Ziker Article
Abstracts
In
Press. [In Russian] “The Central Taimyr Lowlands in 1926/27: Identity and
Settlement Pattern of the Native Peoples.” In David G. Anderson (ed.) Turukhanskaia
Ekspeditsia Pripoliarnoi Perepisi: Etnografiia i Demografia Malochislennykh
Narodov Severe. Yakutsk.
Эта
глава
основана на
обзоре и
предварительном
анализе
данных
Приполярной
переписи 1926-27
гг. в
обширном
географическом
районе,
который я
условно
называю
центральной
Таймырской
низменностью.
В этой
статье я
намерен
показать,
как можно
переконструировать
данные
Приполярной
переписи,
чтобы
выявить
долговремененные
и стабильные
формы
адаптации
человека к
природе.
This
chapter is based on a review and preliminary analysis fo data from the
1926/27 polar census in a wide geographic region, that can be conditionally
considered the Central Taimyr Lowlands. In this review, I show how it is
possible to reinterpret data from the polar census to elucidate longstanding
and stable forms of human adaptation to the environment of the North.
2005.
John Ziker and Michael Schnegg. “Food Sharing at Meals: Kinship,
Reciprocity, and Clustering in the Taimyr Autonomous Region,
Northern Russia
.” Human Nature 16(2): 178-210.
The presence of a kinship link between nuclear families is the strongest
predictor of household sharing in this indigenous, predominantly Dolgan,
food-sharing network. Interhousehold attributes, such as the summed number of
hunters in paired households, also account for much of the variation in
sharing between nuclear families in regression analyses. Differences in the
number of hunters in partner households, as well as proximity and
producer/consumer ratios of households were investigated with relevance to
cost-benefit models. The subset of households involved in reciprocal meal
sharing is 26 of 84 household host-guest pairs. The frequency of reciprocal
meal sharing between families in this subset correlated positively with
average household relatedness. The evolution of cooperation through clustering
may illuminate the relationship between kinship and reciprocity at this most
intimate phase of food sharing.
2005. “Property,
Hunting, and Food Sharing in the Taimyr Autonomous Region (
North-Central Siberia
).” Pp 98-101 in Chris Hann (ed.) Property Relations: the Halle Focus
Group 2000- 2005.
Halle
,
Germany
: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
With
the collapse of the planned economy in the 1990s, state-sponsored production
in native communities in the Taimyr rapidly diminished. Local subsistence
economies became the major emphasis for the indigenous population living in
the tundra. Alongside the depression and emergent subsistence economy in
remote communities, Presidential decrees and regional edicts favored a variety
of property relations in the region. Those living in communities at a distance
from Dudinka and in remote houses across the tundra were less likely to make
formal land claims. Concomitantly, informal means of regulating access to and
distribution of resources, such as cosmological injunctions on hoarding and
cooperative hunting, were more important in the bush.
2004. "Anthropology of Eurasia, Postsocialism and Beyond." Reviews in
Anthropology 33(2):163-175.
The
paper discusses a range of studies and approaches dealing mainly with identity
in postsocialist
Russia
, a growing trend in the anthropological literature on the Former Soviet Union
and
Eastern Europe
. Within the current period of expansion of Western research in the region,
anthropologists specializing in this geographical area have been initiating
research on topics relevant to a wider audience, moving slowly away from
postsocialist change per se. To varying degrees these four books digress from
postsocialism and link up to mainstream anthropological topics.
2003. “Horseradish is No Sweeter than Turnips:
Entitlements and Sustainability in the Taimyr Autonomous Region.” Pp. 363-390
in C. Hann (ed.) The Postsocialist Agrarian Question: Property Relations
and Rural Condition. Münster: Lit Verlag.
This chapter uses an old Russian proverb as a metaphor to
describe the equally depressing situation of two sets of indigenous hunters
and herders: 1) those who have suspended their with state enterprises to
form their own enterprises and, 2) those who have maintained employment with
the successors to the Soviet-era state enterprises. The formal hierarchy of
entitlements to natural resources in Taimyr is described, as well as local
informal entitlements that are being employed in the post-Socialist era. The
perpetuation of local systems of entitlement is discussed.
2003. “Assigned Territories, Family/Clan/Communal
Holdings, and Common-Pool Resources in the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Northern
Russia.” Human Ecology 31(3): 331-368.
This paper describes an indigenous hunting/fishing/trapping economy in
the Taimyr Autonomous Region, northern Russia, and traces the continuities
and developments in property since the collapse of the Soviet command
economy in 1991. Indigenous relations to hunting grounds and renewable
resources are discussed with ethnographic case material from Dolgan and
Nganasan communities. Land tenure is analyzed in terms of inclusive and
exclusive property and informal and formal resource management. The
asymmetric growth and distribution of common-pool territories and private
holdings is a central issue. A number of factors when examined together
appear to favor common property and traditional management including
ancestral frames of morality and access, crosscutting kin relationships,
principles of ownership and mutual aid, cooperative hunting, sharing of meat
and fish, as well as migration patterns of prey species and relative
increases in the cost of freight transport since 1991. In addition, private
holdings often make commercial sales and generally have better access to
urban centers, while they are more closely regulated through land, tax, and
environment offices of local government.
2003. Kinship and Friendship in the Taimyr
Autonomous Region, Northern Russia.” Sozialer Sinn 2003/1: 59-80.
