Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-l4dxg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T04:57:41.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sharing and the ideology of subsistence in a Greenlandic sealing community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

Mark Nuttall
Mark Nuttall
Affiliation:
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LL
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Seal hunting remains of vital importance to Inuit culture, but the value of seal meat extends beyond nutritional and dietary requirements. This article focuses on the contemporary ideology of subsistence in a Greenlandic scaling community, with particular reference to the sharing of seal meat. Seal hunting is not cash-oriented and therefore seal meat is not regarded as a commodity. When it is shared or given away as a gift it expresses the relationships people share with each other. Sharing cements bonds of kinship and close social association and remains a distinctive statement of community.

Type
Articles
Information
Polar Record , Volume 27 , Issue 162 , July 1991 , pp. 217 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balikci, A. 1970. The Netsilik Eskimo. New York, The Natural History Press.Google Scholar
Boas, F. 1888. The Central Eskimo. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.Google Scholar
Boas, F. 1901. The Eskimo of Baffin Island and Hudson Bay. American Museum of Natural History Bulletin 15(1).Google Scholar
Born, E. W. 1987. Aspects of present-day maritime hunting in the Thule area, northwest Greenland. In Hacquebord, L. and Vaughan, R. (editors). Between Greenland and America. Arctic Centre, University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Dahl, J. 1989. The integrative and cultural role of hunting and subsistence in Greenland. Etudes Inuit Studies 13(1): 23–42.Google Scholar
Damas, D. 1972. Central Eskimo systems of food sharing. Ethnology 5(2): 220–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fienup-Riordan, A. 1983. The Nelson Island Eskimo: social structure and ritual distribution. Anchorage, Alaska Pacific University Press.Google Scholar
Firth, R. 1951. Elements of social organization. London, Watts.Google Scholar
Greenland Home Rule. 1989. Greenland subsistence hunting. Report produced for 41st meeting of the International Whaling Commission, San Diego, California.Google Scholar
Gregory, C. 1982. Gifts and commodities. London, Academic Press.Google Scholar
Haller, A. 1986. The spatial organization of the marine hunting culture in the Upernavik district, Greenland. Bamberg, Universitet Bamberg.Google Scholar
Kapel, F. O. and Petersen, R. 1982. Aboriginal subsistence hunting: the Greenland case. In: Aboriginal subsistence whaling. Reports of the International Whaling Commission, Special Issue No. 4, IWC, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Kleivan, I. and Sonne, B. 1985. Eskimos: Greenland and Canada. Leiden, E. J. Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langgaard, P. 1986. Modernization and traditional interpersonal relations in a small Greenlandic community: a case study from south Greenland. Arctic Anthropology 23(1 & 2): 299–314.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the western Pacific. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. 1966. Thegift. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. 1979. Seasonal variation of the Eskimo. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Nelson, R. 1969. Hunters of the northern ice. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nuttall, M. 1989. Seal hunting in modern Greenland: an overview and case study from Upernavik. Paper presented at a workshop on ‘The Future of Native Whaling and Sealing in the Arctic’, Scott Polar Research Institute, June, 1989.Google Scholar
Nuttall, M. 1990. Animal rights and Greenlandic sealing: a threat to culture survival. Polar Record 26(158): 240–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, R. 1989. Traditional and present distribution channels. In: Greenland Home Rule: 107–16.Google Scholar
Price, J.A. 1962. Washo economy. Nevada State Museum Anthropological Papers No. 6.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, K. 1930. Intellectual culture of the Hudson Bay Eskimos. Kobenhavn, Nordisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. 1974. Stone Age economics. London, Tavistock.Google Scholar
Søoby, R. 1969/1970. The Eskimo animal cult. Folk 11–12: 43–78.Google Scholar
Spencer, R.F. 1959. The North Alaskan Eskimo. Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethology Bulletin 171, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Statsministeriet, . 1988. Grønland 1987. Årbog.Kobenhavn, Grønlands-departementet.Google Scholar
Tanner, A. 1979. Bringing home animals. St John's, ISER.Google Scholar
Wenzel, G. 1981. Clyde Inuit adaptation and ecology: the organization of subsistence. Ottawa, National Museum of Man.Google Scholar
Williamson, R. G. 1974. Eskimo underground. Uppsala, Uppsala Universitet.Google Scholar