Refrigerator, salt, and sugar: technologies of getting and processing food in Chukotka

The article examines the transformations in the practices of gathering and technologies of cooking and preserving food that were spread among the reindeer herders of Chukotka in the second half of the twentieth to the early twenty first centuries. The paper is based on field and archival materials relating mainly to the Amguema village and Amguema tundra. The article begins with the analysis of the observation of how refrigerators, sugar, and salt are used among the local residents. The appearance and distribution of these material objects led to a change in both the technology of cooking and the composition of products gathered in the tundra. In this regard, the article first focuses on food processing and then moves on to discuss gathering in the tundra. It examines how these changes, which are rapid, significant, visual, and lived by the people on a daily basis during the mealtime, are reflected upon by the locals, and how the food memory is used by them in their present life. It is concluded that the preparation and consumption of authentic Chukchi food, as well as the activities unfolding in the tundra, allow the local people to weave one part of their experience (in the tundra and yaranga) into the modern life in apartment houses and cottages and thereby to overcome the spatial displacement caused by their staying in the village.

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