Subsistence Flashcards
Five Major Subsistence Strategies
- Food Collecting
- Horticulture
- Pastoralism
- Agriculture (intensive agriculture)
- INdustrialization
Adaptation
Process organisms undergo to achieve a beneficial adjustment to an available enviornment and the result of that process
Cultural Ecology
The sutyd of interaction of specific human culture with their enviornment
Ecology
The sutyd of interactions of living organisms with one another and thier inorganic world
Ecosystem
A community of different species of plants and animals interacting with one another and the chemical and physical parts of thier enviornement
Biome
Regions that share physical characteristics and have similar communities of plants and animals
Culture type
The view of culture in therms of the realtion of its particular technology to the enviornemnt exploited by that technology
Environment and Technology
- Food getting stragey will depend primarily on enviornment and technology
- Relationship neither neat or tidy
- Enviornment does not determine strategy, rather sets broad limits
- More complex technologies gerater control ove rthe enviornment
Carrying Capacity
Theoretical limit to which a population may grow and maintain itself without deleterious effects on its enviornment
Optimal foraging theory
a theory that foragers lok for those species of plants and animasl that will maximize their caloric intake for the time spent hunting and gathering food
Convergent Evolution
In cultural evolution, the development of similar adaptations to similar enviornmental conditions by peoples whos ancestrals cultures were different
Parallel Evolution
In culturel evolution, the development of similar adaptations to similar enviornmental conditions by epoples whose ancestral cultures were similar
Culture Core
The features of a culture that play a part in matters relating to the societys way of making a living
Ethnoscientist
Anthropologist who seek to understand the principles behind native idea systems and ways those principles inform a people about their enviornment and help them survive. (Emic approach)
Who came up with the idea of Cultural Materialism
Marvin Harris
Cultural materialism
Anthropologist who seek to understand the principles behind native idea systems and ways those principles inofrm a people about their enviornment and help them survive
Components of universal pattern
- Infrastructure
- Structure
- Superstructure
Infrastructure
Consists of the technologies and productive and reproductive activities that bears directerly on the provision of food and shelter, protection against illness, and the satisfaction of sexual and other basic human needs and drives
Structure
Cultural materialistic term for eh social and political organizational components of human culture
Superstructure
Cultural Materialist term of rhe “realm of values, beliefs, aesthetics, rules, symbols, rituals, religions, philosophies, and other forms of knowledge, including science itself
Food collecting
- collection and exploitation of wild plants and animals that already exist in the natural enviornment
- 90% of human history we have been hunters and gathers
- Change begain with the nolithic revolution
- Only a few societies are existing today
- Restricted to marginal habitats
- Much cultural variation
General chuaracteristics of FC societies
- Low popultaion densities
- nomadic or semi-nomadic
- Basic social unit family or band
- Occupy remote and marginally useful regions of the planet
- Social, political, ecnomic institutions less complex
- Wild plants provide greatest amount of food
Density of Social Relations
Roughly, the number and inensity of interatcions amoung members of a camp or residential unit
Ju/ Hoasnsi
- totally dependent on HG
- Strong division of labor
- most important food item: Mongongo nut
- Demgraphics not that different from industrialized socities
- Almost never face starvation
- RElatively low investments of energy (12- 19 hours per week)
Netsilik Eskimos
- Live in one of the most inhabitable regions of the world
- LIve in delicate balance with the enviornenment
- Number of strategies to deal with their enviornement
- Under constatnt ecological pressure
Food Producing Societies
- Approximately 10Kya transition to food producing began
- Known as Neolithic revolution
- First in Mesopotamia (10 Mya)
- Thailand (9Kya)
- China (8kYa)
- Sub-Saharan Africa ( 5Kya)
Why did societies turn into Food-producing societies ?
- Enironment: Varioation in rainfall and temperature
- Demographics > Incrased population size, increased population pressure
The Cultural changes in Food-producing Societies
- increase in population size
- Children become important economic resource
- Societies become more sedentary
- Greater Diversity of labor
- Greater complexity in social, political, economic systems
Four kinds of food-producing socieites?
- Horticulture
- Agriculture
- Pastoralism
- Industrialization
Horticulture
- Simplest form of farming
- uses basci hand tools
- Generally absent: Plows, animal power, irrigation, fertilizers
- RElationviely low crop yields
- Often practice mixed strategies
Characteristics of Pastoralism
- Generally found in regions unsuited for agriculture
- Not a single unified food-getting strategy
- Wide variation in ways animasl are herded
- Pure pastorlism either rare or nonexistent
Transhumance
Movement pattern of pastorlists in which some men move livestock seasonally while other members of thier group, including women and hcildren, stay in permant settlements
Nomadism
A lifestyle involving the periodic movement of human populations in serach of food or pature for livestock
Roles of livestock in pastoralist Societies
- Food
- Fuel
- Tolls and atrifacts
- Clothing
- Building material
- Antiseptic
- Legitimizes marriages
- compensation for wrongs
- Sacrifices during important religious ceremonies
Agriculture
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
Agriculture is
- A more recent cultural phenomenon
- More efficent than horticulture
- Increased energy and technology increases carrying capacity
- Higher population densities. Price greater investmet of labor and capital
Terracing Characteristics
- Higher productivity
- More settled communities
- More complex labo specialization
- More social straification
- Plitical and religious hierarchies
- Permitted the development of states and Civilizations
Peasantry
Rural proples, usually on the lowerst rung of the societys ladder, who provide urban inhabitants with farm products but have little access to wealth or political power
Industrialzed food getting
- Third Major revolution food-getting
- First: Initial domestication
- Second: Intensification (agriculture)
- Third: Industrialization
Effects of industrialization
- increased productivity
- increased commercialization
- Centralization of farms (agri-businesses)
Enviornmental Problems with FG Industrialization
- Lower water tables
- ecological changes of nearby water
- destruction of water fauna
- pollution of aquifers
- Salinization of soil
- Air Pollution
