Chapter 16

Question 1

A horticultural system of cultivation is characterized by

Answer 1

periodic cycles of cultivation and fallowing.

Question 2

In which food production system does part of the group’s population accompany the herds to distant pastures and the remaining population maintain year-round villages and grow crops?

Answer 2

transhumance

Question 3

Intensive agriculture

Answer 3

has significant environmental effects, such as deforestation, water pollution, and reduction of ecological diversity.

Question 4

What term refers to the type of pastoral economy in which the entire population moves with their animals throughout the year?

Answer 4

pastoral nomadism

Question 5

What is a mode of production?

Answer 5

the way a society’s social relations are organized to produce the labor necessary for generating the society’s subsistence and energy needs

Question 6

What are the means (or factors) of production?

Answer 6

a society’s major productive resources, such as land and other natural resources, labor, technology, and capital

Question 7

Which of the following was a characteristic shared by recent foraging communities?

Answer 7

They lived in marginal environments that were of little interest to food-producing societies.

Question 8

Which of the following economic principles is generally dominant in industrial society?

Answer 8

the market principle

Question 9

Generalized reciprocity

Answer 9

is the characteristic form of exchange in egalitarian societies.

Question 10

The Kalahari Desert of southern Africa is home to the foraging group known as the Ju/’hoansi San.

Answer 10

true

Question 11

Despite differences arising from environmental variation, all foraging economies have shared one essential feature:

Answer 11

their reliance on available natural resources for their subsistence, rather than controlling the reproduction of plants and animals.

Question 12

In order to intensify production, agriculturalists frequently build irrigation canals and terraces.

Answer 12

true

Question 13

Agriculturalists tend to live in permanent villages that are larger and closer to other settlements than the semipermanent settlements of horticulturalists.

Answer 13

true

Question 14

Pastoralists are specialized herders whose subsistence strategies are focused on domesticated animals.

Answer 14

true

Question 15

This chapter’s description of the San Bushmen’s relation to the government of Botswana provides a telling example of how

Answer 15

more and more foragers have come under the control of nation-states and are now influenced by the forces of globalization.

Question 16

With balanced reciprocity, the giver expects something in return equal to what was given.

Answer 16

true

Question 17

Potlatching is a form of competitive feasting that enables individuals to redistribute surplus materials while simultaneously increasing their own prestige.

Answer 17

true

Question 18

Anthropological analysis of potlatching contradicts the classic economics assumption that individuals are, by nature, profit maximizers.

Answer 18

true

Question 19

Yehudi Cohen’s adaptive strategies

Answer 19

suggest an association (or correlation) between the economies of societies and their social features.

Question 20

Economic anthropology is the cross-cultural study of systems of production, distribution, and consumption.

Answer 20

true