Critical review on the E. A. Davydova reindeer Herders of Chukotka: power, kinship, relations with the state (based on materials from the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries). Saint Petersburg: MAE RAN, 2022. 316 p.
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2023-2-164-168
The monograph by E. A. Davydova examines power relations in the communities of Chukchi reindeer herders from the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. The author analyzes the power relations of the reindeer Chukchi in everyday life, family relations, ritual knowledge, and relations with the state. This is the first anthropological study that deals specifically with power relations among the Chukchi. The book's primary source is the unique diaries of the Soviet ethnographer Varvara Kuznetsova, who worked in the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the 1940s and 50s. The framework of the topic arose from the content of the diary entries, as their author held the lowest social position in the Chukchi community, and therefore power relations were involuntarily reflected in her diary entries. The success of the reviewed book was determined by a combination of several factors: a little-researched subject, unique field material by V. Kuznetsova, and a high level of analysis and interpretation by the book's author. E. A. Davydova based her study on the theoretical works of M. Foucault, E. Giddens, K. Wolfe, and other foreign and Russian scientists and on historical, ethnographic, and anthropological literature from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Due to the peculiarities of the key source, the author used micro-historical and biographical methods. The “signs” and well-known features of the Chukchi culture, such as “spousal companionship” (men concluded a friendship agreement among themselves, according to which each of them had the right to his friend's wife), hospitable hetarism, the custom of voluntary death, the custom of gender transformation, the use of hallucinogens and a number of others, the author managed to interpret them in the context of power relations and give them a new understanding. The book contains a lot of new, unique information about Chukchi ethnography in the field of household (use of space, food related to its consumption; leisure, domestic violence); social relations when kinship is considered as a resource and symbolic capital. A special chapter is devoted to Chukchi's relations with the state.
Keywords: field diaries of Varvara Kuznetsova, MAE RAS archive, Chukchi ethnography, power, kinship, relations with the state
References:
Michailova E. A. Skitaniia Varvary Kuznetzovoi. Chukotskaia ekspeditsia Varvary Grigor’evny Kuznetsovoi. 1948s–1951s. [Wanderings of Varvara Kuznetsova. Chukotka expedition of Varvara Grigorievna Kuznetsova. 1948s–1951s]. Saint-Petersburg: MAE RAS, 2015. 190 p. (in Russian).
Khakhovskaia L. N. Polevye issledovaniia V.G. Kuznetsovoi v Amguemskoi tundre [Field research of V.G. Kuznetsova in the Amguema Tundra] // Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie. 2016. No 3. P. 83–95 (in Russian).
Sirina A. Soviet traditions in the study of Siberian hunter-gatherer society // Hunter-Gatherers in History, Archaeology and Anthropology. Ed. by A. Barnard. Oxford-New York: Berg, 2004. P. 89–101.
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Issue: 2, 2023
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: REVIEWS
Pages: 164 — 168
Downloads: 339