ELSPETH READY
Senior ResearcherDepartment of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
I am an anthropologist with broad interests that originate in questions about cultural adaptation to climate change and the evolution of human subsistence ecology.
My main focus is community-based research in the Canadian Arctic, working with the communities of Kangiqsujuaq and Ulukhaktok (with Peter Collings). Our current project, Sanguatsiniq, focuses on Inuit concepts of stress, stress management and its social aspects, as well as on food security and the interaction of the cash and subsistence economies in Arctic settlements. My work employs mixed-methods ranging from network analysis to grounded theory. I have been working in Kangiqsujuaq since 2011 and have spent over 19 months living in the community.
I also have ongoing research collaborations focused on evolutionary-ecological theory and climate change adaptation (with James Holland Jones), zooarchaeology and Neandertal foraging behaviours (with Eugène Morin), and network data collection and analysis methods (especially with Eleanor Power).
For more details, download my curriculum vitae.
Teaching materials
Syllabus for BIO 216 (Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture), University of Leipzig, Fall/Winter 2022-2023.
Lecture slides for my section of the HBEC PhD core seminar (Subsistence and Cooperation).
Lecture slides for a brief introduction to social network analysis, with Dan Redhead.
Materials from social network analysis workshops at the AAPA meetings in 2018 and 2019, with Jamie Jones and Ashley Hazel.
A tutorial on how to calculate model predictions for exponential random graph models containing transitivity terms.
Code repositories
Market integration and cooperative resource harvesting (Brown and Ready, Ecology & Society).
Measuring reciprocity (Ready and Power 2021, Network Science).
Comparing social network structures... (Ready et al. 2020, Field Methods).
Code and data for Competing forces of withdrawal and disease avoidance... (Ready et al. 2020, PLoS ONE).
Cooperation beyond consanguinuity (Power and Ready 2019).
Building Bigness (Power and Ready 2018).
Data for Sharing-based social capital... (Ready 2018). See S1 Table and S1 Data.
Community and policy reports
See the Sanguatsiniq webpage.
Media coverage
Post aus Kangiqsujuaq, Kanada (Report from Kangiqsujuaq, Canada). MaxPlanckForschung 4/2022 (in German).
Can sustainability ensure survival? I help a reporter from Deutschlandfunk find out (in German).
This blog post reflects on the double-edged sword of media coverage.
What can gig economy workers learn from romance writers? A report by Christine Larson on our analysis of romance writers' advice networks.
Letter to the Editor, Maclean's magazine (November 2016)
Arctic work
Hillemann, F., Beheim, B. and Ready, E. 2023 [in press]. Socio-economic predictors of Inuit hunting
choices and their implications for climate change adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Collings, P., Ready, E., and Medina-Ramírez, O., 2023. An ethnographic
model of stress and stress management in two Canadian Inuit communities. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Ready, E. 2022. Ilagiit, parts of each other: Scale and Inuit social relations. In T. Widlok and M. Dores Cruz (Eds.) Scale Matters: The Quality of Quantity in Human Social Relations, pp. 155-178. Transcript Verlag.
Ready, E. and Collings, P. 2021. “All the problems in the community are multifaceted and related to each other”: Inuit concerns in an era of climate change American Journal of Human Biology 33: e235316.
Koster, J., McElreath, R. et al. 2020. The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation. Science Advances 6 (26): eaax9070.
Ready, E. 2019. Why subsistence matters. Hunter-Gatherer Research 3 (4): 635–649.
Ready, E. 2018. Who, being loved, is poor? Poverty, marriage, and changing family structures in the Canadian Arctic. Human Organization 77 (2): 122–134.
Ready, E. 2018. Sharing-based social capital associated with harvest production and wealth in the Canadian Arctic. PLoS ONE 13 (3): e1093759.
Ready, E. and Collings, P. 2018. Rethinking "Big problems" in Arctic health. Anthropology News 59 (1): e71-e76.
Ready, E. and Power, E.A. 2018. Why wage-earners hunt. Food sharing, social structure and influence in an Arctic mixed economy. Current Anthropology 59 (1): 74–97.
