Chapter 7 Flashcards
What are the diverse ways that humans make a living that are shaped by cultural and contextual factors?
Economy and Economic anthropology
What is Anthropocene?
The impact of human activity on the natural world
What is economy?
The culturally specific processes used by members of a society to provide themselves with material resources.
What is economic anthropology?
is the “part of the discipline that debates issues of human nature that relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living”
What are the three dominant explantions of economies based on different assumptions of human nature?
- Self-interested model
- Social model
- Moral model
What is the self-interested model?
Individuals are interested in their own well-being
How individuals maximize their utility under conditions of scarcity: when resources are not enough to obtain all necessary goods
What is the Social model?
How people form groups and excercise power
Focus should be on institutions, which are stable and enduring cultural practices that organize social life
What is the Moral model?
Human motivation is shaped by culturally specific belief systems and values
What are the three phases that the economy is comprised of?
- Production
- Distribution
- Consumption
What is the production phase of the economy?
The transformation of nature’s raw materials into a form suitable for human use
Influenced by Karl Marx, many anthropologists, see production as the driving force behind economic activity
Early anthropologists categorized different forms of production into typologies that were often thought of as evolutionary
E.g., hunting and gathering, agriculture, industrial revolution
Today, we know that different forms of production have rarely existed in isolation and communities often use multiple forms of production at the same time, seasonally, or over long periods of time
What is the distribution phase of the economy?
The allocation of goods and services
Distribution and Exchange
The second phase of economic activity involves the distribution of goods.
Modes of exchange: patterns according to which distribution takes place: reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange
What is the consumption phase of the economy?
Using up material goods necessary for human survival
What is labour?
The activity linking human social groups to the material world around them.
Labour is important to production and the transformation of nature’s raw material.
What are subsistence strategies?
The different strategies used by members of a society to meet their basic material survival needs.
What are Food Collectors?
People who gather wild plant materials, fish, and/or hunt for food.
E.g. Hunting, fishing, and gathering
This form of production was often negatively portrayed in early western thought as harsh and austere
Impacted substantially by colonialism, particularly settler colonialism
Many people combine food collection with other forms of production
