“It’s Difficult because It’s Far Away”: Remoteness of Villages and Hamlets of Usinsk Municipal District in Everyday Experience

Abstract

The article explores what constitutes remoteness and how it is experienced by residents of villages and rural areas in the Usinsk municipal district in the Komi Republic. The empirical material includes about 35 interviews, informal conversations, and observations collected during two anthropological expeditions in 2023 and 2024. Instead of approaching the study of remoteness as physical distance that determines the characteristics of life in a particular place, or as a metaphor that emphasises the social differences between residents of different places, this phenomenon is examined from the perspective of lived experience and practices related to movement between settlements. The focus is on how residents of remote villages connect various circumstances (accessibility, routes and schedules of different modes of transport, climatic and weather conditions, administrative restrictions and informal ties) in order successfully to reach their destination or deliver goods. Each act of movement involves navigating and aligning multiple factors. Thus, remoteness is understood through the nature of movement itself — as an extended and specific way of moving between places that are significant to people, and a particular way of experiencing that movement. The proposed approach allows us to see remoteness as a dynamic and practical phenomenon, tied to material conditions. This perspective helps better to understand the lived experience of everyday life in remote rural villages and broadens the conceptualisation of remoteness.