Lecture 13 - World Of Discovery

Question 1

What is the primary focus of economics?

Answer 1

Study of the material welfare of humankind

Question 2

What are the three major interrelated areas of activity in economics?

Answer 2

• Production
• Exchange/distribution
• Consumption

Question 3

What are the main modes of production?

Answer 3

• Foraging (and hunter gatherers)
• Horticulture - smaller scale agriculture
• Pastoralist - raising and domesticating animals
• Agriculture
• Industrialism

Question 4

How are modes of production related to human organization?

Answer 4

Intimately associates with modes of organization (social, political, economic) and frames of meaning (values, beliefs, symbol systems)

Question 5

Example of Horticulturalists.

Answer 5

The Yanomami people

Hotter climate, shallow soil, higher humidity, high biodiversity, and immense knowledge of plants and animals allows them to be so.

Question 6

What is the importance of manioc (cassava) in the Amazon?

Answer 6

• Highly productive in poor soils
• Represents largest proportion of diet
• Creates a surplus

Question 7

What factors contribute to affluence and environmental sustainability?

Answer 7

• Maximize leisure
• Household autonomy
• Labor equality
• Meets the needs of everyone

Question 8

Who contrasted capitalist commodity exchanges with non-capitalist gift exchanges?

Answer 8

Marcel Mauss (1950)

Question 9

What are the three modes of exchange identified by Marshall Sahlins?

Answer 9

• Reciprocity
• Redistribution
• Market exchange

Question 10

What is reciprocity?

Answer 10

The exchange of goods and services of equal value

Question 11

List the 3 forms of reciprocity.

Answer 11

• Generalized reciprocity - exchange that doesn’t specify the time or value of return
• Balanced reciprocity - return of equal value at specified time
• Negative reciprocity - one part attempts to get something for nothing

Question 12

What does redistribution require?

Answer 12

Some form of centralized social organization

Question 13

What does market exchange involve?

Answer 13

• Trade – the exchange of goods
• Money – a medium of exchange that assigns values to goods
• Market – the supply, demand price mechanism for regulating exchange

Question 14

What are the three theoretical camps in economic anthropology?

Answer 14

• Self interested model
• Social model of human nature
• Moral model

Question 15

What does consumption refer to in economics?

Answer 15

The use of material goods for human survival

Question 16

What three approaches do anthropologists take to account for consumption patterns?

Answer 16

• Internal explanation – Malinowski and basic human needs
• External explanation – cultural ecology
• Cultural explanation of consumption