Ch.10

Question 1

Define economic anthropology.

Question 2

What is a subsistence strategy

Question 3

Compare and contrast food collectors and food producers

Question 4

Identify and briefly describe the four types of subsistence strategies.

Question 5

In terms of modes of exchange, what have some anthropologists argued about self-interested, materialistic decision making in the capitalist market as the prototype of human rationality?

Question 6

Compare and contrast gift exchange and commodity exchange.

Question 7

Identify and briefly describe the three modes of exchange.

Question 8

What is Maisin society based on?

Question 9

Briefly discuss how the different types of reciprocity among the Maisin are embedded in social relations.

Question 10

Briefly describe the conflict between the “traditional” economic system and the “modern” one (i.e., what are each based on and where is the conflict/disruption?).

Question 11

Identify and briefly describe the three modes of production discussed by Wolf (1982).

Question 12

What is the basic definition of consumption?

Question 13

Briefly sum up the main ideas behind the following attempts to explain consumption patterns:

The Internal Explanation

The External Explanation

The Cultural Explanation

Question 14

What does the phrase “original affluent society” refer to?

Question 15

Define affluence. In what two ways can we create affluence?

Question 16

The ethnographic example of banana leaves as “women’s wealth” in the Trobriand Islands provides an interesting example of not only a local economic system embedded in social relations, but also how it may be interpreted (or ignored) by outsiders.

Briefly describe how the woman is the person through who yams are passed from her own kin group to her husband, and through whom women’s wealth (i.e., banana leaves) is passed from her husband to her own kin group.

Question 17

What is the focus of the anthropology of food?

Question 18

Briefly sum up what Counihan found with her food-centred life histories research.