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| Abstract Title:
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| Large Scale Tipping Points, Small Scale Societies
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| Graduate Student Presenter:
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Philip A Loring
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| Name of the Author(s) and Affiliation(s):
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Philip A Loring and S.C. Gerlach, Department of Anthropology, Resilience and Adaptation Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks
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Much has been made of the question of large-scale, ecological tipping points in the arctic system, with important work being done to identify where they may have already been experienced, how they might be avoided, and to anticipate how they will impact arctic peoples. This last question, how ecological tipping points will affect the Arctic’s small-scale communities is a complicated one, because socio-cultural, political, and economic systems can have tipping points of their own, and the interactions between these domains are many. Gradual ecological change can accumulate over time and lead to abrupt cultural or economic change; conversely, many resilient social systems in the past have proven able to take abrupt ecological changes ‘in stride.’ The communities of ‘bush’ Alaska are presently undergoing a dramatic period of economic, cultural and demographic restructuring, with common patterns of rural-to-urban migration occurring across the state. Some of the major drivers of these transitions include: a significantly decreased ability to rely on wild foods as the result of climate variability and regulatory rigidity, an increased need/desire to participate in a cash economy, and the needs of elders to pursue quality healthcare services. Many communities are becoming locked-in to these transitions; the longer they progress the harder it becomes to reverse the trend. This begs the question of whether some socio-cultural or socio-economic tipping point has been reached or exceeded for communities undergoing these transitions. If not, what are new designs for policy and resource management that can go towards reversing these destructive trends? And for those that have, what way forward as they experience the significant nutritional and social-cultural stresses, such as diabetes, depression, and alcoholism that appear to result?
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