Subsistence Risk Management Variation in Indigenous North America
Tyler Retherford
Dr. Amber Johnson, Faculty Mentor
Risk management in subsistence strategies is an area still little understood. There are many studies on the way in which particular peoples manage risk, but the issue of why people adopt different forms of risk management strategies has not received adequate attention. This paper uses ethnographic data from North America to discern what factors explain the variation in risk management. The primary focus of this study is on the connection between environmental conditions and three types of risk management, storage, wealth, and reciprocity, in order to create the basis for a model of risk management.
Keywords: subsistence, risk, social structure, food production
Topic(s):Anthropology
Sociology/Anthropology
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 9-1
Location: VH 1228
Time: 8:00