Any event or formal occasion requires special infrastructure and spaces necessary for the preparation and serving of food products. Using the example of Chukotka, the authors analyze the practices of preparing for and consuming food products as part of celebrations in the tundra and official events in villages. The holiday infrastructure is temporary, people assemble and dismantle it, adapting it to their needs. At official events in the village, the practice of offering guests ethnic food in their native dwellings – yarangas – has become a mandatory custom. If, in the case of organizing a holiday in the tundra, actions inseparable from the event come to the fore, such as the departure of shepherds to their herd, catching deer and slaughtering them, transporting the carcasses to the brigade's camp and cutting them up, laying a fire and heating ice, crushing bones and cooking, as well as all subsequent stages of preparing and conducting of the ceremony, then, in official events, these previously indicated processes are made more compact and accelerated to the maximum extent possible, and “the biography” of the products is virtually erased. The leitmotif of the celebration is not the process of preparation and cooking process itself, but rather the presentation of different dishes. Accordingly, the sacred function of food changes: it becomes a display of an unfolding event reflected in visual material posted on instant messengers and social media.
Key words: Chukotka, Arctic, reindeer herders, traditional feast, kilvei, rituals, ethnic food, sacred and profane, change in the sacred functions of food
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2024_2_86
About the authors
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Vladimir N. Davydov – PhD, Candidate of Sociological Sciences, Deputy Director for Scientific Work of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera); research fellow at the Scientific and Educational Center “Circumpolar Chukotka”, Chukotka branch of NEFU (Anadyr); 3 University Emb., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia; Chukotka Branch of the Northern Federal University; 3 Studencheskaya st., Anadyr, 689000, Russia; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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Olga M. Shulgina – Postgraduate student of the Department of Russian Art of St. Petersburg State University, Junior research fellow at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography; 3 University Emb., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |