Sharing, Subsistence, and Social Norms in Northern Siberia

The majority of families in Ust’-Avam in northern Siberia are dependent on subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping and have been part of a vertically integrated industrial economy in a remote area of the former Soviet Union. Thus, the results from behavioral games conducted there in 2003—the dictator game (DG), the ultimatum game (UG), and the third-party punishment game (TPG)—lend themselves to comparison with other indigenous hunter-gatherers, as well as with working communities in other nation-states. My ethnographic research in the region beginning in 1992 helps to contextualize these results. The two indigenous ethnic minorities in the community (Dolgan and Nganasan) have differing linguistic, religious, and economic histories, and I took these differences into account in my analysis of the game results. Group characteristics did not result in different outcomes in the experiments, although individual and household characteristics did. The results show moderate levels of second-party punishment in the ultimatum game, along with relatively high offers and a notable concern for fairness in the dictator game. The chapter begins with a summary of the ethnographic material relevant to this community of indigenous hunter-fisher-trappers in northern Siberia. Next, results of player surveys and a descriptive analysis of the game results are presented. The chapter closes with a presentation and discussion of the multiple regressions of the game results.