Die bisherige ethnologische Forschung bietet Beschreibungen vielfältiger
Strategien, der sich Menschen in postsozialistischen Gesellschaften bedienen
um aus der Ungewissheit der Übergangssituation das Beste für sich
herauszuholen. In der Taimyr-Region bieten Verwandtschaft und Freundschaft
die soziale Sicherheit und die moralische Unterstützung, die so wichtig sind
für viele indigene Haushalte in abgelegenen Siedlungen. Die hier vorgelegte
Studie über Verwandtschaft und Freundschaft auf Taimyr basiert auf indigenen
Interpretationen des Teilens, sowohl auf Grundlage einer Erhebung mittels
Fragebogen als auch auf teilnehmender Beobachtung in Situationen des
Teilens. Diese Formen der Dokumentation verfolgen die Lebensfähigkeit der
auf das Teilen von Ressourcen angewiesenen Gemeinde.In einigen Fällen zeigt
sich, dass das Teilen mit anderen Haushalten höchst assymetrisch verläuft
und gründet sich auf Entwicklungszyklen innerhalb der Familie oder –
seltener – auf Beziehungen zwischen nicht miteinander verwandten Personen.
Der Autor beschreibt, wie verschiedene Haushalte sich gegenseitig bewirten
und welche Schlüsse sich daraus über die Differenzierung zwischen
Verwandtschaft und Freundschaft ziehen lassen. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie
unter Dolganen und Nganasanen legen nahe, dass eine kooperative Haltung
wesentlicher sein mag für freundschaftliche denn für verwandtschaftliche
Beziehungen.
Anthropologists have described a variety of strategies people are
employing to make the best out of uncertain transition in postsocialist
society. In the Taimyr Region kinship and friendship provide local social
security and moral support important to the livelihood of many indigenous
households in remote villages. This study of kinship and friendship in the
Taimyr is based on indigenous understandings of sharing, responses to
surveys, and participant observation of sharing events. These forms of
documentation show how the viability of the resource sharing community
works. In some cases, inter-household sharing is highly asymmetrical due to
family development cycles and, more rarely, certain types of non-kin
relationships. Reciprocal hosting at meals is described and the implications
for differentiating kinship and friendship are proposed. Dolgan and Nganasan
people suggest that a cooperative attitude may be more essential for
friendship, while that may not be as essential among kin.
Schlagworte: soziale Organisation, Netzwerke,
elterlicher/außerelterlicher Nepotismus, Reziprozität, Teilen von Nahrung,
Nachhaltigkeit, Dolganen, Nganasanen, Völker Sibiriens.
Key words: Social organization, networks, parental/extraparental
nepotism, reciprocity, food sharing, sustainability, Dolgan, Nganasan,
Siberian peoples
Published by Leske +
Budrich
2002. “Raw and Cooked in Arctic Siberia:
Seasonality, Gender and Diet among the Dolgan and Nganasan Hunter Gatherers.”
Nutritional Anthropology 25(2): 20-33.
This research on diet provides new information on indigenous dependency
upon the Russian and global economies in a remote and climatically extreme
region. Investigating the most recent changes and variation in the diet of
indigenous householders through time and across locations in the Taimyr
Autonomous Region, Northern Russia, a number of variables affecting diet
choice were identified, including season, location, gender, and historical
changes in settlement pattern. While grains and refined carbohydrates have
been available in the Russian north for at least 200 years to varying
extents, carbohydrates were supplied in abundance and sold at low prices in
government-owned stores during the last 30 years of the Soviet era. During
the 1990s, I documented a reduction in the consumption of non-local
foodstuffs due, in part, to less frequent and robust supplies to remote
indigenous communities, as well as loss of employment. This trend provides
some evidence against models of social change involving increased
integration with, and typical benefits of, the free market. Reduced
availability of non-local foods, and what this means for nutrition and
consumption strategies, is discussed.
2002. “Land Use and Economic Change among
the Dolgan and the Nganasan.” Pp. 191-208 in E. Kasten (ed.) People and the
Land: Pathways to Reform in Post-Soviet Siberia, Vol. 1, Dietrich Reimer
Verlag.
This article analyzes changes in land use and tenure since the collapse
of the Soviet Union, and analyzes these changes in terms of infrastructure,
relations of production, and relations of distribution in the Ust Avam
community. The situation in this Siberian community contrasts significantly
with those in many native and rural communities around the world, where
contact and integration with the global economy is increasing. The
fragmentation of post-Soviet Russia has left the native peoples of remote
Taimyr settlements at the edge of a depressed economy, where local social
processes encourage subsistence foraging, food gifts, and communal land
tenure. The development of local institutions that regulate resource use
among native hunters in the Taimyr, a process running counter to the global
trend, is a topic of applied and fundamental importance to anthropology,
native rights, and environmental policy.
2001. “Traditsionnaia Pishcha i Pitanie Dolgan i
Nganasan” [“Traditional Food and Nutrition of the Dolgan and
Nganasan.”] Pp. 152-156 in David G. Anderson (ed.) Sel’skoe
Zdravookhranenie u Malochislennykh Narodov Severa Kanady i Rossii, Chast’ 2,
Narodnaia Medistina. [Village Health Care among the Small-Numbering
Peoples of the Canadian and Russian North, Part 2, Folk Medicine.]
Novosibirsk: Sibprint Agency.
This article summarizes my initial findings on the nutritional traditions
of the Dolgan and Nganasan, as well as some of their beliefs regarding food
and health. English text.
2001. “Land Use and Social Change among the Dolgan
and Nganasan of Northern Siberia.” Pp. 47-66 in David G. Anderson and Kazunobo
Ikeya (eds.) Parks, Property, Power: Managing Hunting Practice and Identity
within State Policy Regimes. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 59. Osaka:
National Museum of Ethnology.
