Anthropology Chapter 5
Special-purpose money
Objects of value for which only some goods/services can be exchanged.
Pastoralists
- Rely on animals for either their source of food or to trade. - Trade with agricultural groups is very important to them. - Generally nomadic and live in small groups. - Risk of overgrazing, which can lead to desertification-managed through mobility. -Travel across wide territories where they typically have land rights rather than ownership.
Rural Vietnam: The Mekong Delta
- Tropical climate with long rainy season. - Rice cultivation components: irrigation and water control system; specialized equipment; defined set of socioeconomic roles. - Production of single crop provides food and income.
Pastoralism
A subsistence technology principally involving the raising of large herds of animals. - typically practiced in grassland regions of the earth: steppes, prairies, & savannahs.
Economic anthropology
A subfield that attempts to explain human economic behavior in the scope of history, geography, & culture.
General-purpose money
A universally accepted medium of exchange.
Irrigation
- Horticulturalists wait for rain; agriculturalists developed irrigation systems. - An irrigated field is a capital investment, it takes time to yield but then increases in value.
The Saami: northwestern Scandanavia
- Intensive herding of reindeer in some seasons (herd under constant human supervision). - Extensive system of herding allows animals more migratory freedom but less customization to humans.
Facts about Intensive Agriculture
- It is more complex than horticulture. - Incorporates use of fertilizers and irrigation; more machines than hand labor. - Stay in same area by rotating crops to restore nutrients to the soil. - Settlement, production for market, and specialized roles lead to differences in wealth and power.
The Yanomamö
- Live in the Amazon in a dense rainforest. - Most of their food produced by gardening. - Men do clearing work and women plant, weed, and harvest. - Use of slash and burn clearing technique.
Food-getting strategies
- Most important survival activity. - Understanding food-getting can predict other aspects of a cultural group's behavior. - Everyone participates in getting food.
General Features of Foragers
- Most live in small communties in sparsely populated territories. - Follow a nomadic lifestyle - no permanent settlements. - Division of labor based on age and gender, generally not divided by class.
How many years ago did people in diverse geographic locations make the revolutionary change to--> Food Production.
About 10,000 years ago.
Subsistence economies
Economies in which almost all able-bodied adults are largely engaged in getting food for themselves and their families.
Cash crops
Cultivated commodities raised for sale rather than for personal consumption by the cultivator.
Introduction of Commercial and Industrial Agriculture
Cultivation for sale, rather than personal consumption, becomes industrialized when some of the production processes are done by machine.
Post-industrial
Development of economy toward technology-enabled knowledge/service oriented work, rather than manual.
Pre-industrial
Domestic (family) production
Foragers
Don't own, buy, or sell land, since hunters & gatherers depend on following the food.
Generalized Reciprocity
Gift giving without immediate or planned return.
Balanced Reciprocity
Giving with the expectation of immediate or planned trade
Hunter-gatherers
People who collect food from naturally occurring resources: wild plants and animals. Term sometimes minimizes dependence on fishing. (aka foragers or food collectors).
Food producers
People who have domesticated plants or animals to control food sources. - Horticulture: small scale farming - Agriculture: large scale/industrialized cultivation - Pastoralism: animal herding
Complex Foragers
Societies that depend on fishing are more likely to have more permanent communities & more social inequality.
Migratory Labor
Some members of a community move to a place that offers the possibility of working for a wage.
Commercialization
The increasing dependence on buying and selling, with money as the medium of exchange (rather than goods).
Market or commercial exchange
Transactions where prices depend on supply and demand. Most exchanges involve money.
Reciprocity
Consists of giving and taking without the use of money.
Food Production
-Most people today depend on domesticated plants and or animals for food. -Domestication of plants & animals allowed people to have some control over natural processes, like breeding and seeding.
Horticulture
The growing of crops of all kinds with relatively simple tools (like hand tools) & methods (usually no irrigation or fertilization).
What is the danger in comparing foragers in the past to modern foraging groups?
1.) Early foragers lived in most types of environments. 2.) Contemporary foragers are not relics of the past. 3.) Relationships among difference societies are different today than in the past.
