Because the rural communities she was investigating in Chukotka were primarily engaged in reindeer herding, Patty Gray developed some expertise in that area, although less with the on-the-ground practice of reindeer herding and more with the political economy of it. She has consistently endeavored to write against the tendency to exoticize northern dwellers as bearers of ecological knowledge and rather to reveal them as political and economic actors frustrated by their marginalization. In this area, she has benefited from ongoing collaboration with her PhD mentor, Anatoly Khazanov, who is a renowned specialist on pastoral nomad societies.
Publications on this research
Gray, Patty A. 2021. “‘О вкусе хлеба мы уже забыли’: Обеспечение чукотского села в постсоветский период” [‘We Have Already Forgotten the Taste of Bread’: Provisioning in a Chukotkan Village after State Socialism]. Сибирские исторические исследования [Siberian Historical Research] 2021, No. 4: 21-36. DOI: 10.17223/2312461X/34/3.
Gray, Patty A. 2016. “Sovremennoe sostoianie olenevodstva na Chukotke [The current state of reindeer herding in Chukotka].” Translated by Sergei Sokolovskii. Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie [Ethnographic Review] No.2 (2016), pp.42-54. Part of a special issue on the theme “The current state of stock-breeding in the post-communist states”, edited by Anatoly M. Khazanov.
Gray, Patty A. 2012. “‘I Should Have Some Deer, But I Don’t Remember How Many’: Confused Ownership of Reindeer in Chukotka.” In Who Owns the Stock? Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals, ed. by Guenther Schlee and Anatoly Khazanov. Oxford: Berghahn Books. (Read a review of the book and this chapter of the book in The Toronto Review of Books.)
Gray, Patty A. 2004. “Chukotkan Reindeer Husbandry in the Twentieth Century: In the Image of the Soviet Economy.” In Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: Knowing & Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North, ed. by D. Anderson and M. Nuttall, pp. 136-153. Oxford: Berghahn.
Gray, Patty A. 2000. “Chukotkan Reindeer Husbandry in the Post-Socialist Transition,” Polar Research 19(1):31-38.