This paper, originally presented at the 8th International Conference on
Hunting and Gathering Societies, explores changes in land use in the central
Taimyr Autonomous Region. The strategies that native people in the Siberian
Arctic are employing in response to the collapse of Socialism and the
planned economy in Russia are described. Two types of households--those that
maintained use-rights to state enterprise lands and those that claimed
family/clan holdings--are compared. From the regional perspective,
family/clan holdings, part and parcel of the newly developing capitalist
economic system, involve the members in the regional economy as producers of
traditional products and rational users of the tundra. Ironically, the other
strategy--maintaining use-rights to state-enterprise lands--involves
decreasing contact with the regional economy.
1999. “Survival Economy and Core-Periphery Dynamics
in the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Russia.” Anthropology of Eastern
Europe Review 17(2):59-65.
This article discusses the return to a subsistence, or "survival
economy," in which Dolgan and Nganasan hunters reduce risk by limiting their
involvement in the emerging market economy of Russia. The ecological,
economic, and political factors related to this recent change in a remote
and strategically important region of the Russian Arctic, the Taimyr
Autonomous Region, are discussed. I present the viewpoints of indigenous
residents on recent changes in Russia, elaborate on their idea of survival
economy, and develop ideas for the relationship between individual actors
and the Russian economic transition.
1998a. “Land Tenure and Economic Collapse in
Northern Siberia.” Arctic Research in the U.S. Volume 12,
pp. 73-80. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, Interagency
Arctic Research Policy Committee.
This article discusses how recent economic and political changes
in Russia have affected indigenous peoples in Siberia. Ethnographers in the
former Soviet Union have observed an expansion of self-interested strategies
among a variety of groups, and have associated negative social effects with
these behaviors. Despite the negative effects of rapid financial and
infrastructure changes, as well as the lack of involvement in land claims, a
large number of native Siberians are maintaining social and economic
traditions. While the transition period is creating hardship, in some
respects this hardship keeps the community together.
1998b. “Kinship and Exchange Among the Dolgan and Nganasan
of Northern Siberia.” Pp. 191-238 in Barry Isaac (ed.) Research in Economic
Anthropology, Volume 19. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
This paper reviews theoretical perspectives on social change
among indigenous northern peoples, provides data on changes in rural
enterprise productivity in the Taimyr Autonomous Region (1981-1997),
summarizes interview data on capital distribution and distribution of
locally-produced flesh foods, and reports interview results for general
socio-economic standing and various forms of exchange in a remote native
community (79 heads of households).
1997. (in Russian with Ivan Shmetterling)
“Robinzony i Pyatnisty, Odnako.” [“Robinsons and Fridays, You Don’t
Say.”] Ekspert 48:82-85, 15 December 1997.
This article provides an overview, in Russian, of my research in
the Taimyr Autonomous Region and reports interview results for
socio-economic standing and various forms of exchange in a remote native
community (79 heads of households). The article is my first attempt to make
some of my research results available to the Russian public.
1996. "Comments on the Draft Law of the Russian
Federation on Fundamentals of Legal Status for the Native Peoples of the
Russian North," Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie, Vol. 2, pp. 141-143 (In
Russian).
I support the draft law of the Russian Federation on
Fundamentals of Legal Status for the Native Peoples of the Russian North
(F.L.S.). The F.L.S. law attempts changes that should provide some
basic protections for indigenous Siberians and the need for ecological
conservation in Siberia. My approach to this discussion is one of
sympathetic criticism. The draft law passed by the Duma twice, but President
Yeltsin refused to sign it into law. For
the entire English text, click here.
1996. "Problems of the North: Aboriginal Rights or
Industrial Development in the Siberian Arctic," Michigan Discussions in
Anthropology, Vol. 12, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
In many northern and rural areas of European Russia and Siberia, there
are ethnically distinct aboriginal populations sometimes called
"small-numbering" peoples (malochislenniye narody). Russian-speakers usually
use this term to refer collectively to the aboriginal groups of the far
north, Siberia, and the far east. Russian imperial expansion and, more
recently, large-scale industrial development in Siberia have resulted in
severe ecological and social problems undermining the future of these
indigenous people, their traditions, and languages. Nevertheless, many
native individuals and a growing native movement are striving to
re-establish their rights regarding territory, renewable resources, and
cultural development.
Click
here for more information on MDIA vol. 12.
Conference Paper
Abstracts
2005. “Darwinian evolutionary theory and social
behavior: Analysis of cooperative networks among indigenous Siberian
minorities in the Taimyr Autonomous
Okrug
,
Russia
.” Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Association of Politics and
Life Sciences,
Washington
DC
, August 31-September 4.
How well does Darwinian evolutionary theory predict behavioral outcomes in
tribal and state societies? Following Napoleon Chagnon, empirical research
in anthropology has focused on hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies
in order to address this question. My research adds to examinations of a
number of models derived from evolutionary theory to explain and predict
variation in social behavior. Kinship (i.e., generalized reciprocity),
reciprocal altruism, (i.e., risk buffering or by-product mutualism),
tolerated scrounging (i.e., community goods or marginal costs of defense),
and costly signaling (i.e., Zahavi effect) are the 4 major hypotheses. I
have analyzed a food-sharing network of indigenous, predominantly Dolgan,
nuclear families observed at 466 meals for a number of independent
variables. The strongest consistent predictor of household sharing is the
presence of a consanguineal kinship link between households. Other
attributes, such as the summed number of hunters in paired households, also
account for much of the variation in sharing in the network. Differences in
the number of hunters in partner households, as well as proximity and
producer/consumer ratios of households were investigated with relevance to
cost-benefit predictions of the models above. The subset of households
involved in reciprocal meal sharing in this network is 26 of 84 household
host-guest pairs. The frequency of reciprocal meal sharing between families
in this subset also correlated positively with average consanguineal
relatedness between households. The evolution of cooperation through
clustering may illuminate the relationship between kinship and reciprocity
at this most personal phase of food sharing.