Ready, E. 2016. Challenges in the assessment of Inuit food security. Arctic 69 (3): 266–280.
Ready, E. 2015. Ensuring country food access for a food secure future in Nunavik. In: Quebec policy on the Arctic: Challenges and perspectives. Arctic and International Relations Series, Issue 1. Canadian Studies Center and Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, pp.50–54. University of Washington, Seattle.
Archaeological Research
Baumann, M., Ready, E. et al. 2022. Not so unusual Neanderthal bone tools: New examples from Abri Lartet, France. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 14: 200.
Morin, E., Boileau, A., and Ready, E. 2021. A refitting experiment on long bone identification. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 31: 650–662.
Ready, E. and Price, M.H. 2021. Human behavioral ecology and niche construction. Evolutionary Anthropology 31(1): 71-83.
Morin, E., Beauval, C., Boileau, A., Ready, E., and Laroulandie, V., 2019. The Number of Distinct Elements: Extending a landmark-based counting unit to other taxa. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24: 773–784.
Ready, E. and Morin, E., 2019. Preliminary analysis of faunal remains from three Middle Paleolithic deposits in Charente, France. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24: 290–301.
Morin, E., Ready, E., Boileau, A., Beauval, C., and Coumont, M.P 2017. Problems of Identification and Quantification in Archaeozoological Analysis, Part I: Insights from a Blind Test. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
24 (3): 886–937.
Morin, E., Ready, E., Boileau, A., Beauval, C., and Coumont, M.P. 2017. Problems of Identification and Quantification in Archaeozoological Analysis, Part II: Presentation of an Alternative Counting Method. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 24 (3): 938–973.
Ready, E. 2013. Neandertal foraging during the late Mousterian in the Pyrenees: New insights based on faunal remains from Gatzarria Cave. Journal of Archaeological Science 40: 1568–1578.
Morin, E., and Ready, E. 2013. Foraging goals and transport decisions in Western Europe during the Middle and early Upper Paleolithic. In: J.A. Clark and J. Speth, Eds., Zooarchaeology and modern human origins: Human hunting behavior during the later Pleistocene. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series, pp. 227–269. Springer, Dordrecht.
Ready, E. 2010. Neandertal Man the hunter: A history of Neandertal subsistence. Vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology 10: 58–80.
Other projects and collaborations
Brown, M. and Ready, E. 2022. Market integration and cooperative resource harvesting among kin, clan, and neighbours in rural China. Ecology & Society 27(4): Article 17.
Larson, C and Ready, E. 2022. Good advice: Networks, innovation and resilience in book publishing during a digital disruption. New Media & Society.
Pisor, A. et al. 2022. Effective climate-change adaptation means supporting community autonomy. Nature Climate Change 12: 213–215.
Ready, E. and Power, E.A. 2021. Measuring reciprocity: Double sampling, concordance, and network construction. Network Science 9(4): 387--02.
Jones, J.H., Ready, E. and Pisor, A.C. 2021. Want climate-change adaptation? Evolutionary theory can help. American Journal of Human Biology 33: e23539.
Jones, J.H., Pisor, A.C. et al. 2021. How can evolutionary and biological anthropologists engage broader audiences? American Journal of Human Biology 33: e23592.
Ready, E., Habecker, P., Abadie, R., Davila, C., Rivera Villegas, A., Khan, B., and Dombrowski, K. 2020. Comparing social network structures generated through sociometric and ethnographic methods. Field methods. 32 (4): 416-432.
Ready, E., Habecker, P., Abadie, R., Khan, B., and Dombrowski, K. 2020. Competing forces of withdrawal and disease avoidance in the risk networks of people who inject drugs. PLoS ONE 15 (6): e0235124.
Power, E.A. and Ready, E. 2019. Cooperation beyond consanguinity: post-marital residence, delineations of kin, and social support among South Indian Tamils. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 374 (1780): 20180070.
Bliege Bird, R., Ready, E., and Power, E.A., 2018. The social significance of subtle signals. Nature Human Behaviour 2 (2): 1–6.
Power, E. and Ready, E. 2018. Building bigness: Reputation, prominence, and social capital in rural South India. American Anthropologist 120 (3): 444–459.