Making a Living

1
Chapter 16
This chapter introduces students to the variety
of economic systems that are present in human
societies. It especially focuses on the
distinctions between foraging, horticulture,
agriculture, and pastoralism, and on models of
distribution and exchange.

• Making a Living

2
Adaptive Strategies

• Yehudi Cohen (1974) used the term adaptive
  strategy to describe a groups system of economic
  production.
• Ethnoatlas

3
Adaptive Strategies

• Cohen has developed a typology of cultures using
  this distinction
• Foraging
• Horticulture
• Agriculture
• Pastoralism
• Industrialism

4
Adaptive Strategies

• Cohens typology refers to a relationship between
  economies and social features
• arguing that the most important reason for
  similarities between unrelated cultures is their
  possession of a similar adaptive strategy.

5
Foraging

• Human groups with foraging economies are not
  ecologically dominant.
• The primary reason for the continuing survival of
  foraging economies is the inapplicability of
  their environmental settings to food production.

6
Correlates of Foraging

• Band organization
• Typically are socially mobile
• Gender-based division of labor
• women gathering
• men hunting and fishing
• All foraging societies distinguish among their
  members according to age and gender, but are
  relatively egalitarian compared to other societal
  types.

7
Horticulture

• Horticulture is nonintensive plant cultivation,
  based on the use of simple tools and cyclical,
  noncontinuous use crop lands.
• Slash-and-burn cultivation and shifting
  cultivation are alternative labels for
  horticulture.

8
Agriculture

• Agriculture is cultivation involving continuous
  use of crop land and is more labor-intensive than
  horticulture.
• Domesticated animals are commonly used in
  agriculture,
• Irrigation is one of the agricultural techniques
  that frees cultivation from seasonal domination.
• Terracing is an agricultural technique which
  renders land otherwise too steep for most forms
  of cultivation

9
The Costs and Benefits of Agriculture

• Agriculture is far more labor-intensive and
  capital-intensive than horticulture
• Agricultures long-term production (per area) is
  far more stable than horticultures.

10
The Cultivation Continuum

• Nonindustrial economies do not always fit cleanly
  into the distinct categories given above
• Sectorial fallowing a plot of land may be
  planted two to three years before shifting then
  allowed to lie fallow for a period of years.
• Horticulture requires regular fallowing (the
  length of which varies), whereas agriculture does
  not.

11
Intensification People and the Environment

• Agriculture, by turning humans into ecological
  dominants
• Intensified food production is associated with
  sedentism and rapid population increase.
• Most agriculturalists live in states because
  agricultural economies require regulatory
  mechanisms.

12
Pastoralism

• Pastoral economies are based upon domesticated
  herd animals
• but members of such economies may get
  agricultural produce through trade or their own
  subsidiary cultivation.

13
Pastoralism

• Pastoral nomadism
• all members of the pastoral society follow the
  herd throughout the year.
• Transhumance or agro-pastoralism
• part of the society follows the herd, while the
  other part maintains a home village (this is
  usually associated with some cultivation by the
  pastoralists).

14
Modes of Production

• Economic anthropology studies economics in a
  comparative perspective.
• An economy is a study of production,
  distribution, and consumption of resources.

15
Modes of Production

• Mode of production
• a way of organizing production--a set of social
  relations through which labor is deployed to
  wrest energy from nature using tools, skills,
  organization, and knowledge.
• Similarity of adaptive strategies between
  societies tends to correspond with similarity of
  mode of production variations occur according
  to environmental particularities.

16
Production in Nonindustrial Populations

• All societies divide labor according to gender
  and age
• the nature of these divisions varies greatly from
  society to society.
• Valuation of the kinds of work ascribed to
  different groups varies, as well.

17
Means of Production

• Means of production include land, labor,
  technology, and capital.
• Land the importance of land varies according to
  method of production land is less important to
  a foraging economy than it is to a cultivating
  economy.
• Labor, tools, and specialization nonindustrial
  economies are usually but not always
  characterized by more cooperation and less
  specialized labor than is found in industrial
  societies.

18
Alienation in Industrial Economies

• A worker is alienated from the product of her or
  his work when the product is sold, with the
  profit going to an employer, while the worker is
  paid a wage.
• A consequence of alienation is that a worker has
  less personal investment in the product, in
  contrast to the more intimate relationship
  existing between worker and product in
  nonindustrial societies.
• Alienation may generalize to encompass not only
  worker-product relations, but coworker relations,
  as well.

19
Economizing and Maximization

• Classical economic theory assumed that
  individuals universally acted rationally, by
  economizing to maximize profits,
• but comparative data shows that people frequently
  respond to other motivations than profit
• Discussion
• Understanding Ourselves page 440

20
Economizing and Maximization

• Alternative Ends
• People devote their time, resources, and energy
  to five broad categories of ends
• Subsistence fund
• Replacement fund
• Social fund
• Ceremonial fund
• Rent fund

21
The Market Principle

• The market principle occurs when exchange rates
  and organization are governed by an arbitrary
  money standard.
• Price is set by the law of supply and demand.
• The market principle is common to industrial
  societies.

22
Redistribution

• Redistribution is the typical mode of exchange in
  chiefdoms and some nonindustrial states.
• In a redistributive system, product moves from
  the local level to the hierarchical center, where
  it is reorganized, and a proportion is sent back
  down to the local level.
• Examples in U.S.?

23
Reciprocity

• Reciprocity is exchange between social equals and
  occurs in three degrees generalized, balanced,
  and negative.
• Generalized reciprocity is most common to closely
  related exchange partners and involves giving
  with no specific expectation of exchange, but
  with a reliance upon similar opportunities being
  available to the giver (prevalent among foragers).

24
Reciprocity

• Balanced reciprocity involves more distantly
  related partners and involves giving with the
  expectation of equivalent (but not necessarily
  immediate) exchange
• Negative reciprocity involves very distant
  trading partners and is characterized by each
  partner attempting to maximize profit and an
  expectation of immediate exchange

25
Coexistence of Exchange Principles

• Most economies are not exclusively characterized
  by a single mode of reciprocity.
• The United States economy has all three types of
  reciprocity.

26
Potlatching

• Potlatches, as once practiced by Northwest Coast
  Native American groups, are a widely studied
  ritual in which sponsors (helped by their
  entourages) gave away resources and manufactured
  wealth while generating prestige for themselves.
• Potlatching tribes (such as Kwakiutl and Salish
  peoples) were foragers but lived in sedentary
  villages and had chiefs--this political
  complexity is attributed to the overall richness
  of their environment.
• Dramatic depopulation resulting from postcontact
  diseases and the influx of new trade goods
  dramatically affected the nature of potlatches,
  which began to extended to the entire population.

27
Potlatching (cont.)

• The result of the new surplus, cultural trauma,
  and the competition caused by wider inclusion was
  that prestige was created by the destruction of
  wealth, rather than the redistribution of it
• Potlatches were once interpreted as wasteful
  displays generated by culturally induced mania
  for prestige, but Kottak argues that customs like
  the potlatch are adaptive, allowing adjustment
  for alternating periods of local abundance and
  shortage.
• The Northwest Coast tribes were unusual in that
  they were foraging populations living in a rich,
  nonmarginal environmental setting.