Doctoral Dissertation Research: Environmental variability and food security in Nunavik, Canada

Global environmental change is an issue of major concern for Arctic communities but there is little understanding of how these factors mediate longer-term processes of social and cultural change. This dissertation research project proposes to improve our understanding of the potential social and cultural impacts of environmental change in the Arctic by relating short-term environmental variability to different social and economic outcomes at the household level. To explore these relationships, observational and weather station data on short-term climate variability, on seasonal and daily scales, will be used to analyze variation in the success rates of hunting activities and in household expenditures for store food. These patterns will be further explored by examining their articulation with different strategies of engagement with the subsistence and cash economies, country food-sharing networks, and household food security. The project will gather both qualitative and qualitative data and has the potential to increase our insights into how rapid environmental change is affecting social and cultural change.