Food as a Power Resource among the Amguema Chukchi: Studying V.G. Kuznetsova’s Field Diaries
[Pishcha kak vlastnyi resurs u amguemskikh olenevodov: po dnevnikam V.G. Kuznetsovoi]
Type of publication: Research Article
Submitted: 12.12.2017
Accepted: 27.11.2018
About author(s)
Elena A. Davydova | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9299-7551 | elenav0202@gmail.com | Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) (3 University Emb., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia)
Keywords
food, power relations, Chukotka, Amguema Chukchi, reindeer herding
Abstract
The article examines food practices of the Amguema Chukchi as a vehicle for the building of social hierarchy in a community. The study draws on the field diaries of Varvara Kuznetsova, a Soviet ethnographer who was living with reindeer herders in the Amguema tundra in Chukotka for three years from 1948 to 1951. The distribution of food resources in Chukchi families was asymmetric. An analysis of these differences reveals the situational character of power in the camps of reindeer Chukchi. The person who was distributing food influenced power relations existing in the community. However, first, hierarchy could be challenged by other participants of the interaction; and secondly, different people could perform the role of food distributor at different time periods.
Funding Information
This research was supported by the following institutions and grants:
Russian Science Foundation, https://doi.org/10.13039/501100006769 [grant no. 17-78-10125]
Citation
Davydova, E.A. 2019. Pishcha kak vlastnyi resurs u amguemskikh olenevodov: po dnevnikam V.G. Kuznetsovoi [Food as a Power Resource among the Amguema Chukchi: Studying V.G. Kuznetsova’s Field Diaries]. Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 2: 43-60. https://doi.org/10.31857/S086954150004881-9
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