1 / 32

Making a Living

Making a Living. Adaptive Strategies Foraging Cultivation Pastoralism Modes of Production Economizing and Maximization Distribution, Exchange Potlatching. Adaptive Strategies. Advent of food production fueled major changes in human life.

Download Presentation

Making a Living

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Making a Living • Adaptive Strategies • Foraging • Cultivation • Pastoralism • Modes of Production • Economizing and Maximization • Distribution, Exchange • Potlatching

  2. Adaptive Strategies • Advent of food production fueled major changes in human life • Formation of larger social and political systems - eventually states • Yehudi Cohen used term adaptive strategy to describe a group's system of economic production • Developed typology of societies based on correlation between economies and social features.

  3. Adaptive Strategies • Foraging • Horticulture • Agriculture • Pastoralism • Industrialism • Yehudi Cohen included 5 adaptive strategies

  4. Table 16.1 Yehudi Cohen’s Adaptive Strategies (Economic Typology) Summarized

  5. Foraging • All foragers rely on natural resources for subsistence, rather than controlling plant and animal reproduction. • Foraging survived mainly in environments that posed major obstacles to food production • Foraging economies have relied on nature to make their living

  6. Foraging • Correlations – association or covariation between two or more variables • People who subsist by hunting, gathering, and fishing often live in band-organized societies • Band – small group of fewer than 100 people • Correlates of Foraging

  7. Foraging • Fictive Kinship – personal relationships modeled on kinship • All human societies have some kind of division of labor based on gender • Men typically hunt and fish • Women gather and collect • All foragers make social distinctions based on age • Typical characteristic of foraging societies is mobility

  8. Horticulture • Field not permanently cultivated • Slash-and-burn cultivation • Shifting cultivation • Cultivation that makes intensive use of none of factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery • Use simple tools

  9. Agriculture • Domesticated animals • Many agriculturalists use animals as means of production • Irrigation • Can cultivate a plot year after year • Capital investment that increases in value • Cultivation that requires more labor than horticulture does, because it uses land intensively and continuously

  10. Cultivation • Labor necessary to build and maintain a system of terraces is great • Costs and Benefits of Agriculture • Long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable • Terracing

  11. Cultivation • Long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable • Agriculture societies tend to be more densely populated than are horticultural ones • Costs and Benefits of Agriculture

  12. The Cultivation Continuum • Horticulture always uses a fallow period whereas agriculture does not • Until recently, horticulture was main form of cultivation in Africa, Southeast Asia, Pacific islands, Mexico, Central America, and South American tropical forest • Intermediate economies, combining horticulture and agricultural features, exist

  13. Intensification: People and the Environment • Agricultural economies grow increasingly specialized – focusing on: • One or a few caloric staples, such as rice • Animals that are raised • Agricultural economies also pose a series of regulatory problems – which central governments often have arisen to solve • Intensive cultivators are sedentary people

  14. Pastoralism • Pastoralists – herders whose activities focus on such domesticated animals as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and yak • Herders attempt to protect their animals and to ensure their reproduction in return for food and other products • Herders typically make direct use of their herds for food

  15. Pastoralists • Pastoral Nomadism – members of pastoral society follow herd throughout the year • Transhumance – part of group moves with herd, but most stay in the home village • Before the Industrial Revolution, pastoralism almost totally confined to the Old World

  16. Modes of Production • Economy – system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources • Mode of production – way of organizing production; “set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge” (Wolf, 1982)

  17. Production in Nonindustrial Populations • Division of economic labor related to age and gender a cultural universal, but specific tasks assigned to each sex and age varies • Betsilio of Madagascar have 2 stages of teamwork in rice cultivation

  18. Means of Production • Land • Land less permanent among foragers than it is for food producers • Among food producers, rights to means of production also come through kinship and marriage • Means, or Factors, of Production – include land, labor, technology, and capital

  19. Modes of Production • In nonindustrial societies, access to land and labor comes through social links • Alienation in Industrial Economies • When factory workers produce for sale and for their employer's profit, rather than for their own use, they may be alienated from the items they make • Labor, tools, and specialization

  20. Economizing and Maximization • What motivates people in different cultures to produce, distribute or exchange, and consume? • Anthropologists view both economic systems and motivations in a cross-cultural perspective • How are production, distribution, and consumption organized in different societies?

  21. Economizing and Maximization • Economizing – rational allocation of scarce means (or resources) to alternative ends • Idea that individuals choose to maximize profits basic assumption of classical economist of 19th century

  22. Economizing and Maximization • Maximize profit • Wealth • Prestige • Pleasure • Comfort • Social Harmony • Some economists recognize individuals may be motivated by other goals

  23. Economizing and Maximization • People devote some of their time and energy to building up subsistence fund • Citizens of nonindustrial states also allocate scarce resources to a rent fund, resources that people render to an individual or agency that is superior politically or economically • Alternative Ends

  24. Economizing and Maximization • Live in state – organized societies • Produce food without elaborate technology • Pay rent to landlords • Alternative Ends • Peasants – small-scale agriculturalists who live in nonindustrial states and have rent fund obligations

  25. Distribution, Exchange • “Organizational process of purchase and sale at money price” (Dalton 1967) • Value set by supply and demand • Redistribution • Operates when goods, services, or their equivalent, move from local level to a center • The Market Principle

  26. Distribution, Exchange • Exchange between social equals, normally related by kinship, marriage, or close personal tie • Dominant in more egalitarian societies • Reciprocity

  27. Distribution, Exchange • Generalized reciprocity – giving with no specific expectation of exchange • Balanced reciprocity – exchanges between people who are more distantly related than are members of the same band or household • Negative reciprocity – dealing with people outside or on the fringes of their social systems • Three types of reciprocity

  28. Coexistence of Exchange Principles • Also support redistribution and generalized reciprocity • Balanced reciprocity would be out of place in foraging band • In North America, market principle governs most exchanges

  29. Potlatching • Some tribes still practice the potlatch • Potlatches traditionally gave away food, blankets, pieces of copper, or other items • Festive event within a regional exchange system among tribes of the north Pacific Coast of North America

  30. Potlatching • Potlaching also served to prevent the development of socioeconomic stratification, a system of social classes • If profit motive universal, how does one explain the potlach, in which wealth is given away?

  31. Figure 16.5 Location of Potlaching Groups

More Related