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McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

O v e r v i e w

Making a Living

This chapter introduces students to the variety of economic systems that are present in human societies. It especially focuses on the distinctions between foraging, horticulture, agriculture, and pastoralism, and on models of distribution and exchange.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

2 Adaptive Strategies

• Yehudi Cohen used the term adaptive strategy to describe a group’s system of economic production.

• Cohen has developed a typology of cultures using this distinction, referring to a relationship between economies and social features, arguing that the most important reason for similarities between unrelated cultures is their possession of a similar adaptive strategy.

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3 Foraging

• Human groups with foraging economies are not ecologically dominant.

• The primary reason for the continuing survival of foraging economies is the inapplicability of their environmental settings to food production.

http://www.museums.org.za/sam/resource/arch/diorama.htm

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4 Correlates of Foraging

• Band organization is typical of foraging societies, because its flexibility allows for seasonal adjustments.

• Members of foraging societies typically are socially mobile, having the ability to affiliate with more than one group during their lifetimes (e.g., through fictive kinship).

• The typical foraging society gender-based division of labor has women gathering and men hunting and fishing, with gathering contributing more to the group diet.

• All foraging societies distinguish among their members according to age and gender, but are relatively egalitarian (making only minor distinctions in status) compared to other societal types.

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5 Horticulture

• Horticulture is nonintensive plant cultivation, based on the use of simple tools and cyclical, noncontinuous use crop lands.

• Slash-and-burn cultivation and shifting cultivation are alternative labels for horticulture.

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6 Agriculture

• Agriculture is cultivation involving continuous use of crop land and is more labor-intensive (due to the ancillary needs generated by farm animals and crop land formation) than horticulture.

• Domesticated animals are commonly used in agriculture, mainly to ease labor and provide manure.

• Irrigation is one of the agricultural techniques that frees cultivation from seasonal domination.

• Terracing is an agricultural technique which renders land otherwise too steep for most forms of cultivation (particularly irrigated cultivation) susceptible to agriculture (e.g., the Ifugao of Central Luzon, in the Philippines).

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7The Costs and Benefits of Agriculture• Agriculture is far more labor-intensive and capital-intensive than

horticulture, but does not necessarily yield more than horticulture (under ideal conditions) does.

• Agriculture’s long-term production (per area) is far more stable than horticulture’s.

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8 The Cultivation Continuum

• In reality, nonindustrial economies do not always fit cleanly into the distinct categories given above, thus it is useful to think in terms of a cultivation continuum.

• Sectorial fallowing: a plot of land may be planted two to three years before shifting (as with the Kuikuru, South American manioc horticulturalists), then allowed to lie fallow for a period of years.

• A baseline distinction between agriculture and horticulture is that horticulture requires regular fallowing (the length of which varies), whereas agriculture does not.

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9Intensification: People and the Environment• Agriculture, by turning humans into ecological dominants, allows

human populations to move into (and transform) a much wider range of environments than was possible prior to the development of cultivation.

• Intensified food production is associated with sedentism and rapid population increase.

• Most agriculturalists live in states because agricultural economies require regulatory mechanisms.

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10 Pastoralism

• Pastoral economies are based upon domesticated herd animals, but members of such economies may get agricultural produce through trade or their own subsidiary cultivation.

• Pastoral nomadism: all members of the pastoral society follow the herd throughout the year.

• Transhumance or agro-pastoralism: part of the society follows the herd, while the other part maintains a home village (this is usually associated with some cultivation by the pastoralists).

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11 Modes of Production

• Economic anthropology studies economics in a comparative perspective.

• An economy is a study of production, distribution, and consumption of resources.

• Mode of production is defined as a way of organizing production--a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.

• Similarity of adaptive strategies between societies tends to correspond with similarity of mode of production: variations occur according to environmental particularities.

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12Production in Nonindustrial Populations• All societies divide labor according to gender and age, but the nature

of these divisions varies greatly from society to society.

• Valuation of the kinds of work ascribed to different groups varies, as well.

• Examples are taken from the Betsileo, of Madagascar.

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13 Means of Production

• Means of production include land, labor, technology, and capital.

• Land: the importance of land varies according to method of production — land is less important to a foraging economy than it is to a cultivating economy.

• Labor, tools, and specialization: nonindustrial economies are usually but not always characterized by more cooperation and less specialized labor than is found in industrial societies.

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14 Alienation in Industrial Economies

• By definition, a worker is alienated from the product of her or his work when the product is sold, with the profit going to an employer, while the worker is paid a wage.

• A consequence of alienation is that a worker has less personal investment in the product, in contrast to the more intimate relationship existing between worker and product in nonindustrial societies.

• Alienation may generalize to encompass not only worker-product relations, but coworker relations, as well.

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15 Economizing and Maximization

• Classical economic theory assumed that individuals universally acted rationally, by economizing to maximize profits, but comparative data shows that people frequently respond to other motivations than profit.

