The Food Sharing Debate: A Case Study from Siberia

Draft paper prepared for the 9th International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies,
Edinburgh, Scotland, September 9-13, 2002.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

Food sharing is a fundamental economic phenomenon in contemporary hunting-and-gathering societies, linked to issues of indigenous identity and sustainability (e.g., Freeman et al. 1998, Nuttall 1998). Food sharing has been recounted in anthropological writings, where the logic of the gift (Mauss 1967), immediate- and delayed-returns (Woodburn 1968, 1982), foodstuffs exchange (Tonkinson 1978), cooperative hunting and camp-wide sharing (Turnbull 1987 [1961]), and insulting the meat (Lee 1993 [1984]) have become among many illustrious examples of the phenomenon. One particularly intriguing result of these studies is that much sharing occurs in one-way flows without material reciprocation in kind. Skilled or lucky hunters, for example, regularly have more food to give out than non-hunters or unskilled and unlucky hunters. Hunt (2000:20) argues that it is better to categorize this kind of resource allocation as a transfer. Unlike an exchange, a transfer does not have to be economic in the sense of balancing needs with limited resources. With transfer, food can pass through sets of partners, or networks of dyadic social relationships. What benefit does the producer of the food receive in exchange for transfers of food is an important issue that has become somewhat of a debate in some of the recent evolutionary ecology literature (Hawkes, 1993, 2001, 2002; Hill and Kaplan 1993; Gurven 2001; Sosis 2001; Bliege Bird and Bird 1997; Ingold 1996). Another related issue in anthropological food sharing research is how multiple modes or explanations for sharing link up with one another (e.g., Bodenhorn 2000; Fortier 2000, Hovelsrud-Broda 2000, Kishigami 2000, Kitanishi 2000, Wenzel 2000). This paper strives to address these issues and reports on food sharing data from north-central Siberia in light of recent anthropological research and modeling. Three overarching systems of distribution are examined: a) kinship cooperation, b) reciprocity, and c) producers, seekers, and circumstantialists. In my field research in Siberia I have given attention to both the attitudes and moral environment of the participants, as well as documented resource flow and social relationships of those involved in food sharing.