Alex Oehler

I am a circumpolar ethnographer with special interests in human-animal and human-landscape relations. Much of my work has looked at how societal ideas (religious, philosophical, practical) converge with how people relate to animals within and outside of their households. I am interested in interspecies communication and collaboration, including how hunters interpret the movements of animals and vice-versa, but also how people communicate with land features and vegetation all around the North. Here are some of my most recent publications:

Oehler, A. (In Press) Expanded Visions: A New Anthropology of the Moving Image, by Schneider, A., London, Routledge, 2021, 200 pp. Entanglements Journal.

Oehler, A. (2021). Humans and Dogs of Mountainous Inner Asia: Sensory Collaboration and Personhood. Human Ecology, pp.1-14.

Oehler, A. (2020) The Care Work of Balance: Apportioning Life in Soiot Herder-Hunter Households of the Eastern Sayan Mountains. Inner Asia, Special Issue on Human-Animal Relations, Thomas White, Natasha Fijn (eds.).

Oehler, A. (2020). Beyond Wild and Tame: Soiot Encounters in a Sentient Landscape. New York: Berghahn Press.

Oehler, A. (2020) Pacing Transhumance: Examples of Rhythm Alignment in the Eastern Sayan Mountains. Inner Asia 22: 67–86.

Oehler, A., and A. Varfolomeeva. (2019) Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border. London: Lexington Books.

Oehler, A. (2020) Arctic Crashes: People and Animals in the Changing North: edited by Igor Krupnik and Aron L. Crowell, Washington, Smithsonian Scholarly Press, 2020, 555 pp. The Polar Journal, DOI: 10.1080/2154896X.2020.1847811

Oehler, A. (2019) Introduction. In Oehler, A. and Varfolomeeva, A. Eds. Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border. London: Lexington books.

Oehler, A. and I. Rassadin (2019) On the Role of the Horse in Tofa Households. In Oehler, A. and Varfolomeeva, A. Eds. Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border. London: Lexington books.

Oehler, A. (2019) Taking Stock: Tofa Reindeer Herding Today. In Oehler, A. and Varfolomeeva, A. Eds. Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border. London: Lexington books.

Oehler, A. (2019) Falling In and Out of Rhythm. In Oehler, A. and Varfolomeeva, A. Eds. Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border. London: Lexington books.

Oehler, A. (2018) Social Memory and Oka-Soiot Reindeer Herders: On the Challenges of Reindeer in Multi Species Mountain Households. J of Ancient Tech Lab 14(3): 112–123.

Oehler, A (2018) Hunters in Their Own Right: Perspectival Sharing in Soiot Hunters and Their Dogs. In Wishart, R., Losey, R., Loovers, JPL. Eds. Dogs in the North. London, Routledge. Pp. 40-56.

Oehler, A. (2018) An Arctic Indigenous Knowledge System of Landscape, Climate, and Human Interactions: Evenki Reindeer Herders and Hunters, by A. Lavrillier & S. Gabyshev. 2017. Fürstenberg/Havel: SEC Publications. Hunter Gatherer Studies 3(2): 353–357.