2005. “An Evolutionary Analysis of Indigenous Siberian
Food-Sharing Networks.” Paper to be presented to the annual meeting of the
Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
Austin
,
Texas
, June 1-5.
Among the Dolgan in the Taimyr Autonomous Okrug,
Russia
, meals often include members of a number of families. A food-sharing
network was derived from participant observation of 814 meals in 1995 and
1996. Coupled with sociodemographic and genealogical data, multivariate
matrix regression showed that the strongest consistent predictor of
household sharing at meals was a consanguineal kinship link between
households. The summed number of hunters in paired households also accounted
for much of the variation in the network. Additional indices were
investigated with reference to a series of cost-benefit models in studies of
hunter-gatherer food sharing. The frequency of reciprocal meal sharing
between families within this network subset correlated positively with
average consanguineal relatedness between households. The evolution of
cooperation through clustering may illuminate the relationship between
kinship and reciprocity at this most personal phase of food sharing.
2005. “The Social Context of Fairness and Rational
Choice in
Siberia
.” Paper presented to the Roots
of Human Sociality Conference.
Pasadena
,
California
, April 15-17.
Generosity is encouraged among the Dolgan and Nganasan through kinship and
common property traditions, including maxims and cosmological ideas that
reward sharing and emphasize negative outcomes of examples of selfishness.
It appears that these norms of sharing manifest in the pattern of
experimental game offers in Ust’-Avam. Those players who make more money
generally gave higher portions of their allotment. Those who lived in larger
households gave less, as did players who listed more capital-wealth items.
These results suggest that economic need and integration with the greater
economy are important variables in sharing behavior. Moderate incidence of
low offers and moderate levels of punishment occurred in a second game,
which may reflect some risk-taking in the community and a complementary
level of willingness to punish egoists. These results are consistent with
Ust’-Avam’s subsistence hunting-and-gathering lifestyle, common-pool
territories, and common sharing with kin, as well as entitlements to aid for
community members.
2005. John Ziker and Karen Wadley. “Demographic Health and the Community
Well-Being in the Taimyr Lowlands,
Northern Russia
.” Paper Presented to the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting.
Santa Fe
,
New Mexico
, April 9.
The paper reviews local concerns
about high rates of mortality in an indigenous (Dolgan and Nganasan)
community. Alcohol sales in the 1990s free market economy, lay-offs, and
periods of inactivity are related to the mortality pattern. Changing fertility
patterns are noted and tested against the changing economic and political
context in the Taimyr Autonomous Region. To abandon drinking for periods of up
to 1 year, some community members are using a medical treatment called
“coding”—a kind of hypnosis.
2005. “Land Tenure and Game-Management Strategies Among
the Dolgan of
Northern Siberia
: Points for Comparison.” Paper presented to the 41st Annual
Meeting of the Idaho Chapter of the Wildlife Society,
Boise
,
Idaho
, March 10.
Since the
1991 collapse of the
Soviet Union
, a range of land tenure arrangements have developed in rural and remote
areas. The land and waters of northern
Siberia
provide important biotic resources for indigenous people and local economies,
as is the case in other Arctic regions. Access to these resources among the
Dolgan is imperative for local communities and is usually defined both through
land claims, historic use, and titles, as well as through kinship identities,
and traditional knowledge of the resources and how to use them. The
particulars vary, but one common recent influence on property relations across
the
Arctic
is state-level society and development. State concepts and procedures for
administering access to land and resource management may be superimposed upon
local concepts and practices, which are longstanding local strategies of
access and allocation. How these two levels of land tenure and resource
management operate together is one of the major questions I addressed in my
research.
2004. “Rational Choice and Limits on Agency in
Siberia
.” Workshop: Rational Choice and the Limits of Individual Agency, Max Planck
Institute for Social Anthropology,
Halle
(Saale)
Germany
, September 16-18.
The
paper discusses research on rational choice and limits of individual agency
among indigenous Dolgan and Nganasan community members in
Northern Russia
. Ethno-experimental games conducted in
Siberia
in 2003. The preliminary analysis of results are contextualized in terms of
wider traditions of sharing in the community. Concepts of fairness and
willingness to punish egoists appear to vary cross-culturally depending on
the socio-economic and political contexts. In the case of the Avam tundra
Dolgan and Nganasan ancestors and elders play important cosmological (and
explanatory) roles in defining "proper" (moral) and "
improper" (amoral) behavior. Such ancestral strategies are one of the
fields where agency operates to encourage certain cooperative behaviors,
such as sharing among kin. Agency in such cases is an expression of
authority (mainly of elders), and thus, limits on individuals may make sense
in local frames of reference, where costs are paid beyond the economically
rational choice.
2004. “Hunter Status and Reproductive Success in
Northern Siberia
.” Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution
Society.
Berlin
,
Germany
, July 21-25.
The
results of this preliminary investigation indicate that individual hunters'
reproductive success is correlated with perceptions of the hunters’
ability in the local community. This
result makes it difficult to rule out the costly signaling hypothesis,
although alternative explanations may also account for the variation.Whether
benefits from being a good hunter go directly to offspring or are
distributed through the community with reciprocal or indirect benefits
remains to be investigated.
2004. “The Social Movement of Meat in Taimyr,
Northern Russia
.” Paper presented to the 5th International Congress of Arctic
Social Sciences.
Fairbanks
,
Alaska
, May 19-23.
