BROTHERS FOREVER: FRATERNAL TIES AND THE DYNAMICS OF OBLIGATION IN ARCTIC RUSSIA

This ethnographic documentation of a settlement in Arctic Russia demonstrates the role of brotherhood in local institutions, individual decision-making and family- and community-based obligations. It shows how crucial these are for understanding the complex dynamics of power, obligation and identity to distinguish the diverse use of fraternal metaphors in the community in contrast to the national level or state ideology. I start with the premise that the most prevalent and emotionally charged concepts of brotherhood are, in fact, local and are rooted in two social institutions – the institute of “a hunting crew” and the local kinship system(s). Although these two evolved and transformed under the Soviet and post-Soviet state regimes, the principles of social organisation, positioning and obligations, essential for ties between men, persisted. As the kinship relations are transformative, they do not create an immutable basis for kin-based resources. Labour, such as marine hunting, makes such a basis. In individual decision-making, only non-optative relations with parents and siblings matter. In this study, my focus is the influence of male siblings and cousins on a man’s actions. In the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine, some families approve of the monetised service in the army as a substitute for family care and subsistence, and men join their siblings and cousins in the army. The study thus shows how the notion of brotherhood impacts individual decision-making and why it is not difficult, metaphorically speaking, to change sealskin- for heavy-duty leather army boots.