Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2019 12 (8)

Authors

Goncharov, Nikolai S.

Contact information

Goncharov, Nikolai S.: Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) RAS 3 University emb., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia;

Keywords

exchange; socio-cultural space; thickening; fishing; crafts; context; trade; continuum; attractiveness

Abstract

The article discusses the parameters of the exchange of resources in a settlement on the Lena river in the Northern part of Yakutia. The main purpose of the work is to clarify the phenomenon of exchange through the study of peculiarities of building up the socio-cultural space through exchange practices. The subject of research is the phenomenon of exchange localized in a specific context of its functioning. The work is based on materials collected by the author during the fieldwork carried out in 2018. The first part of the article identifies the research problem, briefly describes the main theoretical developments that were used in the article or influenced the character of the author’s reflection on this material. Further there is a description of the socio-cultural components that form the exchange practices; “dispersion” of the general context of the settlement into separate groups of elements combined (only potentially) by a functional connection with the phenomenon of exchange. Examples of “contexts” made up of these elements and various ligaments reflecting them are also considered in the article: in the sphere of harvesting, trade, feeding of spirits, national holidays, etc. In the final part, the author formulates main views and conclusions about the problem under study: the socio-cultural field of exchanges is a continuum of relations, material (living and non-living) objects, their behaviour, properties, etc., which requires a special “tool” to work with it. According to the author, such “tools” are the concepts of “thickening”, “compaction”, “unleashing”, etc., because in the continuous field of exchange relations they allow fixing the centres of “thickening” of certain parameters indicating the specificity of the exchange procedures. The author makes a conclusion about the “out-of-culture”, actual property of the act of communication in the form of exchange, and indicates its binding potential. Through a structural analysis of the exchange in general, it was concluded that the resource asymmetry provokes the exchange; the definition of exchange was given. The findings can be applied to the analysis of energy flows in a socio-cultural environment

Pages

1425-1441

DOI

10.17516/1997–1370–0458

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/112620

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).