Important Concepts from Unit 6 notes Flashcards
Neoclassical economic theorists such as ______ assumed that individuals are inherently rational and self-interested (individuals are oriented towards maximizing utility and minimizing costs/individuals are primarily concerned with their own wellbeing and are indifferent to the welfare of others)
Adam Smith
who raised some of the first objections from within anthropology to neoclassical theories of the “economic man”?
Bronislaw Malinowski
why did Bronislaw Maloinowski reject the idea of the “economic man”? What did he observe in the Trobriand Islands and yam-farming?
the men in charge of the yams expended lots of energy on the aesthetics of their yams and farms, which contradicts the theory of the economic yam, and the yams didn’t even directly support them, they would all be given to the man’s sister and her family
Anthropological approaches to the study of the economy are also typically ______
holistic
what are the three phases of economic processes?
production
distribution/exchange
comsumption
Production, as noted earlier, is often closely linked to and dependent on systems of _______ and _________
distribution and consumption
what are the two other inter-changable words for food collectors?
foragers
hunters and gatherers
____________, such as the Ju/’hoansi of southern Africa, lived in environments where resources are often patchy and, as a result, tend to relocate often in search of food.
Small-scale food collectors or foragers
__________, such as the Native peoples of the northwest coast of North America, lived in environments where the resources were more plentiful and, as a result, tended to build permanent settlements
Complex food collectors or foragers
_____ or _______, depend on domesticated animals for food and other economic resources
herders or pastoralists
what are the three dominant modes of distribution?
reciprocity, redistribution, market exchange
In _________’s view, there was no such thing as a “free gift.” Rather, he argued, gifts produce ties of obligation and debt. Practices of gift giving are both self-interested and oriented towards others.
Marcel Mauss
Marshall Sahlins argues that practices of reciprocity can be divided into three forms: _______, ________, and ________
generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity
__________ refers to the exchange of goods and services without expectation of an immediate return (parents to a child)
Generalized reciprocity
__________ refers to the exchange of goods of equivalent value within a set time period (birthday gifts)
Balanced reciprocity
perfectly balanced reciprocity is defined as…
the simultaneous exchange of the same types of goods at the same time
_______: one party seeks to benefit at the expense of the other (theft, stealing)
negative reciprocity
who were allowed to participate in the kula exchange? (trobriand islands)
rich and famous, island chiefs and their high-ranking officers
The kula ring thus demonstrates how reciprocity and gift giving create ________
social relationships
what kind of exchange/reciprocity is the Kula trading tradition?
balanced reciprocity, but more similar to perfect reciprocity
_______ observed the existence of a highly respected local tradition of accumulating and exchanging banana leaves, which were known locally as “women’s wealth” in the Trobriand Islands
Annette Weiner
Weiner argued that what was at work was in fact a __________ of reciprocity: yams were traded over an appropriate amount of time for banana leaves or women’s wealth
balanced form, these exchanges back and forth between the families reinforced the pivotal role of women in kinship relations
A classic example of redistribution within anthropology, as well as an example key to ______’ theory of the gift, is that of the potlatch, what is a potlatch?
Marcel Mauss’
Potlatch is a gift giving ceremony traditionally practiced among the First Nations peoples of Canada’s west coast
what are the three main examples given to explain redistribution?
potlatch
taxation
Cuba’s economic system (citizens not being able to buy their own cars/houses in the past, instead being redistributed by the government)
__________ is the predominant form of exchange in capitalist societies
market exchange, it also exists in non-capitalist societies too!
Eric Wolfe reworked Marx and Engel’s theories to develop three principle modes of production, what are they?
kin-ordered mode of production (tasks divided amongst members of a family)
tributary mode (labourers pay tribute to rulers)
capitalism (workers sell their own labour for wages)
_____-value: specific material and tangible qualities and the uses to which it can be put, the usefulness of a thing
use-value
______-value: the quantitative measure according to which goods can be exchanged for others
exchange-value
______ argues that it is human labour that creates the value of goods under capitalism, and that labour itself is a commodity
Karl Marx
_____-value: gap between the new value produced by the labour of workers and the compensation they are provided for that labour in wages
surplus-value, how employers make profit (can be exploited)
Julian Steward (who studied under Franz Boas), created the term _______: which seeks to account for economic and other cultural behaviours primarily as adaptations to the physical environments that people inhabit
cultural ecology (second approach to the question of consumption)
