Anth Exam 2 Subsistence Anthropology

What are levelling mechanisms?

A cultural obligation compelling prosperous members of a community to give away goods, host public feasts, provide free service, or otherwise demonstrate generosity so that no one permanently accumulates significantly more wealth than anyone else.

What is barter?

Exchange of goods or services without money.

• Name (and be able to define/describe) the 4 cultural adaptations defined by Cohen (besides industrialism).

Foraging: until 10,000 years ago all humans were foragers most foragers eventually turned to food production, and those foragers who still exist have at least some dependence on food production or on food producers. All modern foragers live in nation-states, depend to some extent on government assistance, and are influenced by national and international policies and political and economic events in the world system. Throughout the world, foraging survived mainly in environments that posed major obstacles to food production. A few groups living in environments suitable for food production nevertheless remained foragers because they could support themselves adequately by hunting and gathering. to food production. Horticulture: Horticulture is cultivation that does not make intensive use of land, labor, capital, or machinery. Horticulture involves the use of simple tools and frequently slash-and-burn techniques. Horticulture is also called shifting cultivation because the relationship between people and land is not permanent (i.e., horticulturalists shift between plots of land, leaving areas with exhausted soil or thick weed cover to lie fallow for several years before returning to cultivate them once again). Agriculture: Agriculture is cultivation that involves intensive and continuous use of land. Agriculture is more labor intensive because of its use of domesticated animals, irrigation, and/or terracing. Many agriculturalists use animals for transport, as cultivating machines, and for their manure. Irrigation allows agriculturalists to schedule their planting in advance (they do not have to wait for a rainy season), and it makes it possible to cultivate a plot year after year. Irrigation enriches soil by creating ecosystems with several species of plants and animals, many of them minute organisms, whose wastes fertilize the land.Terracing is an agricultural technique that allows steep hillsides to be cultivated and irrigated. Costs and Benefits of Agriculture An agricultural field does not necessarily produce a higher single-year yield than does a horticultural plot. Because agriculture is very labor intensive (e.g., construction and maintenance of irrigation systems and terraces, care of animals), its yield relative to the labor invested is lower than that of horticulture. The main advantage of agriculture is that its long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable (agricultural land can yield one or two crops annually for years, or even generations). Pastoralism: Pastoral economies are based on herds of domesticated animals (e.g., cattle, sheep, goats, camels, yaks, reindeer). Many pastoralists live in symbiosis with their herds (symbiosis is an obligatory interaction between groups that is beneficial to each). Unlike the use of animals merely as productive machines, pastoralists typically make direct use of their herds for food. It is impossible to base subsistence solely on animals, so most pastoralists supplement their diets by hunting, gathering, fishing, cultivating, or trading. Two patterns of movement occur with pastoralism: nomadism and transhumance. In pastoral nomadism, the entire group—women, men, and children—moves with the animals throughout the year. With transhumance, part of the group moves with the herds, but most people stay in the home village. Pastoral nomads trade for crops and other products with more sedentary people during their annual movement, while in transhumant societies, the people who remain in year-round villages can grow their own crops.

• What are the 3 main modes of exchange discussed in class and in your text? Can you think of examples of each one within our own society?

Reciprocity: Exchange of goods and services of equal exchange, gift giving, food sharing, emphasis and social relationship, generalized reciprocity (value uncalculated, repayment delayed and unspecified) Redistribution: Good accumulated into a central place and then redistributed (requires surplus) leveling mechanisms, 3 goals, status/power display (wealth and generosity) make sure all have enough, alliance building (feasts, gifts). Keeps goods and money in circulation, pooled for collective benefit, reduces social tension, source of prestige for leaders. Market exchange: buying and selling of goods/services with prices set by supply and demand. Money if often used but not always.

• What type of subsistence system has humanity used for the majority of its existence (throughout most of prehistory)?

food foraging

What is reciprocity

The exchange of goods and services, of approximately equal value, between two parties

What is agropastoralism?

Agropastoralism: The form of farming that combines agricultural (growing crops) and pastoralism (rearing livestock)

• What is the Kula Ring? What type of exchange does it represent? What is its function with Trobriand society?

Barter, a mode of balanced reciprocity that reinforces trade and social relations among the seafaring Melanesians who inhabit a large ring of islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Kula participants are men of influence who travel to island within the Trobriand ring to exchange prestige items- red shell necklaces, which are circulated around the ring of islands in a clockwise direction, and white shell armbands, which are carried in the opposite direction. Each man in the Kula ring is linked to partners on the island that neighbor his own. This trading establishes and reinforces social partnerships among traders doing business on distant shores, ensuring a welcome reception form people who have similar vested interests. This also allows men to proclaim individual fame and talent.

• What is the potlatch? What mode of exchange does it represent? What function does it serve within societies that practice(d) it?

On the northwestern coast of North America, an indigenous ceremonial event in which a village chief publicly gives away stockpiled food and other goods that signify wealth. This allows the society to display wealth and if they are ever in a time of need the village will most likely help them out this displays redistribution.

What is pastoralism?

Pastoralism: The breeding and managing of migratory herds of domesticated grazing animals, such as goats, sheep, cattle, llamas, and camels.