3 Types of Food Production Systems
1.) Horticulture 2.) Intensive Agriculture 3.) Pastoralism
Distribution of goods and services can be classified under three general types:
1.) Reciprocity 2.) Redistribution 3.) Market or Commercial Exchange
Forced and Required Labor
1.) Taxation 2.) Corvée 3.) Slavery
Division of Labor
A customary assignment of different kinds of work to different kinds of people. -all societies have this
Foraging (aka food collecting)
A food-getting strategy that obtains wild plant and animal resources through gathering, hunting, scavenging, or fishing.
Intensive Agriculturalist
Commonly maintain individual ownership of land, given that they invest in the annual use of a plot.
Slavery
Forced work upon kidnapped/ captured enslaved persons who have no freedom.
Taxation
Indirect form of forced labor-must work to pay tax
Intensive Agriculture
Involves techniques that enable people to cultivate fields permanently.
Tributary
Non-industrial; most people pay labor tribute to ruler
Corvée
Nonmonetary system of required labor
Industrial
Reliance on machines & workers (wage-earners)
The physical environment normally exercises a _____, rather than a _____, influence on how people in an area get their food.
Restraining, determining
Redistribution
The accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person, or in a particular place, for the purpose of subsequent distribution.
Economics
The branch of knowledge that deals with the production, distribution, consumption, & transfer of wealth; the application of this discipline to a particular sphere.
The Worldwide Trend Toward Commercialization
The expansion of Western societies and capitalism are leading to dependence on commercial exchange.
Production
The transformation or conversion of resources into into food, tools, and other goods through labor.
Nonagricultural Commercial Production
When a self-sufficient society depends on trading for its livelihood. This is generally done to obtain other industrially made objects.
Supplementary Cash Crops
When cultivators produce a surplus above their subsistence requirements, which is then sold for cash.
Jared Diamond
Why do societies collapse? -domestic animals give us disease -those with better immune systems survive to pass on their genes -he draws from a variety of fields
Recap
• Allocation of Resources: it's about landownership • Conversion of Resources: turning resources into capital. • Distribution of Goods and Services: you need pigs for everything. • Worldwide Trend Toward Commercialization
The Origin, Spread, and Intensification of Food Production
• Food Production is generally more productive per acre of land than foraging and so can support more people in a region • This leads to competition for land • In the competition for land between food producers and food collectors, the food producers may have had a significant advantage.
Economy Recap: It's all about Food
• Foraging (food collection) vs. Food Production • Restraints on Food-getting caused by environment • Food Production has spread, leading to landownership competition.
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950)
• French sociologist • argued that gifts are never "free" • found that early exchange systems center around the obligations to give, to receive, & most importantly, to reciprocate.
Potlatch ceremonies
• Gift giving feast practiced by indigenous people of the Pacific NW. • Studied by Mauss • Typically practiced in the winter, as the warmer months were for procuring wealth. • Hosted by a particular House (numaym), or kin group.
Restraining
• Growing seasons limited by climate - horticulture & agriculture most popular closer to Equator. • Foraging & pastoralism can be viable in most habitats.
What conditions pushed people to switch from collecting to producing food?
• Population growth in regions of bountiful wild resources. • Global population growth. • The emergence of hotter, drier summers and colder winters.
Incentives for Labor
• Profit Motive: desire to exchange goods for more than their cost. - Not part of Subsistence Economies • Social Rewards of Sharing: drive to earn respect or fulfill special traditions. • Achievement: motivation to achieve what society agrees is a "high standard of living."
The Allocation of Resources
• Societies have different rules pertaining to access to resources, especially rights to land. • Colonialism, the State, and Land Rights: Colonialism determined landownership for everyone!
Horticulturalists
• They are more sedentary than foragers-attempt to yield more food from an area of settlement, and move after several years • Don't rely on crops alone • Hunting, fishing, and some small domesticated animals (pigs, chickens, goats, sheep), included in lifestyle. • Generally don't own land, as they move periodically to new plots, but oHen families, bands, or other groups are known to be associated with the areas they cultivate.
