Chapter 5 Flashcards
Cohen
Adaptive strategy describes a society’s system of economic production
Five Main Adaptive Strategies
Foraging, Horticulture, Agriculture, Pastoralism, and Industrialism
Correlations
Association or covariation with two or more variables
Bands
Small groups, fewer than a hundred people
Correlates of Foraging
Members related by kinship or marriage may split up during part of the year, mobility
Gender-based division of Labor
Men typically hunt and fish, women gather and collect
Gathering
Tends to contribute more to the diet than hunting and fishing do
Correlates of foraging (continued)
Age-based social distinctions
Horticulture
Cultivation that does not make intensive use of land, labor, capital, or machinery
Horticulture uses
Simple tools, slash-and-burn techniques
Horticulture with plots of land
They shifted between plots of land, exhausted plots left fallow for a period of time
Agriculture
Cultivation that involves intensive and continuous use of land
Agriculture compared to Horticulture
More labor-intensive than horticulture
Domesticated animals
Used for transport, as cultivating machines and for their manure
Agriculture uses
Irrigation and terracing
Costs and benefits of agriculture
Does not necessarily produce higher single-year yields than horticulture, very labor-intensive (lower yield)
Main Advantage of Agriculture
Greater, more dependable long-term yield
Agricultural Intensification
People and the environment
Intensified food production associated with:
Sedentary people, increased population size and density and increased regulation
Negative environmental effects:
Disease, deforestation, and loss of ecological diversity
Pastorlists
Activities focus on such domesticated animals as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, yak, and reindeer
Pastoralism
Symbiotic relationship, direct use of animals for food, and supplement diets by hunting, gathering, fishing, etc.
Two patterns of movement in Pastoralism
Nomadism and Transhumance
Nomadism
Entire group moves with animals throughout the year
Transhumance
Part of group moves with the herds, but most people stay in the home village
A case of industrial alienation
Thousands of young women assemble microchips and microcomponents
Industrial alienation involved
Rigid work routine, constant supervision by men, three shifts daily, overtime, and surveillance
Spirit possession
May be unconscious protest
Anthropology demonstrates
People are not always motivated by desire to maximize profit
People may try to maximize
Profit, wealth, prestige, pleasure, comfort, or social harmony
People invest scarce resources in what?
Subsistence, replacement, social, ceremonial, and rent funds
Peasants
small-scale agriculturalists in nonindustrial states with rent fund obligations
Peasants live in?
State organized societies
Polyani’s 3 Principles
market principle, redistribution, reciprocity
The market principle
in world capitalist economy, market principle governs distribution of means of production (law of supply and demand)
Redistribution
Goods (or services) move from the local level to a center and the flow of goods eventually reverses direction
Reciprocity (exchange between social equals)
normally related by kinship, marriage, or another close personal tie
Generalized reciprocity
someone gives and expects nothing immediate in return
Balanced reciprocity
exchanges between people who are more distantly related
Negative reciprocity
exchanges with people on fringes or outside of social system; full of ambiguity and distrust
United States coexistence of exchange principles
market principle and reciprocal exchanges also occur
Potlatching (Tribes of North Pacific Coast of North America)
rituals in which sponsors gave away resources in exchange for a greater prestige
