Economic Relations Flashcards
What are Subsistence Strategies?
How to provide basic subsistence: Food, shelter, clothing, social interaction, water, air, shelter, fire, comfort, safety
Phases of Economic Activity
Production, Distribution (way of sharing), Consumption
Types of Subsistence Strategies:
Food collectors –> Foragers, Food producers (farming) –> Herders, Horticulturalists, Extensive Agriculture, Intensive Agriculture, Domestication
Do subsistence strategies necessarily evolve? If so, is it in a linear progression?
No and No, there is no natural order of development.
Types of Food Production:
Herding, Horticulturalists, Factory farming of animals and fish, Mechanized industrial agriculture, Extensive agriculture, Intensive agriculture
Types of Reciprocity:
Generalized, Balanced, Negative
Explanations for patterns of Consumption:
- ) The internal explanation (Malinowski): Argues that people produce things to satisfy basic human needs.
- ) The external explanation: Consumption patterns depend on external resources now available
- ) The Cultural Explanation: Both internal and external patterns are inadequate because they ignore how each culture defines their needs and satisfies them. Logic that isn’t reduced to psychology or biology, we may be more identified by what food we eat, clothing, shelter etc…
Is Domestication a quick and universal process?
No, it happened in different places at different times depending on ecological niches, it is a gradual process.
Extensive Agriculture
slash and burn technique: clear forested areas to plant crops, dependent on rain water and human muscle power as well as simple tools
- Can exhaust the land, deplete it of it’s resources
- Needing to increase use of land because of exhaustion of land
Intensive Agriculture
use of draft animals, uses ploughs, irrigation, fertilizer, brings more land under cultivation at one time (less work more results)
Mechanized Industrial Agriculture
large scale farming, lots of animals, large scale of production, highly dependent on industrial methods of production. Done to increase the yield, not just providing for community, many more people involved. Uses of pesticides, chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs
- Livestock sector is largest source of income for pharmaceutical companies
Modes of Exchange
Reciprocity, Redistribution, Market Exchange
Reciprocity
Most ancient form of exchange, still practiced today,
Each group is trying to maximize their own benefits (Generalized, Balanced, Negative)
Redistribution
Central social organization that receives gifts from the group, the redistributes them to the group, egalitarian.
For ex: Chiefdom, collect tribute (material object with value, food, clothing) collected from citizens then redistributed — potlatch ceremony: redistribution in form of tribute
(Also exists in the form of taxes)
Market Exchange
associated with capitalist societies, A society can have more than one mode of distribution, exchange of goods is calculated in standard of value, need a common purpose of exchange, Commodities as currency (cash and virtual)