• Alternative Ends– People devote their time, resources, and energy to five broad categories of

ends: subsistence, replacement, social, ceremonial, and rent.

– Subsistence fund: work is done to replace calories lost through life activities.

– Replacement fund: work is expended maintaining the technology necessary for life (broadly defined).

– Social fund: work is expended to establish and maintain social ties.

– Ceremonial fund: work is expended to fulfill ritual obligations.

– Rent fund: work is expended to satisfy the obligations owed (or inflicted by) political or economic superiors.

– Peasants have rent fund obligations.

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16 The Market Principle

• The market principle occurs when exchange rates and organization are governed by an arbitrary money standard.

• Price is set by the law of supply and demand.

• The market principle is common to industrial societies.

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17 Redistribution

• Redistribution is the typical mode of exchange in chiefdoms and some nonindustrial states.

• In a redistributive system, product moves from the local level to the hierarchical center, where it is reorganized, and a proportion is sent back down to the local level.

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18 Reciprocity

• Reciprocity is exchange between social equals and occurs in three degrees: generalized, balanced, and negative.

• Generalized reciprocity is most common to closely related exchange partners and involves giving with no specific expectation of exchange, but with a reliance upon similar opportunities being available to the giver (prevalent among foragers).

• Balanced reciprocity involves more distantly related partners and involves giving with the expectation of equivalent (but not necessarily immediate) exchange (common in tribal societies and has serious ramifications for the relationship of trading partners).

• Negative reciprocity involves very distant trading partners and is characterized by each partner attempting to maximize profit and an expectation of immediate exchange (e.g., market economies, silent barter between Mbuti foragers and horticulturalist neighbors).

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19 Coexistence of Exchange Principles

• Most economies are not exclusively characterized by a single mode of reciprocity.

• The United States economy has all three types of reciprocity.

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20 Potlatching

• Potlatches, as once practiced by Northwest Coast Native American groups, are a widely studied ritual in which sponsors (helped by their entourages) gave away resources and manufactured wealth while generating prestige for themselves.

• Potlatching tribes (such as Kwakiutl and Salish peoples) were foragers but lived in sedentary villages and had chiefs--this political complexity is attributed to the overall richness of their environment.

• The result of the new surplus, cultural trauma, and the competition caused by wider inclusion was that prestige was created by the destruction of wealth, rather than the redistribution of it

• The Northwest Coast tribes were unusual in that they were foraging populations living in a rich, nonmarginal environmental setting.

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21 Potlatch in the NW Coast

• The word "potlatch" is Chinook jargon meaning "to give." – For the Tlingit people the potlatch was an immensely important winter

ceremony featuring dancing, 'Singing, feasting, and -the lavish distribution of property.

– Major potlatches were a means of honoring the dead, and, if successful, could serve to raise the social rank of the host.

– A host could easily be bankrupted from throwing a single potlatch, but if there followed a resultant raise in prestige for himself and his clan, it would be considered well worth the price and effort.

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22 Tlingit potlatches

• Traditional Tlingit potlatches were the culmination of a series of funeral rituals and ceremonies.

• Custom dictated a wake, cremation, and post cremation feasts. • All ceremonies, including the finale-the potlatch feast- served to

strengthen the alliance between the clan of the deceased and the moiety opposites (i.e. the living spouse's lineage).

• The opposites were in charge of several funerary rituals including preparation of the body and final cremation.

• If the deceased was a high ranking individual, it was customary for the moiety opposites to tear down and rebuild his home for his descendants, or at a minimum, to refurbish the existing house.

• Ultimately the potlatch was given ostensibly to honor the deceased, but it also provided the opportunity to repay the moiety opposites for their part in the funeral service.

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23 Traditional Northwest Coast houses

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24 Ozette Site

Cedar dug-out canoe from the Ozette site

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25A sample of the regilia worn during a potlatch (Tlinglit)

http://sheldonmuseum.org/tlingitpotlatch.htm

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26 Tlinglit Dance

Dance, for the Tlingit people is a means of expression and communication, and a form of enjoyment. It is a major potlatch activity, or, as in the old days, it could be an impromptu performance around the evening fire. The shaman used dance as a vehicle to make contact with the spirit world; regular folks might tell a story, ridicule an opponent, or extend an apology through a combination of dance motions. Drums and carved rattles were used as accompaniment.

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27 Tlinglit Totem Pole

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28What does this have to do with subsistence?• Reciprocity

– Potlatches were once interpreted as wasteful displays generated by culturally induced mania for prestige, but Kottak argues that customs like the potlatch are adaptive, allowing adjustment for alternating periods of local abundance and shortage.

– A host could easily be bankrupted from throwing a single potlatch, but if there followed a resultant raise in prestige for himself and his clan, it would be considered well worth the price and effort.