W5C1: production

Question 1

Modes of subsistence:

Answer 1

the dominant mode of subsistence […] is not the same as a mode of production, but is related to dominant production techniques, irrespective of property relations’ (Eriksen 2023: 327).

These are idealtypes, pure forms scarcely remain

Question 2

Neolithic Revolution:

Answer 2

‘The emergence of agriculture about 10,000 years ago allowed for a larger and more predictable food supply and the support and development of more aggregated human populations’ (Balée 2016: 201).

‘Agriculture was a momentous occurrence in human history, for without agriculture, state-level society would not exist’ (Balée 2016: 201).

Very clear relation between food production and political organisation

Question 3

Six modes of subsistence

Answer 3

• Hunter-gatherers
• Horticulturalists
• Agriculturalists
• Pastoralists
• Peasants
• Industrial societies

Question 4

Hunter-gatherers

Answer 4

• Usually they have simple technology
• Simple division of labour: different age, different gender
• Small population size, usually low population density
• Egalitarian political organization
• Enormous variety between hunter-gatherers
• Limited opportunity for storage

Building a state require resources, food in particular. No way to store food?

Question 5

Horticulturalists:

Answer 5

• Very basic form of agriculture
• More complex social organisation, but usually division of labour based on gender and age
• Simple technology (digging stick, hoe)
• Limited possibility of storage
• Limited surplus
• Main food is usually a starchy tuber

Question 6

Agriculture:

Answer 6

• Distinguished by the use of ploughs and draught animals
• Surpluses start to exist, more people who don’t need to produce food, more differentiation and specialization in labour: priests, soldiers, scribes, chiefs
• Complex state organisation

Question 7

Pastoralists

Answer 7

• Nomads, moving around with the herd
• But can they be considered an autonomous, independent mode of subsistence? Problematic, are always dependent on a different system
• Symbiotic relationship with agriculturalists
• Simple technology
• Limited opportunity for storage

Question 8

Peasants:

Answer 8

• Special case of food cultivators
• Agriculturalists partly integrated into the world economy. Have to pay rent for the land they till: land has become a commodity. Tied to land, whilst wage workers can be replaced
• Produce food for subsistence, but also depend onselling in buying in a general-purpose monetised market
• Can specialise, but production is holistic: individual worker takes part in all phases of the process

Question 9

Industrial societies:

Answer 9

• Very complex division of labour
• Specialisation of knowledge,
• Separate political and economic institutions,
• Complex mechanical technology
• Social integration at a very large scale
• ‘Industrial societies have centralised states, anonymous labour markets, written legislation and systems of social control integrating an enormous number of people on the basis of principles other than kinship’ (Eriksen 2023: 329

Question 10

Post-industrial information societies:

Answer 10

• Production of immaterial goods is the main economic activity
• Difficult to draw the line, advanced information societies are also leading industrial societies
• Industrial production is shaped by electronic information technology

Question 11

Involution:

Answer 11

Involution is ‘the tendency to intensify and elaborate inward instead of expanding outwards’ (Eriksen 2023: 348).

No longer a radical breakthrough, law of diminishing returns

Question 12

Important concepts or ideas regarding production

Answer 12

• Bullshit jobs
• Technology
• Actor Network Theory
• Neoliberalism
• World System theory

Question 13

Bullshit jobs (Graeber)

Answer 13

• Keynes: due to automation, people would only have to work 15 hours a week. But: people are still working 40 hours. An increasing number of people have bullshit jobs
• Jobs that neither make the world a better place, nor provide satisfaction to their incumbents
• Continued existence due to protestant work ethic, hierarchies and a systemic need to keep people permanently exhausted to prevent revolt
• Interesting analysis, but exaggerated

Question 14

Technology (Ingold)

Answer 14

• “A corpus of culturally transmitted knowledge, expresweed in manufacture and use” (Ingold). Emphasizes social and cultural dimension
• Technological somnambulism: techniques are trivial or irrelevant to social organisation and culture. Technology is made and put to use, and is neutral
• Technological determinism: technology is of paramount impotante for culture and social organisation and dictate patterns of social and cultural life
• Technology as ideology: the belief that technology can fix things for us

Question 15

Actor Network Theory (Latour)

Answer 15

Way of making human more modest about to what extent humans are in control. Objects also have powers over humans. These are all linked and control human behaviour

Question 16

Neoliberalism

Answer 16

Liberalism: idea of markets, supply and demand, individual freedom. But only works when you are ‘strongest’ in the market.

Neoliberalism: opening up all the economic markets, to get best economic development. Open market without any protection is only good when you are the strongest in the market. Apply market thinking everywhere

Question 17

World system theory (Wallerstein)

Answer 17

• Classical idea of modernisation (world bank, imf, oxfam): all societies over time are developing. Countries with little development: follow the same path, but just lagging behind
• World system theory: dependencia thinking. First centres of economic development (core) have not grown because they started their development early, but have grown because they have exploited other countries (periphery). Countries with little development are actually getting poorer

Question 18

Co-evolution:

Answer 18

• A domesticate is a plant or animal whose genotypes has been changed by human interference through artificial selection’ (Balée 2016: 199).
• ‘Through their long association with humans, these plants developed advantageous features, such as faster rates of maturation and bigger, better, more edible parts (seeds, fruit pulp, roots, or corns) that were easier to harvest than they had been to collect in their wild forms’ (Balée 2016: 201).
• Co-evolution: we have an influence on crops and animals, they have an influence on us

Question 19

Precariat:

Answer 19

wage workers with minimal job security and uncertain prospects

Question 20

Cultural ecology:

Answer 20

The research paradigm that studies the relationship between ecosystem, carrying capacity, and production system. But: not deterministic

• Societies were pushed to more complex systems because of population pressure when a food shortage would become a recurrent problem unless they switched to more labour-intensive production techniques that give larger yields.
• Extensive agriculture (slash-and-burn cultivation of shifting cultivation is the best known type of it) requires more work than hunting and gathering but allows higher population densities. Intensive agriculture (like rice production in paddies) can yield very large harvests per hectare (and even multiple harvests per year) but requires far more labour input, etc.
• The evolutionary development of political systems goes hand in hand with the development of more productive agricultural systems. A society only moves on to a more complex level if and when forced by circumstances;

Question 21

Four different ways in which humans conceptualize and enact the nature-culture relationship (Descola):

Answer 21

• Animism: everything in nature is animated with spirit and constitutes a totality
• Totemism: there is a concrete relatedness between human groups and totemic being
• Naturalism: nature is fundamentally distinct from humanity, although all life has the same origin
• Analogism: ‘the great chaing of being’, according to which everything is distinct from, everything else, but connected systemically and symbolically

Nature-culture therefore isn’t as binary, no absolute universal distinction