Shelters, raids, invasions: practice of inhabitants coexistence with alcohol in Chukotka village settlements. Strategies for problem minimization

This article, on the example of a number of rural settlements in Chukotka, explores how people in small communities have adapted to the presence of alcohol in their lives, and also considers the life of the population of national villages through the prism of the presence of alcohol in their daily lives. The relevance of the chosen topic is determined by a number of factors, including: the need for a deeper study of the impact on people of products of progress (alcohol) that penetrated even the most remote and hard-to-reach settlements; the importance of studying the influence of alcohol on the life of various indigenous communities (and, in particular, on the inhabitants of the Far North) and their cultural appearance; and insufficient scientific elaboration of this issue, etc. The purpose of the article is to consider alcohol not just as an element of material culture, but as a component of the network of actions included in social interactions, and also as one of the «actants» with material, symbolic, semantic characteristics and the ability to modify human activities. Based on the analysis, the author claims that alcohol is one of the catalysts in the modern micro society, which reveals gender roles and shows the status of men and women. Despite the severity of the problem of alcoholism among the indigenous population of Chukotka, restrictions on alcohol consumption are imposed only on women with children in the village micro-community. If a woman does not have children, her status approaches the status of a man whom society does not openly condemn for drinking alcohol. In the case of a woman who has children «washed down», she loses her children for a time and, thereby, her status as a woman.