Economics, Adaptation, and Subsistence patterns Flashcards
1
Q
The Chicken and the Egg
A
- The text points out that “economics is the core organizing principle of culture”
- This is a good argument for a Marxist or P-E approach (remember the infrastructure, structure, superstructure triangle?)
- But to eat (to gather, to hunt) you need a whole lot of symbolic stuff too (superstructure)
2
Q
Adaptation
A
- Changes in a system, including species, in response to changes in context or environment, so as to make that system or species more fit to survive in the context or environment
- Like other creatures, humans adapt to their environments, but, they also interact with their environments
- Human adaptation is (mostly) a matter of culture
3
Q
Economics
A
- Word economics comes from Greek word Oikonomikos
- Oikos means house
- Root nem, means to regulate, administer, and organize
- The academic discipline that studies systems of production, distribution, and consumption, typically in the industrialized world
- formal economic theory: Assumptions about economic behaviour based on the experience of Western industrialized economies.
- economic anthropology :The branch of anthropology that looks at cross-cultural systems of production, distribution, and consumption.
4
Q
Economy
A
- A system for producing, distributing, and consuming goods
- A social process
- All societies have economics systems
5
Q
Production
A
- Goods obtained from the environment and the ways in which “raw” materials are transformed into human (and therefore social or cultural) goods
- Modes of production (units of production, division of labour, subsistence strategy)
- how production is organized the sets of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge
- Means of production (environment and technology – allocation of resources)
- include land, labor, technology, and capital (available resources)
- allocation of resources: A society’s regulation and control of such resources as land and water and their by-products.
- Modes of production (units of production, division of labour, subsistence strategy)
- division of labour :The assignment of day-to-day tasks to the various members of a society.
- labour specialization: The extent to which productive activities are divided among the members of a society.
6
Q
Subsistence Strategies
A
- Foraging
- Pastoralism
- Horticulture
- Intensive agriculture
- Industrial agriculture
7
Q
Foraging — Hunting and Gathering
A
- Up until about 10,000 years ago, all human societies were foraging societies
- Contemporary and historically recent foraging societies occupy marginal environments from the perspective of food producers
- The above societies are different from pre-food producing societies because they have contact with food producers
Social Consequences of Foraging
- Low population densities on large home ranges
- Nuclear families
- Small social units (bands)
- Age and sex-based division of labour
- Little specialization; situational leadership
- Highly mobile – seasonal mobility
- Significant social flexibility – seasonal congregation and dispersa
8
Q
Food Production
A
- Food production first appears around 10,000 years ago – the Neolithic Revolution (Fertile Crescent, but also China and Americas
- Pastoralism – domestic animals
- Agriculture – domestic plants
- humans began to cultivate crops and keep herds of animals as sources of food. For the first time, humans gained a measure of control over their food supply, no longer having to rely solely on what existed naturally in the environment.
- This shift from hunting and gathering to producing food, known as the Neolithic Revolution (sometimes called the agricultural or agrarian revolution), occurred independently in several different areas of the world.
General Consequences of Food Production
- More food = population growth
- Less mobility
- People freed from food quest- can develop other specializations such as religious leader, craftsperson
- More food, but not always better diets
- Increase in zoonotic disease and parasites
- Increase in infectious disease
9
Q
Horticulture
A
- Small-scale crop cultivation characterized by the use of simple technology and the absence of irrigation and fertilizer.
- Farming without the use of plows, irrigation, fertilizer, or draft animals
- Swidden agriculture or shifting cultivation
- Depends a lot on the fertility of the land
- Variable division of labour, variable property rights, semi-permanent to permanent settlements
- Variable gender stratification and violence
- Horticulturalists rely on human power and simple tools to work small plots of land to produce food primarily for household consumption.
- shifting cultivation: (swidden cultivation, slash-and-burn method) clearing the land by manually cutting down natural growth, burning it, and planting in the burned area relatively short periods of cultivation are followed by longer fallow periods.