This
paper describes the modes by which meat and other bush products are
transferred and exchanged in an indigenous community in the Taimyr
Autonomous Region,
Northern Russia
. In the 1990s, social connections and non-market exchanges became
increasingly important within the remote community described here.
2003. “Tradition
and the Conflict between Generations in Taimyr: The Logic of Conformity and
Dialectic of Learning.”
Siberian Studies Center Workshop: Everything is Still Before You: Being Young
in Siberia Today, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle
(Saale) Germany,
November 15-17.
This
paper expands on ideas about how various logical arguments or formulations
are used to promote values and social goods in relation to access and
entitlements to resources. Focusing more generally on intergenerational
relationships in indigenous communities in Siberia, two competing processes
are described: 1) the “channeling” by elder generations and ancestors of
younger generations’ social behavior, and 2) the abandonment or contesting
of such traditional strategies.
2003. “Sharing
in Siberia: Social Networks and Explanatory Hypotheses.” The
Human Behavioral Ecology Workshop: Future Questions, Approaches, and
Applications for a Second Generation, Cooperation and Competition, University
of Maine, Department Anthropology and Climate Change Institute, May
8-11.
This
paper describes the relative importance of kinship, location, and household
status in food sharing at meals among indigenous, settled hunter-gatherers
in the Siberian Arctic. Explanatory hypotheses derived from evolutionary
theory are pitted against the data gathered in the socio-ecological context
of a remote community within a collapsing state economy. Multivariate
analysis is used. This research has implications for the types of food
sharing developing among contemporary indigenous hunter-gatherers
experiencing extreme economic hardship. Such a context exposes the prosocial
nature of decision-making in small-scale human society.
2002. "The Food Sharing Debate: A Case Study From Siberia." Ninth
International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Edinburgh,
Scotland, September 9.
This paper examines theoretical assumptions and expectations about
hunter-gatherer food sharing in light of material from the Siberian Arctic.
Theoretical assumptions and predictions of three models, each with relevance
to evolutionary and socio-cultural ecology, are examined: a) kinship
cooperation, b) reciprocity, and c) producers, seekers, and
circumstantialists. The flow of hunted and gathered resources was documented
among the Dolgan and Nganasan, indigenous peoples in north central Siberia
with a complex history in czarist Russia and the Soviet Union. In the
post-Socialist era, diminishing economic subsidies to remote communities has
favored subsistence hunting and gathering, non-market distribution, and
common-pool resource use. Considering systematic information on a number of
relevant variables with food distribution, this research identifies the
strategies through which and why the Dolgan and Nganasan are implementing
non-market sharing patterns. This is significant for interpretation of human
natures and anthropological economics of big-game hunting.
2002. "Socio-Ecological Contests of Livestock Theft." Collective and
Multiple Forms of Property in Land and Animals, Max Planck Institute for
Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale) August 21.
This paper explores livestock theft and its social and ecological context
as a tool to examine the boundaries and limits of multi-level ownership.
Especially relevant to portable property, such as livestock, theft occurs
where implicit or explicit property relations are recognized. An examination
of theft may refine our discussions of property relations which allow for
imprecise membership criteria and for gradations of membership, or where
rights to use and rights to dispose are vested in multiple individuals.
Particularly important to this discussion is a cross-cultural comparison,
where livestock theft is institutionalized, and in what ways. An intriguing
possibility is that livestock stealing is part of a system of communication
about use of common pastures relevant to political or military relations. On
the other hand livestock theft can be a symptom of the breakdown of common
property regimes. Comparisons between pastoral societies in Africa and
Siberia are made.
2002. Ziker, J. and A. Venstel. Reindeer Herding and Hunting Among the
Dolgan: A Comparative Study of Property Relations in the Russian Far North.
European Association for Social Anthropology, 7th Biennial Conference,
Copenhagen, August 14-17.
Here, we summarize our research on changes in forms of property in the
Russian far north, comparing two studies of the Dolgan, a Turkic-speaking
ethnic minority, living in two regions of Siberia. Across the Siberian
north, we have described developments that counter expectations of formal
economic models of social change. We identify conditions that favor these
unexpected economic choices among the Dolgan, in particular understandings
of common-pool resources and their locally developing management
schemes.
2002. "Theoretical Approaches in the United States." Who Owns Siberian
Ethnography? An International Workshop on Methods and Approaches to
Ethnography in the Russian North, Halle/Saale, Germany, March 7.
The paper focuses on the American Siberianists and their theoretical
approaches. Among Siberianists, we have overcome the simple dividing lines
within American Anthropology to a large extent. I believe this has to do
with the conditions of field research in Siberia, as well as the common
problems experienced by Siberian peoples. Both are the result of years of
Russian Imperial and Soviet rule.
2002. "Kinship, Friendship, and Public Goods in Native Siberian Food
Sharing." Tagung: Verwandtschaft und Freundshaft. Zur Unterscheidung und
Relevanz zweier Beziehungssysteme. Bielefeld, Germany, February 10.
The importance of kinship and friendship within indigenous communities in
the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Northern Russia, is interpreted here through
an anthropological study on sharing, in particular the sharing of food. Food
sharing, or non-market distribution, is an integral part of the survival
strategies people are employing at the geographic and demographic periphery
of the Russian Federation. Sharing is one way people are creating and
strengthening community in the face of uncertain transition. A distressing
and demoralizing period of change, beginning with the 1991 dismantling of
the Soviet Union's planned economy, has taken place in the communities where
I studied. Kinship and friendship relationships are helping people to
survive in a social context of unemployment, decreased availability of
consumer goods, high cost of transportation, distance to markets, and
minority ethnic status.
