Lecture 11: Making A Living Flashcards
economy
a system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources
economics is the study of such systems
economic anthropology
study of economics in a comparative perspective
debates the issues of human nature that relate to decisions of daily life and making a living
“Making a Living”
satisfaction of the most basic survival needs
until 10,000 years ago, there was no difference b/w making a living and foraging for food
• began to change with the advent of domestication
and new food production
• only 30,000 people still forage (decreasing)
adaptive strategies
- methods for meeting basic needs
- before industrial revolution… 4 adaptive strategies
1) foraging: (hunt/gather)
2) horticulture
3) agriculture
4) pastoralism: rely on domestic animals to make living (milk heavy diets, often nomadic)
5) industrialism
Yehudi Cohen’s typologies (overly simplistic adaptive strategies)
based on correlations
1) social/political organization
2) environment/geography
3) population density
4) diet
NOT: perfect, an evolutionary schema, mutually exclusive
foraging
1 depends on naturally available food 2 small populations 3 mobile 4 relatively egalitarian 5 gendered division of labor
ex: christmas at the kalihari
horticulture
1) Swiddens (slash and burn cultivation) in Santa Cruz,
Bolivia
2) hand-held tools
3) low yields
4) inequalitiesagriculture
1 more complex tools 2 permanent plots and fields 3 sedentary lifestyle; higher population density 4 increased specialization 5 higher productivity 6 individual ownership
industrialism (U.S.)
based on machines which make the development of manufacturing, mass production, mechanization possible
produces large, mobile, skilled, specialized, and educated labor forces
controlled by states and employed by firms
Modes of Production
ways of organizing production, wresting energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, knowledge
structured in ways that alter the characteristics of what consumers want
Karl Marx
focused on the importance of human LABOR in transforming raw materials into desired products
labor links humans to the material world
capitalism
alternative ends
subsistence, replacement, social, ceremonial funds
exchange
economist Karl Polanyl 3 principles of exchange
•reciprocity
•redistribution
•markets
- not always about the money
reciprocity
- exchange relationships “gift giving”
- desire to participate or not affects those relationships
1) generalized: exchange w/ no exception of immediate return (parent-child giving, foragers)
2) balanced: exchange with anticipation of equal return
(Xmas gifts, bartering)
3) negative: the attempt to get something for nothing (cattle raiders, expecting something selfishly)
Malinowski and Kula Ring
•reciprocity
- kula ring: exchange network in Trobriand Islands
- “once in the Kula, always in the Kula.”
- objects must be passed on
- exchange accompanied by magic and ceremony
- reinforces status and authority, based on trust, obligation, and shame
- different from barter
- often resulted in marriage
Dating, Courtship, Marriage in America
•negative reciprocity
-lack of trust: “Can I trust you?”
-things become a little more balanced
“I’ll be good to you if you’re good to me’
-love, closer relations, nothing immediate expected in return
- breakup
- negative reciprocity, but somewhat balanced in order to re-establish trust
Redistribution
• when goods or services, or their equivalent, move from the local level to a center
- taxes, pooling, tribute…
- food surplus that forms new states
Potlatches
- northwest coast of NA
- communities give away food, blankets, copper, in order to gain prestige.
- profit motive viewed potlatches as irrational and wasteful by classical economic theory
markets
- all purpose money as a relation substitute
- supply and demand
- fluidity, diversity
Means of Production
major productive resources, such as land (territory), labor, and technology
silent trade
also called silent barter; a method by traders who cannot speak each other’s language can trade without talking
