Author: Elspeth Ready
Publisher:
Published: 2016
Total Pages:
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This dissertation examines household livelihood strategies, particularly food sharing, and social structure. Although food sharing has been a central topic of research in human behavioural ecology, the field has lacked the methods necessary to scale up from dyadic interactions to broader social structures. Here, I employ social network theory and analysis to explore how strategic economic decisions, such as decisions about sharing, are embedded in and feedback onto social structures. The dynamics of these social structures have important consequences for processes of social and cultural change, including both the persistence of cultural practices and changes in socioeconomic inequality. This research is based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Kangiqsujuaq, Nunavik, an Inuit settlement of approximately 800 people on the eastern coast of the Hudson Strait in northern Canada. In Kangiqsujuaq, traditional Inuit socioeconomic goals and activities, particularly customary resource harvesting and sharing practices, co-exist and depend upon opportunities and constraints in the cash economy. Analyses presented in this dissertation are based on a questionnaire conducted with 110 Inuit households in the settlement. This questionnaire covered a broad range of subjects relevant to household livelihood strategies, including demographics, economics, harvest participation, food security, and food sharing networks. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the development of mixed cash and subsistence economies in Inuit settlements and on evaluating the prevalence and form of food insecurity in Kangiqsujuaq. The food security assessment indicates that 41% of households in Kangiqsujuaq have low or very low food security, and analysis of these results reveals that food insecurity is correlated with other indicators of wealth. However, the patterning of Kangiqsujuarmiut responses also suggests that standard food security assessment modules need to be used in conjunction with other metrics of food access, such as food sharing networks, to adequately account for the additional factors that influence access to harvested foods. Chapters 4 through 6 examine customary food sharing in Kangiqsujuaq and its relationship with socioeconomic status. Most importantly, traditional food sharing in the settlement does not serve a single function such as reciprocity. Instead, food sharing emerges as a complex social, political, and economic phenomenon that accomplishes different objectives for actors based on their social position. Generosity is a strategy through which economic, political, and social advantages can be obtained and maintained, for those who can afford it. These network patterns impart broad social and economic consequences in the settlement. In particular, the sharing network is not structured to effectively reduce food insecurity for the settlement as a whole. Poor and food insecure households have the least resilient sharing networks. Social structures at the household level, including household divisions of labour and marriage patterns, also affect the economic strategies available to households. The network approach adopted in this research highlights the conjugate role of individual decisions and structural constraints in broader processes of social and cultural change. In Kangiqsujuaq, mixed economies persist because food-sharing articulates with social structure in ways that have consequences for the creation and persistence of inequality within the settlement. Food sharing among Inuit redistributes wealth, but the act of redistribution reinforces patterns of social organization in the settlement. Given the structural inequalities documented in this research, traditional sharing cannot be considered as a palliative to climate change so long as high levels of poverty continue to undermine food security, access to hunting equipment, and food sharing in Kangiqsujuaq.
Author: Janet Mancini Billson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2007-04-09
Total Pages: 491
ISBN-13: 1461638267
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Inuit Women is the definitive study of the Inuit during a time of rapid change. Based on fourteen years of research and fieldwork, this analysis focuses on the challenges facing Inuit women as they enter the twenty-first century. Written shortly after the creation of Nunavut, a new province carved out of traditional Inuit homelands in the Canadian North, this compelling book combines conclusions drawn from the authors' ethnographic research with the stories of Inuit women and men, told in their own words. In addition to their presentation of the personal portraits and voices of many Inuit respondents, Janet Mancini Billson and Kyra Mancini explore global issues: the impact of rapid social change and Canadian resettlement policy on Inuit culture; women's roles in society; and gender relations in Baffin Island, in the Eastern Arctic. They also include an extensive section on how the newly created territory of Nunavut is impacting the lives of Inuit women and their families. Working from a research approach grounded in feminist theory, the authors involve their Inuit interviewees as full participants in the process. This book stands alone in its attention to Inuit women's issues and lives and should be read by everyone interested in gender relations, development, modernization, globalization, and Inuit culture.
Author: Germaine Warkentin
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2001-01-01
Total Pages: 404
ISBN-13: 9780802081490
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Eighteen innovative essays explore not only how the European Renaissance helped form Canada, but also how more significantly the experience of Canada touched the Renaissance and those who first came to the shores of North America.
Author: Michael J. Kral
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-07-01
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 0190671793
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Inuit have among the highest suicide rates in the world - ten times the national average. Inuit narratives of suicide provide clues as to what can and in some cases has been done to combat the problem, but until recently they have not circulated far beyond Inuit communities themselves. At the same time, academic researchers have studied suicide among Indigenous peoples, but have stopped short of analyzing narrative accounts for their themes of cultural survival. Based on two decades of participatory action and ethnographic research, The Return of the Sun is a historical and anthropological examination of suicide among Inuit youth in Arctic Canada. Conceptualizing suicide among Inuit as a response to colonial disruption of family and interpersonal relationships and examining how the community has addressed the issue, Kral draws on research from psychology, anthropology, Indigenous studies, and social justice to understand and address this population. Central to the book are narrative accounts by Inuit of their experiences and perceptions of suicide, and the lives of youth and their community action for change. As these Indigenous community success stories have not previously been widely retold, The Return of the Sun gives voice to a historically ignored community. Kral also locates this community action within the larger Inuit movement toward self-determination and self-governance. This important volume will be of interest to a broad range of social scientists, as well as researchers and practitioners in the mental health fields.