2001. “The Raw and the Cooked in Arctic Siberia: Seasonality, Gender and
Diet among the Dolgan and Nganasan Hunter Gatherers.” Paper presented to the
100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington,
DC, November 28.
This article investigates recent changes in the diet of indigenous Dolgan
and Nganasan householders in the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Northern Russia.
Representing two of Russia's thirty numerically small peoples of Siberia,
the Dolgan and Nganasan have had several centuries of interaction with
Russian and Soviet administrations and a complementary history of social
change. While grains and refined carbohydrates have been available for at
least 200 years, they were present in abundance during the last 30 years of
the Soviet era, when large remote settlements were constructed. Services
that were once easy to access during the Soviet era are now dwindling--the
variety and quantity of imported food items has decreased in recent years
and subsistence hunting and gathering now provides the Dolgan and Nganasan
with almost all protein and fat in the study communities. The Dolgan and
Nganasan have a full complement of traditional food-processing techniques,
several of which require uncooked meat and fish (sometimes frozen). A
typology of food preparation techniques will be presented. Raw protein is
consumed widely, a traditional practice that provides vitamins where access
to fresh vegetable foods is limited. The role of women in diet breadth is
discussed, as well as the importance of location and season in food
preparation.
2001. “The Dolgan of Northern Russia: Native Language in School and
Community.” Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Alaskan
Anthropological Association, Fairbanks, AK, March 23.
The Dolgan are one of Russia's numerically small indigenous peoples of
Siberia. Their language is a form of Yakut (Sakha), a northern Turkic
language, with admixtures of Evenk (Tungus) and Russian. The study community
(population 670) is also home to the Nganasan, whose language is part of the
Samoyedic branch of the Ural-Altaic family. Native language is taught in
school, but core classes are taught in Russian. Mixed marriages have
increased in frequency since settlement in the 1970s, and Russian has become
the lingua franca, especially among young people. Native-language curricula
could benefit by borrowing techniques from foreign language
instruction.
2001. “Clan Holdings, Assigned Territories, and Common Pool Resources: Land
Tenure Developments in the Taimyr Autonomous Region, Northern Russia.” Paper
presented to the 40th Annual Meeting of the Western Regional Science
Association, Palm Springs, CA, February 28.
In the Taimyr Autonomous Region, an Arctic subunit of Krasnoyarskii Krai
in central Siberia, a variety of property relations have developed since the
fall of the Soviet Union. This article discusses three types of land tenure
in indigenous communities in the Taimyr Region: assigned hunting territories
maintained since the Soviet period, and clan holdings and common pool
resources, two forms that have expanded in the 1990s.
2000. “Land Tenure and Economic Change among the Dolgan and
Nganasan.” Paper presented to the “Postsocialisms in the Russian North”
workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale),
Germany, November 9.
This paper describes the interconnections between local social processes
that encourage subsistence foraging and larger-level economic and political
processes that make it difficult for native families in the rural Taimyr
communities to pursue formal land claims.
2000. “Food Sharing among Indigenous Hunters of the Russian Arctic: Models
and Preliminary Evidence.” Paper presented to the Twelfth Annual Meeting
of the Human Behavioral and Evolution Society, Amherst, Massachusetts, June
11.
With the break-up of the Soviet command economy, the Dolgan and Nganasan,
two of Russia's indigenous Siberian peoples, have returned to subsistence
hunting, fishing, and trapping. Informal distribution of the prey is
reflected in a number of behavioral ecological models. This paper provides
preliminary evidence for three models based on focal follow observations and
self-report explanations. The models are: kinship resource transfer,
buffering exchange, and immediate-return cooperation. Buffering exchange and
immediate-return cooperation appear to be connected diachronically and may
depend, in part, on patterns of prey distribution and migration. In the
Dolgan and Nganasan communities where this research was conducted, the
people are relatively isolated from potential sources of trade. The
development of non-market distribution strategies among indigenous north
Siberians is evidence of a basic human social and economic adaptation.
2000. “The Socio-Demography of a Native Siberian Village.”
Paper presented to the Arctic Forum, Washington, DC, May 18.
In Blair Ruble's multidisciplinary study Fragmented Space (2000),
the effects of Russia's free market reforms have been described as a process
of differentiation occurring on urban-rural continuums. Urban centers are
where close to all of Russia's capital wealth has become concentrated. Vast
territories of poverty and infrastructure decay surround these islands of
prosperity. This process is intestified in remote areas of the Russian north
where the larger Russian economy is so unpredictable that the Dolgan and
Nganasan see little or no advantage in participating in it. I collected
complete census information for the focal community of my research, Ust
Avam, population 673. I also collected information on causes of death for
registered mortalities in Ust Avam for the previous 11 years. These data
provide a source of information about fertility and mortality in the
community through time. I found a rapid drop in Ust Avam's fertility and a
concomitant increase in mortality since 1993. Ust Avam's age-sex
distribution shows many young people and fewer middle-aged and elderly
people. In fact, one half of the population is under 19 years old. This
pyramidal shaped distribution is typical for expanding populations or those
with high adult mortality. In 1997, there were about one-half the number of
0-4-year olds than would be expected for the previous cohorts. Underlying
Ust Avam's violent-death and fertility statistics are the fundamental
problems of illegal alcohol distribution and unemployment (inactivity in the
labor force).
2000. Challenges to Self-Determination Among the Siberian Dolgan and
Nganasan. Association for the Study of Nationalities Conference, Columbia, New
York, April 14.
