Anthropology Chapter 7: making a living

Food production

plant cultivation and animal domestication. Fuelled major changes in human life.

Nomadic

regularly on the move.

Horticulture

"Shifting cultivation", swiddening, dry farming. Nonindustrial plant cultivation with fallowing. Use of simple tools, fields are not permanently cultivated (lie fallow). Utilize the slash and burns technique. Can support large permanent villages.

Two main questions of economic anthropologists

1. How are production, distribution, and consumption organized in different societies. 2. What motivates people in different cultures to produce, distribute or exchange, and consume?

Labor

A means of production. In nonindustrial societies, access comes through kinship, descent, and marriage. Items used to work.

Land

A means of production. Ties are less permanent among foragers who move constantly. Strong ties with cultivators.

Sectorial fallowing

A method of more intensive cultivation where plots are planted multiple times before being left to fallow. Seen in New Guinea. Allows for a denser population.

Economy

A system of resource production, distribution, and consumption.

Terracing

Agricultural technique used in small, valley filled areas. Farming of hills that prevents washing away. Stages built into hillside. Springs irrigate, requires great work-maintain every year.

Rent fund

Allocated in nonindustrial states and refers to money for individuals or agencies that are superior politically or economically. Example: tenant farmers.

economizing

Allocation of scarce means among alternative ends. Our wants are infinite and our means our finite. Scarcity=choice based on saving.

Pastoral nomadism

Annual movement of the entire pastoral group with their herds. Example: Middle East and North Africa.

Balanced reciprocity

Applies to exchanges between people who are more distantly related than members of the same band or household. The giver expects something in return.

Correlation

Association; when one variable changes, another does. Example: foragers often live in bands.

Band

Basic social unit among foragers; fewer than 100 people; may split seasonally (San aggregating at water holes). Related by kinship/marriage. Exogamous.

Market principle

Buying, selling, and valuation based on supply and demand. Dominates in today's capitalist world. Bargaining is characteristic.

Potlatch

Competitive feast among tribes on North Pacific Coast of North America. Traditionally gave away food, blankets, copper, etc. In return they get prestige=enhancement of the reputation. Tribes were atypical, sedentary foragers with chiefs. Fishermen. Cultural adaptation to seasonal abundance. Prevents socioeconomic stratification.

Three principles orienting exchange

Defined by Karl Polanyi (1968). 1. The market principle 2. Redistribution 3. Reciprocity

Generalized reciprocity

Exchanges among closely related individuals. Expects nothing concrete or immediate in return. Expressions of personal relationships.

Ceremonial fund

Expenditures on ceremonies and rituals.

Redistribution

Flow of goods into centre, then back out; characteristic of chiefdoms. Example: cherokee- feasts held in central plazas.

Pastoralists

Herders of domesticated animals. Focus on cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and yak. May live in symbiosis with the herd. Most subsidize diet by hunting and gathering, fishing, cultivating, or trading.

Men in bands

Hunt and fish, not gather and collect.

Pygmies

In one of Africa's two broad belts of foraging; equatorial forest of central and eastern Africa. Include Mbuti, Efe.

San "Bushmen"

In one of Africa's two broad belts of foraging; the Kalahari desert of Southern Africa. Include the Ju/'hoansi. Are being relocated by the nation-state.

Cultivation

Includes horticulture, agriculture and pastoralism.

Agriculture

Intensive farming. Require more labor than horticulture, uses land intensively and continuously. Common use of domesticated animals, irrigation, or terracing. Far greater and more dependable long-term yield. Can be more densely populated. Most live in states.

Modern foragers

Live in nation states, depend to some extent on government assistance, and have contacts with food producing neighbours and missionaries/outsiders.

Means or factors of production

Major productive resource. More intimate relationship between workers and these in nonindustrial countries. Example: land, labor, tech, capital. Most are inherited via kin ties.

Replacement fund

Money built up to buy necessary technology. Example: broken plow, hoe. Also includes clothing and shelter-necessary to everyday life.

Subsistence fund

Money built up to eat-replenish lost calories.

Social fund

Money to help friends, relatives, inlaws and neighbours.

Cultivation Continuum

Non industrial economies are both horticultural and agricultural. Continuum of land and labor use.

Transhumance

Only part of the population moves seasonally with herds. Example: European Alps, shepherds take the goats alone.

Negative reciprocity

Potentially hostile exchanges among strangers. A way of establishing friendly relations with outsiders. Often purely economic- people want something back immediately.

Reciprocity

Principle governing exchanges among social equals. Normally related by kinship/marriage. Dominant in more egalitarian societies. General, balanced, negative.

Reciprocity continuum

Runs from generalized (closely related/deferred return) to balanced (increased social distance/delayed return) to negative (strangers/immediate return, calculated)

Peasants

Small scale farmer with rent fund obligations. Produce to feed themselves, to sell their product and to pay rent. 1. live in state organized societies 2. produce food with elaborate tech of modern farming

Mode of production

Specific set of social relations that organizes labor. Capitalist mode= money buys labor power. Nonindustrial, labor=social obligation.

Adaptive strategy

Term used by anthropologist Yehudi Cohen (1947) to describe a group's system of economic production. Most important reason for similarities between unrelated societies is possession of these. Includes: foraging, horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism, and industrialism.

Hunter gatherers (foragers)

There were big game hunters in Europe, plant and animal life in the tropics, land and sea on the North American Pacific coast.

More species

Trend in number of species from north to south.

Nomadism and transhumance

Two patterns of movement which occur with pastoralism. Both based on the fact that herds must move depending on the season.

Foraging

Up to 10,000 ya people lived this way. People rely on available natural resources for their subsistence, rather than controlling the reproduction of plants and animals. Mostly egalitarian societies.

Domesticated animals

Used by agriculturalists as a means of production, transport, as machines, manure.

Irrigation

Used by agriculturalists to control water to crops. Enriches the soil. Fields peak after 7 years and can become too saline within 50-60. Example: Ifugao, Philippines, take water from canals, rivers, streams, ponds.

Alienation in Malaysia

Women working low wage jobs, watched by men, rigid routine work. Women become possessed and have fits.

Women in bands

gather and collect, not hunt and fish. Main food source in tropical climates.