Social Consequences of Horticulture
- More people leads to qualitative social changes
- Multi-community groups, social ranking and stratification, centralized polities, institutions for dispute resolution
- Specialization as some people are freed from the food quest
- Potters, ironsmiths, religious practitioners
- Pronounced seasonal awareness around planting and harvesting
- Witchcraft beliefs
10
Q
Pastoralism
A
- Gendered division of labour = distinct inequality
- Use of animals to secure other goods, wealth, power, and prestige or higher status
- Resistance to killing animals, focus on consumption of animal by- products
- Blood and milk
- Pastoralists breed and care for domestic and other animals (camels, cattle, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, sheep, and yaks) and then use their products (such as hair, milk, meat, and blood) either as their major food source or as an item for exchange.
- Like horticulture, pastoralism first appeared during the Neolithic period. This subsistence pattern is sometimes referred to as animal husbandry and involves herding, breeding, consuming, and using such domesticated herd animals as camels, cattle, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, sheep, and yaks.
- nomadism
- cattle complex: A situation among east African pastoralist cultures in which cattle have both economic and social functions.
Social Consequences of Pastoralism
- Variably mobile Need to access pasture and watering places for animals
- Aggressive and potentially violent
- Need to protect livestock (and perhaps land) from competitors in order to secure one’s own herds
- Organized
- Banded together with related groups to secure shared livelihood
11
Q
Intensive Agriculture
A
- Use of fertilizers, draft animals, plows, and irrigation
- Enormous surpluses
- Massive social changes and population increases
- Stratified societies, pronounced inequalities, more people separated from the food quest, full time specialization, rise of priestly class, centralized political authorities, standing security forces, tributes/taxes-
- It is a more productive form of cultivation of food plants than horticulture, due to the use of animal or mechanical power, as well as irrigation systems, and fertilizers to produce surpluses.
- A form of food production that requires intensive working of the land with plows and draft animals and the use of techniques of soil and water control.
Social Consequences of Intensive Agriculture
- Appearance of first civilizations
- Sumeria, Egypt, Indus River Valley, China, Mesoamerica, Andean South America
- Monumental architecture, writing (record keeping) systems, large, densely populated centres, mathematics, and representational art
- Urban centres are the seat of political power, and they are supplied by lower classes living in the hinterland
- Peasants produce surpluses that the elite expropriate
- Markets appear as a means of distributing surplus wealth
- property rights
- Specialization
- Priests, artisans, merchants, soldiers
- Sumeria, Egypt, Indus River Valley, China, Mesoamerica, Andean South America
12
Q
Industrial Agriculture
A
- Production based on mechanical power (machines that make things or that generate energy), ratgher than human energy
- Factory is the key institution (site of production)
- Massive population increases
- Populations concentrate around factories
- Appearance of major urban centres
- Large scale population transfers – rural to urban
- Appearance of major urban centres
- Populations concentrate around factories
- Monocultures, agribusiness
- It relies on complex machinery, genetically modified animals and plant seeds, and distribution of products for domestic and export markets. I
- It also is linked to processing systems—the transformation of raw commodities into processed food and nonfood items
Social Consequences of Intensive Agriculture
- Separation of work from home
- New means of reckoning time and scheduling labour (EP Thompson Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism)
- Society organized organically (Durkheim) – different classes as different, yet dependent, parts of a whole
13
Q
Exchange and Distribution
A
- Karl Polanyi 1886 - 1964
- The transfer of goods, services, and other values between persons and social groups
- Important for establishing/maintaining social relationships
- Exchange operates not according to market laws, but social rules
- Three major types of exchange or modes of distribution
- Market exchange: A mode of distribution in which goods and services are bought and sold, and their value is determined by the principle of supply and demand.
- Redistribution: A mode of distribution in which goods and services are given by members of a group to a central authority (such as a chief) and then distributed back to the donors.
- Reciprocity: A mode of distribution characterized by the exchange of goods and services of approximately equal value between parties.
14
Q
Spheres of Exchange
A
- Classification of goods and services into distinct spheres
- Exchange between spheres is restricted
- Items from different spheres are qualitatively different from one another
- The Tiv (Nigeria)
- Consumption goods
- Male prestige items
- Marriage
- Because exchange btw spheres is uncommon, social stratification remains unchanged (the rich stay rich)
15
Q
Money
A
- Medium of exchange that acts as a standard of value
- Anything used to make payments for goods or labour as well as to measure their value
- Special purpose money (or limited purpose) - limited to transactions in one exchange sphere (or context)
- General purpose money - crosses exchange spheres or classes of goods and services