This paper identifies three key challenges to sustainable development
among the Dolgan and Nganasan of north-central Siberia: transition to a
subsistence economy; structure of poverty; and demographic consequences of
the dismantling of the planned economy. The data presented in this paper are
evidence of a rapid decline in the demographic health of this native
Siberian settlement during the 1990s: death rates have increased within the
community, and the causes of death have changed as well. Fertility rates
have fallen. The article identifies social and economic context of this
apparently critical situation. Individuals, once employed to make
traditional products for the Soviet economy, are now struggling to feed
their families with little or no money. While some in Ust Avam still receive
small salaries for civil service work or state pensions, their purchasing
power has diminished by an order of magnitude in less than a decade. This
disruption of the formal economy has brought about a demoralizing and
depressing setting.
1999. “Survival Economy and Core-Periphery Dynamics in the Taimyr
Autonomous Region.” Paper presented to Soyuz-99, Bloomington, Indiana,
April 10.
This paper reports on the ways the Dolgan, Nganasan, and Nenets of the
Taimyr Autonomous Region, Krasnoyarskii Krai, are dealing with the
dissolution of state socialism. The central Taimyr's native population
shared in an intense period of development beginning in the late 1960s when
state-organized hunting, fishing, trapping was encouraged over reindeer
herding, and permanent settlements were constructed. Standards of living for
native hunters and workers were relatively high throughout the 1980s. After
the Soviet Union's collapse, reform programs and market forces increased the
costs of production and lowered the value of goods native workers
produce-reindeer meat, fish, and pelts. As a result, native rural
communities were propelled into severe economic depression. A few households
established family/clan holdings (semeino-rodovoe khoziaistvo) based on a
1992 presidential decree by Boris Yeltsin. During 18 months of field
research in the Taimyr region, I developed data to characterize, compare,
and contrast two types of households-those with state-owned hunting
territories and those with recently allowed, private holdings. This paper
reports on indigenous explanations of their land claims activity and land
use. I found variability in involvement in the land-claims process. I
explore this variability in an ecological and holistic analysis.
1998. “Land Use and Social Change among the Dolgan and Nganasan of
Northern Siberia.” Paper presented to the Eighth International
Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Osaka, Japan, October 29.
It appears that capital-intense strategies are not succeeding in the
heart of the Taimyr tundra. Family/clan holdings can not operate under
current conditions: high cost of transportation of products to urban areas;
and the highly bureaucratic nature of making land claims. Rather, hunters
and their families have reoriented to a foraging economy with supplemental
exchange. As part of the subsistence economy, reciprocal-buffering exchange
and altruistic gifting of meat and fish occurs under the tundra code: "Give
it if you have it."
1998. “Land Tenure and Kinship in Northern Siberia.” Paper presented to the
Tenth Annual Meeting of the Human Behavioral and Evolution Society, Davis,
California, July 10.
At the turn of the century the Dolgan and Nganasan were semi-nomadic
reindeer herders occupying adjacent territories. During the 1960s the
government settled these two groups into ethnically mixed permanent
villages. State-organized hunting, fishing, trapping and wage labor replaced
reindeer herding. At the time of settlement, the state assigned hunting
territories to brigades, many of which were nuclear and extended families,
or sets of co-descendants. Since the break-up of the USSR in 1991, some
native households have established what are called family/clan holdings.
During one year of field research among the Dolgan and Nganasan of the
Taimyr Autonomous Region of Northern Siberia I collected information to
characterize, compare, and contrast two types of households--those with use
rights to state farm holdings and those with recently allowed, family/clan
(private) holdings. I conducted my analysis in terms of land-use, local
economy and social organization, and relationships with the macro-economy.
The main question for my research was why some households had created
family/clan holdings and others have stayed with the state farms. In this
paper I will analyze one community's land tenure patterns. The paper will
address the following: Were larger lineages assigned larger territories,
territories with better accessibility, or territories with certain
resources? Or was state territory distribution equitable regarding kinship
and ethnic affiliation? What is the role of kinship in creating the new
family/clan holdings?
1997. “Kinship, Economy, and Ethnicity Among the Dolgan of Northern
Siberia.” Paper presented to the Ninety-sixth Annual Meeting of the American
Anthropological Association, November 23.
This paper discusses how aboriginal Siberians are dealing with the
dissolution of State socialism and subsequent economic collapse. Yesterday,
in the session on Confronting Poverty in the 21st Century (Recent
Ethnographies from Russia, The Transcaucasus and Central Asia), Kuehnast
stated that introduction of the market economy led to black marketing and
speculation, while privatization of enterprises led to a host of other
social problems such as prostitution, drug trading, begging and
homelessness. Dudwick stated that the dissolution of socialism has led to
atomization of social and economic life bringing on mutually reinforcing
poverty and isolation. And, complementing Ssorin-Chaikov's conclusion that
certain individuals are held up as icons of authentic lifestyle differing
from reality, I have found through meticulous surveys and observational
research that aboriginal Siberians are maintaining social and economic
traditions in the face of tremendous technological and financial changes
over the past 80 years. These traditions are facilitating a social safety
net for remote community members despite continuing problems of alcoholism
and unemployment.
1997. (In Russian) “Rodstvo, Obmen, i Etnos v Taimyrskoi Tundre:
Rezultaty Issledovanii (1995-1997).” [“Kinship, Exchange, and Ethnicity in
the Taimyr Tundra: Results of Investigations (1995-1997).”] Paper
presented to the 60th Anniversary Conference of the Taimyr Regional
Territorial Studies Museum, Dudinka, Krasnoyarskii Territory, October 17.
For Aristotle, the focus of attention is observed phenomena, which are
grouped into classes on the basis of common attributes. Lawfulness or
regularity is conceived historically, in terms of frequency of occurrence .