Author: Sarah Strauss
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-07-28
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 1000213609
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Throughout history, the weather has been both feared and revered for its powerful influence over living creatures. Not only does it control our moods, activities, and fashions, but it has also played a crucial role in broader issues of cultural identity, concepts of time, and economic development. In fact, the weather has become so ingrained in our everyday routines that many of us forget just how profoundly this omnipotent force shapes culture. With the continuing rise in global warming and consequential change in weather patterns, our awareness and understanding of this topic has never been so important. This fascinating book is the first to explore our close relationship with the weather. From folklore to visual representations, agricultural and health practices, and unusual weather events, Weather, Climate, Culture demonstrates that the way we discuss and interpret meteorological phenomena concerns not only the events in question but, more complexly, the cultural, political, and historical framework in which we discuss them. Why is it politically safe to discuss current weather conditions, but highly controversial to discuss long-term climate change? Why are the British renowned for talking about the weather and why, in the eighteenth century, was this regarded as genteel? How can accounts of cultural or moral change be associated with narratives of changing climate and vice-versa?Drawing on a wide range of case studies from around the world, this pioneering book provides an original and lively perspective on a subject that continues to have an incalculable impact on the way we live. It will serve as a landmark text for years to come.
Author: Mark Anielski
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2007-06-01
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 1550923412
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →We all know that money can't buy you love...or happiness, but we have been living our lives as though the accumulation of wealth is the key to our dreams. Why, in spite of increasing economic prosperity over the past 50 years, are many conditions of well-being in decline and rates of happiness largely unchanged since the 1950s? Why do our measures of economic progress not reflect the values that make us happy: supportive relationships, meaningful work, a healthy environment, and our spiritual well-being? Economist Mark Anielski developed a new and practical economic model called Genuine Wealth, to measure the real determinants of well-being and help redefine progress. The Economics of Happiness shows: How economics, capitalism, accounting and banking, which dominate our consciousness, can be reoriented towards the pursuit of genuine happiness. How to rediscover the original meaning of the language of economics. How to measure the five capitals of Genuine Wealth: human, social, natural, built and financial. How nations, governments, communities and businesses are using the Genuine Wealth model to build a new economy of well-being. How you and your family can apply the Genuine Wealth model in your lives. Anielski's road-map towards this vision of flourishing economies of well-being will resonate with individuals, communities and governments interested in issues of sustainability and quality of life.
Author: Robert Ruby
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Published: 2014-06-10
Total Pages: 365
ISBN-13: 1466873418
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The true story of how the first English colony in the New World was lost to history, then found again three hundred years later. England's first attempt at colonizing the New World was not at Roanoke or Jamestown, but on a mostly frozen small island in the Canadian Arctic. Queen Elizabeth I called that place Meta Incognita -- the Unknown Shore. Backed by Elizabeth I and her key advisors, including the legendary spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the shadowy Dr. John Dee, the erstwhile pirate Sir Martin Frobisher set out three times across the North Atlantic, in the process leading what is still the largest Arctic expedition in history. In this forbidding place, Frobisher believed he had discovered vast quantities of gold, the fabled Northwest Passage to the riches of Cathay, and a suitable place for a year-round colony. But Frobisher's dream turned into a nightmare, and his colony was lost to history for nearly three centuries. In this brilliantly conceived dual narrative, Robert Ruby interweaves Frobisher's saga with that of the nineteenth-century American Charles Francis Hall, whose explorations of this same landscape enabled him to hear the oral history of the Inuit, passed down through generations. It was these stories that unlocked the mystery of Frobisher's lost colony. Unknown Shore is the story of two men's travels, and of what these men shared three centuries apart. Ultimately, it is a tale of men driven by greed and ambition, of the hard labor of exploration, of the Inuit and their land, and of great gambles gone wrong.
Author: Pamela Stern
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-23
Total Pages: 398
ISBN-13: 1000456137
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Inuit World is a robust and holistic reference source to contemporary Inuit life from the intimate world of the household to the global stage. Organized around the themes of physical worlds, moral, spiritual and intellectual worlds, intimate and everyday worlds, and social and political worlds, this book includes ethnographically rich contributions from a range of scholars, including Inuit and other Indigenous authors. The book considers regional, social, and cultural differences as well as the shared histories and common cultural practices that allow us to recognize Inuit as a single, distinct Indigenous people. The chapters demonstrate both the historical continuity of Inuit culture and the dynamic ways that Inuit people have responded to changing social, environmental, political, and economic conditions. Chapter topics include ancestral landscapes, tourism and archaeology, resource extraction and climate change, environmental activism, and women’s leadership. This book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers in anthropology, Indigenous studies, and Arctic studies and those in related fields including geography, history, sociology, political science, and education.