Resource structure, scalar stress, and the development of Inuit social organization

Abstract

This paper contrasts Inuit socio‐economic organization in two regions: coastal north Alaska and the Mackenzie Delta, Northwest Territories. Peoples of both regions relied on rich and highly seasonal marine mammal resources, and both of their settlement patterns incorporated relatively large and long‐term aggregations. However, their respective patterns of social organization contrasted in a number of ways, most notably in terms of the organization of labour and the scale and physical structure of the household. I argue that these differences can be attributed in large part to the interplay of two factors: scalar stress and resource structure. Scalar stress refers to the stresses inherent in large population aggregations, which must be reduced through strategies as diverse as increasingly hierarchical social organization, group fission, and increasing incidence of group ritual (Johnson 1982). Resource structure refers to aspects of the physiology and behaviour of exploited species which affect the way in which they are utilized by humans. It is my contention that the structure of the focal resource in each region, bowhead whales in north Alaska and beluga whales in the Mackenzie Delta, constrained the nature of responses to scalar stress in the large settlements which existed in each region. In north Alaska, the hunting of bowhead whales was associated with organized whaling crews led by an umialik who owned the hunting equipment and a large share of the whale meat which he and his wife redistributed to others. This redistribution reinforced a degree of social hierarchy which contributed to a reduction in scalar stress. In the Mackenzie Delta, belugas were associated with drive hunting methods in which each adult male owned his own equipment, and the products of the hunt. Social hierarchies were less easily enforced, with a result that people aggregated themselves into much larger households, as represented by the ethnographically and archaeologically well‐known ‘cruciform’ houses which held an average of six families.