. . Moreover, concepts in Aristotelian science often have a valuative
character. There is, for example, the highest form of motion - circular -
that occurs only in the heavens
For Galileo, classification of observed phenomenon, historical frequency,
and evaluative concepts are rejected in favor of dynamic, relational and
empirical concepts. In Galilean science, "lawfulness is assumed to be, at
once, more universal and more specific" (Batson 1991). Laws or relationships
are invariant over different situations and apply to individual cases. These
laws and relationships are defined by testing alternative, hypothesized,
invariant relationships where exceptions are completely valid disproof.
With a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning, one translates
and inducts real world phenomenon into logical theoretical models. The
deductive process leads to formal hypotheses, and with interpretation, to
operational hypotheses that are subject to empirical tests. Researchers then
translate the test results into general terms and by induction modify
theoretical models.
From the Aristotelian side, family and clan holdings in the Russian north
could be described under the rubric of "neotraditionalism" as Pika and
Prokhorov have done (1994). They use neotraditionalism to describe a revival
of traditional economies occurring side-by-side with modern technological
and informational awareness. From a Galilean perspective, I should develop a
number of alternative empirically testable hypotheses about why native
Siberians are forming "neotraditional" family and clan holdings. Are formal
or substantive economic principles primary? Are the new holdings a result of
separatist politics or policies of forced integration? The results from
empirical tests of alternative hypotheses about family and clan economy can
be used to develop better understandings of core-periphery dynamics and
local responses to commercial globalization, along with a refined definition
of neotraditionalism. Group identities and collective territorial strategies
are "group-level" phenomenon. But is analysis and explanation in the same
terms the most fertile?
1997. Chagnon, N.A., Ziker, J., Thompson, B., Price, M. & Eerkens,
J. “The Density of Kinship in Tribal and Peasant Communities.”
Ninth Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, June 5.
The senior author has been quantifying kinship relationships within and
between communities of Yanomamö Indians using genealogical data and a
computer program called KINDEMCOM. Given relatively complete genealogies of
a 'group,' KINDEMCOM searches for and quantitatively documents detectable
kinship relatedness among community members and makes possible the
comparison of what kinds of kinship relationships exist in the community.
Contact with missionaries has resulted in a conspicuous diminution of
Yanomamö 'kinship density' due to the influx of new members. Recent studies
of Siberian tribesmen, Cree Indians of the James Bay area, and Haitian
peasants will be compared to Yanomamö data and the issue of "tests of kin
selection theory" discussed.
1995."Siberian Native Self-Determination: Neotraditionalism in a rapidly
changing plural society." San Diego State University Social Science Graduate
Student, March 25.
With the end of Communist Party rule in 1991, economic and social
transformation in the Russian Federation has been rapid and uneven. Monetary
and privitization policies have resulted in socio-economic depression among
minority groups, as well the low-income classes. Accompanying this
depression subsistence economies have gained significance and indigenous
leaders from thirty or so different aboriginal groups across the Russian
north and Siberia have formed a political confederacy. This confederacy is
pursuing legislative affirmation of land claims and rights to cultural,
economic, and political self-determination based on traditional lifestyles
and ethnicities.
1995. "Ethnocentrism and Detection of Ethnicity." Seventh Annual Meeting of
the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, June 28-July 1.
Ethnocentrism is a facultative adaptation operating within human
sociality. In this paper I propose necessary conditions for the activation
of ethnocentric motivations and for the calibration of ethnicity detection.
That ethnocentrism can utilize hierarchical and rapidly changing definitions
of ethnicity is the main problem in developing ultimate- and proximate-level
hypotheses. In our evolutionary past, what we classify as ethnocentrism
probably served to motivate individuals with common genetic interests in
coalitional aggression and defense. Although ethnocentrism probably does not
function to increase inclusive fitness when coalitions comprise
non-relatives, it still can play a role in motivating individuals for
warfare, conflict, sport and other factional ventures. I suggest that the
role of kinship cooperation is not adequately considered in existing
explanations of the ontogeny of ethnic representations.
1995. "Post-Soviet Siberia." Ninth Annual National Graduate Student
Cultural Studies Conference, UC Santa Cruz, April 17.
The Russian bureaucratic and industrial core, along with Western
corporations now, continues to penetrate and exploit peripheral regions and
non-Russian peoples of the Russian Federation. Resistance to these
exploitative powers is growing with local and regional cultural and
political movements. As seen in Chechnya, these conflicts of interest can
lead to war. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, cooperation with
Russia on human rights, native rights, and environmental conservation has
taken a back seat to U.S. and G-7 agendas of economic reform and monetary
policy. Russia, a colonial power throughout its history, has become the
object of Western capitalist colonization. This position is hard to take for
many Russians and may be one of the fundamental reasons for current social
and political instability in the Russian Federation.
1996. "Risk, Relatives, and Revolution: The Dulgaattar of Northern
Siberia." The Brown Bag Lecture Series in Anthropology, UCSB, January 27.
I analyse the proposition that Siberian peoples are becoming more
integrated with the Russian and global market economy. Although
microeconomic theory and ethnographic reports support this hypothesis for
many regions of the Russian Federation, there is reason to question it for
the Siberian north. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, native people
across Siberia are instituting what they call "family/ clan holdings". The
Russian president decreed the family/clan land-use classification in 1992 in
order to protect the traditional economic activities and living spaces of
aboriginal Siberian peoples. I am researching whether family/clan farms are
in fact focused on traditional economic activities or whether they are more
like entrepreneurial enterprises. In addition, my research includes the many
families still working in the State Farm system to characterize the economic
and social changes they experienced in recent years.
Return to BSU Anthropology's Home Page
Page last updated: October
28, 2005