The Food Sharing Debate: A Case Study from Siberia

Study 3: Identifying Variables and their Significance in Food Sharing

The research I conducted in the second half of 2001 focused on distribution of meat and fish following procurement. The idea with this study was to collect quantitative or quantifiable data that could be also used in a multivariate model of food sharing. Discovering the relative strength of a number of variables in explaining food sharing, and discovering whether one model acts as a filter on the others could add substantially to the anthropology of food sharing. For example, kinship might increase the amounts of meat that would be shared through other modes. Food sharing and distribution information was collected using four techniques in 2001: hunter surveys, economic diaries, rank-order interviews, and open-ended interviews. I have not yet completed the analysis, but I can discuss some preliminary impressions.

A commonly cited reason for sharing with relatives is because they are relatives. Many stated that they give to relatives because they get "pleasure" (udovolstvia). This emotional result is significant for theory of kinship emotions.
Another reason stated is that the relatives needed something to cook, implying that they had a right to the food. This points to the embeddedness of the ownership principle in kinship networks and concepts.
Reciprocity between friends and immediate sharing after the hunt appear to supplement distribution of meat and fish through kinship networks.
Hunters and families who shared food with friends often stated that they shared because they "hosted or treated" (ugostili) the other person. The fact that they are treating implies some degree of generosity, and while not an explicit condition of the transfer, a return treat would be hoped for in the future.
Friends frequently accompanied one another on foraging trips in the Avam tundra and the meat or fish was often split upon completion of the task, usually into similar portions. Many times friends will contribute different necessary items for a foraging trip: One person contributes the motor, the other gives gasoline. One person has a gun, the other ammunition.
Food is provided to nonrelatives and nonfriends without expectations of return gifts, following the producer, seeker , and circumstantialist model assumption.
The receivers of public goods do not necessarily become friends as the primary relationship to the giver.
Many hunter give meat to someone who is persistently asking for it. This is the technique described by Peterson (1993) for Australian aborigines as demand sharing. Such gifts conform to traditional prescriptions for sharing meat and fish with anyone who needs it.
The stated reasons for sharing with kin, friends, and nonrelatives and nonfriends is because they asked (oni poprosili). This goes along with the traditional prescription "Give it, if you have it" which may serve as a motivational component that works as a leveling mechanism.

Theoretical Implications

Evolutionary ecological investigations of the topic among hunter-gatherers have generally focused on primary distributions of the products of hunting, most particularly transfers of meat from hunters to people in other households. The transfer of apparently valuable food resources to people, who pay little or none of the costs of acquisition, prompts the questions of the transfer's benefits to the hunter (Blurton Jones 1987, Hawkes 1993). At least six models have been proposed to describe the mechanisms and conditions that favor resource transfer and sharing among human foragers (Winterhalder's models of circumstance 1997, 2001): 1) tolerated theft; 2) producing, scrounging, opportunism; 3) risk-sensitive subsistence; 4) by-product cooperation; 5) trade/exchange; 6) show-off; and 7) kin selection. Generally, these hypotheses focus on material, reproductive, or social costs and benefits of resource transfer. In this paper, I have grouped these models into three underlying sets of models. Kinship cooperation in food sharing has been minimized in recent literature. The claim is that big game hunting does not make sense economically in provisioning. Does provisioning equate with kinship? I have argued that it does not. Kinship includes the collateral relatives and their descendants, as well as affines, who are the ancestors of common co-descendants (Hamilton 1964, 1975; Jones 2000; Sober and Wilson 1998). When seen in an expanded light, kinship can encompass relationships with significant proportions of contemporary hunting-and-gathering communities such as Ust Avam.