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“Without Deer There Is No Culture, Nothing”
Author(s) -
King Alexander D.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1525/ahu.2002.27.2.133
Subject(s) - herding , symbol (formal) , indigenous , nothing , icon , clothing , power (physics) , ethnography , sociology , anthropology , ethnology , aesthetics , history , linguistics , archaeology , ecology , art , epistemology , physics , philosophy , quantum mechanics , biology , computer science , programming language
This article presents the pragmatics of reindeer herding by Chukchi and Koryak people in northern Kamchatka, Russia, to convey a sense of the importance of herding as a symbolic resource. A detailed description of brief visits to a reindeer herd in Kamchatka uncovers the power of reindeer as a symbol for indigenous people and indigenous culture in this area. I use a first‐person, subjective ethnography and include some of the challenges I met in the field and my attempts to overcome them. The title quotes a reindeer herder impressing upon me the importance of his work for his people. Reindeer are connected to human beings in a totalizing manner. Reindeer are simultaneously index, icon, and symbol of human social organization, economic activity, spiritual practice, material culture—in short, “our culture,” as I was told by many people in Kamchatka.