Sharing or commoditising? A discussion of some of the socio-economic implications of Nunavik's Hunter Support Program

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9225928
AutoresN Gombay (0000-0001-7957-1874, University of Canterbury, autor de correspondencia)
Año2009
Volumen45
Número2
Páginas119-132
Fecha de publicación2009-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPolar Record (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0032-2474 • E-ISSN: 1475-3057
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s003224740800778x
OpenAlexW1977833320
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16
Referencias citadas37

The article considers the perceptions of Inuit in one settlement in Nunavik regarding the dynamic relations between market and subsistence economies. The socio-economic role of country foods in Inuit society are described followed by a discussion about the impacts of the Hunter Support Program (HSP) on Inuit society. A hybrid institution, the HSP buys country foods in order to give them away. Based on interviews that included Inuit purveyors to, and administrators of, the programme, the article discusses some socio-economic effects of commoditisation of country foods on subsistence economies and explores the ways in which this food moves in and out of commodity status. It is argued that these shifts are linked to conflicting notions of value. Some Inuit justify the existence of the HSP because they perceive it to be an essentially non-Inuit institution which lies outside the realm of customary socio-economic organization and thereby frees them from the need to observe those rules strictly while providing them with the income to be able to respect the requirement to share food amongst Inuit. Others express reservations about the programme because it elicits behaviours amongst Inuit that they perceive as threatening their socio-economic reproduction. It is argued that the HSP, an institution that both mimics and breaks with tradition, one which is designed to help Inuit to promote the subsistence way of life yet does so in the context of at least some components of the market, is an example of Wenzel's (2001) contention that the analytical distinction between acculturation and adaptation is not a matter of oppositions, but rather, part of a whole

Biology · Commodity · Context (archaeology) · Economics · Geography · Institution · Market economy · Order (exchange) · Political science · Realm · Reproduction · Settlement (finance) · Subsistence agriculture · Value (mathematics) · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Ecology · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law