A New Interdisciplinary Scientific Field: Arctic Regional Science

Abstract

The article establishes the expediency of the formation of Arctic regional science as a new interdisciplinary scientific field. The existing realities of the economic development of Arctic territories cannot always be explained by mainstream economic theories developed for high-density areas of the temperate zone. Rare anomalies that may occur in the temperate zone tend to drive back to the research periphery, whereas such things are commonplace in the Arctic zone, which can no longer be ignored. The key element of the phenomenon of Arctic regional science is that, instead of competitive forces, it deals with an extremely dynamic, ultimately nonstationary, and economically isolated research subject that pulsates with a giant spatiotemporal amplitude, remote from the main developed centers, with dominant monopolies of different types and sizes. The transformation of the initial conceptual blocs of “parental” Arctic regional science is so great and leads far away from the initial theoretical notions, that it is reasonable to talk about the validity of a radical paradigm shift, rather than of a gradual refinement of previous ideas to fit Arctic conditions. In the authors' opinion, this is the primary method to provide the maximum explanatory power to the developed hypotheses and concepts and their successful integration with specific Arctic realities.