Manitoba 92 Dysart Road Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M5 trottcg@cc.umanitoba.ca STERN, Pamela and Eisa STEVENSON (eds) 2006 Critical Inuit Studies. An Anthology of Contemporary Arctic Ethnography, Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 302 pages. This book stems from a session held at the American Anthropological Association meetings in 2001. As stated in Eisa Stevenson's Introduction, its principal objective, is to show various ways of understanding Inuit society, as seen through the eyes of various anthropologists whose common characteristic is to make use of an ethnographie method. The editors were drawn by a désire to reintroduce American anthropology to Inuit Studies and to the Inuit in gênerai. The book is divided into 15 chapters (written by a total of 16 authors) distributed into three parts. Part 1 deals with "Figuring method." Texts by Molly Lee, Carol Zane Jolies, Michael J. Kral and Lori Idlout, Murielle Nagy, and Edmund (Ned) Searles describe various cultures of research in Inuit Studies. Through various examples, they show that social and political changes in academy, as well as in the communities, have contributed to new ways of conducting research. The central conclusion of the chapters is that research must be collaborative, but that it is not always easy to find out how this collaboration can be implemented. Part 2 of the book is titled: "Reconiïguring Catégories: Culture." With chapters by Pamela Stem, Nancy Wachowich, Nelson Graburn, Peter Kulchyski and Lisa Stevenson, it aims at explaining how culture, hère defined as a form of practice, has been reworked for political and ethical ends by researchers and Inuit alike. Part 2 shows that far from being neutral, Inuit studies are influenced by and have had an influence on the social and cultural conditions of people involved in them. Among ail three sections, Part 2 is the one that justifies the most the "Critical" component of the book's title. Finally, Part 3 ("Reconfiguring Catégories: Place") includes texts by Béatrice Collignon, Nobuhiro Kishigami, Ludger Millier-Wille and Linna Weber Miiller-Wille, BOOK REVIEWS/233 Frank James Tester, and Pamela Stem. It reconsiders the paradigm of space and place, and its rôle in Inuit lives and in the history of Inuit Studies. The last chapter ("From Area Studies to Cultural Studies to a Critical Inuit Studies"), by Pamela Stern, offers a good description of the récent history of Inuit studies in the United States, though it fails to mention the rôle played by Études/lnuit/Studies and the biennial Inuit Studies Conférences in the development of the field at the international level. Moreover, from a Canadian or Greenlandic point of view, Stern's assertion (p. 263) that "the push for some form of indigenous self-governance [..,] is based on the presumption that Inuit cultural différence cannot be accommodated within a modem libéral democracy" sounds rather strange. Flome rule in Greenland, as well as Canada's Nunavut, are precisely examples of modem libéral democracies (amongst other characteristics, their governments are popular rather than ethnie) which were established in order to accommodate Inuit cultural and social différence. The book is gênerai ly good, with, as it is normal, a few chapters weaker than the others. It should nevertheless make a useful textbook for undergraduate students in northern anthropology, geography or sociology. The authors constitute an interesting sample of contemporary specialists of Inuit studies, most of them American or Canadian, but with the addition of two scholars from the Old World, one French and one Japanese. The sample includes several specialists from the younger génération, though it is somewhat distressing to this reviewer to realise that thèse "young" scholars hâve alrcady reached their forties and early fifties. Louis-Jacques Dorais CIÉRA Université Laval Pavillon De Koninck Québec (Québec), G1K7P4 Canada Louis-Jacques.Dorais@ant.ulaval.ca WHITR, Patrick 2004 Mountie in Mukluks: The Arctic Adventures of Bill White, Maderia Park, B.C., Harbour Publishing, 248 pages. Over the past 20 years there has been an increasing number of memoirs and collections of stories published by nurses, teachers and Mounties reflecting upon their government service in the Canadian Arctic. Most of thèse date back to the 1950s and 1960s when the Canadian government vastly increased its officiai présence as part of the incorporation of northern Canada into the modem social state. There are fewer however that go back to the pre-war period. This was a time when non-aboriginal people were rare in the Arctic, when the first tentative contacts between différent cultures were made. Bill White, by his own account irascible and cantankerous from his youth, served with the RCMP on the St. Roch ship and at Cambridge Bay for four years in the early 1930s. Mountie in Mukluks is Bill's story. 234/RECENSIONS 

STERN, Pamela and Lisa STEVENSON (eds), 2006 Critical Inuit Studies. An Anthology of Contemporary Arctic Ethnography, Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 302 pages.

Louis-Jacques Dorais

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Études/Inuit/Studies

http://www.erudit.org/revue/etudinuit/2006/v30/n2/017578ar.pdf

STERN, Pamela and Lisa STEVENSON (eds), 2006 Critical Inuit Studies. An Anthology of Contemporary Arctic Ethnography, Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 302 pages.

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