Culture and the Environment
Ehrlich, Malthus
"Have fewer diners at the table"
Barry Commoner, Godwin, Sen
"Improve table manners," Commoner was the founder of the modern environmental movement.
Effects of agriculturalism
Shorter birth spacing. Increased morbidity and mortality. Increase in pathogens. Malnutrition. Higher fertility.
domestication
Situation in which a taxon diverges from it's original gene pool and establishes a symbiotic relationship with an animal feeding it.
Herero
Pastoralists with a high value on cows who were killed in one of the first genocides of the 20th century by the Germans.
Hayden
A Century of Feasting Studies. Made a case that feasts in the past were a part of social aspects and when you have feasts, you want to have special foods, which is easier when you are an agriculturalist.
Wuk
A reciprocal labor group. 5-20 neighbors.
Franz Boas
Anti-environmental determinism because he was struck by how different peoples or groups in the same environment could function so differently. Advocated looking at the history of the culture. Neo-evolutionism.
Ester Boserup
Believed that as population density increased in an area, land is used up more. People are unable to do forest fallow or bush fallow because they take too long and the land is too necessary to be kept fallow for long.
Settled or agro-pastoralism
Coexistence of agricultural and grazing activities. Fixed settlements.
Robert Braidwood
Concluded that hunter gatherer work loads were lighter than agriculturalists. They also suffered less adverse effects than agriculturalists, such as disease, nutritional stress, and cavities.
Square chicken model of shifting cultivation
Cultivate for a while, leave fallow, cultivate other areas. Results in bush, grass, or tree fallows, depending on time allowed.
Julian Steward
Cultural ecology, in which ecology is the main cause of culture. Culture practices "adaptive strategies."
Julian Steward
Environmental, but not determinist.
Shifting cultivation
Ephemeral plots.
Extensive farming
Farming extensively over areas of land
Intensification
Focus on one plot of land. Results in longer work hours and decreased marginal returns. The efficiency drops, however output per area per time rises. The household as a unit of production becomes important for sustainable farming because it requires great skill.
Trans-humanance or semi-sedentary
Follow a cyclical pattern of seasonal migrations, however the migrations are to the same places following the same routes.
Pharaonic projects
Fordlandia and Jari projects, both of which failed miserably in an effort to take advantage of the Amazon.
Problems for pastoralists
Government intervention often cripples them. Environmental degradation because of overgrazing. Herd animals are easy to steal.
Effects of pastoralism
Horse domestication, global economic network, changed warfare, trade routs.
Discovery thesis
Hunter gatherers would bury their dead with food for the afterlife, and things would grow where they buried them. Not taken very seriously.
Optimal foraging theory
Hunters often go after non-optimal animals to send a message about their status
Underground burning
In higher elevations, the farmers bury biomass and fire to keep the nutrients there.
Mar Muos
Labor group that is compensated with beer. 30-150 workers.
Rosenberg's general theory
Large hunter gatherer territories needed as a safety net so they did not starve to death. Rising population density cuts away at that net, leading them to feel as if they are under pressure to find better methods for food.
Betty Meggers
Law of environmental limitations on culture.
Swidden/slash and burn farming
Method of burning land and farming it. Increases fertility.
Sami of Scandinavia
Migrate with their reindeer from forests in the winter to coastal grasslands in the summer.
Wills's specific theory
Mogollon Indians cultivate maize as storable spring food (agriculture allows foraging)
Mobile pastoralism
Move herds to available pastures within the boundaries of specific territories. Follow seasonal migratory patterns that vary annually. Opportunistic and no permanent settlements. Example is the Maasai of East Africa, who depend on cattle and change regional camps every 5-7 years.
Leslie White
Neo-evolutionism: axis of evolution, in which more involved cultures are those that caputre and harness energy more efficiently. If this is true, then we have done more than half of our society evolution since 1950.
Kofyar
Nigerian tribe that participates in intensive farming. They adapted their area for farming, but terracing. They used sheep and goats for fertilizer and utilized transplant crops. Their main crops are sorghum and Pearl Millet. The households are mostly nuclear and kept small. They intensified the frontier as they entered the market, and as they intensified, their families grew in size for increased labor demands. Wuks and mar muos became even more important.
Alcohol as a theory for agriculturalist
Not just to get drunk, but to get to a sacred state. Also had a big economy in alcohol.
genetically modified foods we eat directly
Papaya, squash, salmon.
Lewis Binford
Post Pleistocene Adaptations: rising sea levels reduced coastal optimal zones, making food less predictable.
Kalahari Bushmen
Primary nutrients provided by the Monongo nut, which is high in protein. They also consume a lot of melon, which is rich in water. They work an average of 2 hours a day, which is less than agriculturalists, despite thoughts that they are less evolved and efficient. They had no concept of land ownership.
Oasis theory
Proposed by V. Gordon Childe, it argues that animal domestication arose as people, plants, and animals congregated around water sources during the arid years that followed the Pleistocene. In this scenario, agriculture arose because of "some genius" and preceded animal domestication.
Fallow farming
Resting plots and allowing nutrients to come back into soil. It restores fertility, deprives pests of crops they rely on, and facilitates garden hunting, in which animals may hang out in fallow fields. Usually, the last crops is designed to help the land when it is fallow, so they are usually nitrogen fixing crops.
Condorcet, Simon
Science will find a solution for more food for higher populations.
Richard B. Lee
Studied the Kalahari Bushmen and their foraging lifestyle. They are considered to be the oldest culture, however this is misleading because they have changed and evolved.
Ed Wilmsen and Revisionists
Studied the bushmen and noted that they were not acting like people who were not poor. Claim that bushmen were victims of circumstances, which is why they lived the way they did. Many were pushed out of their niches by early pastoralists.
Lee
Studied the bushmen of the Kalahari and concluded that their way of life was more energy efficient than agriculture.
Pastoralism
Subsistence system based primarily on domesticated animal production. Owning livestock minimizes risk. Generally practiced in semi-areid and arid areas where agriculture is difficult or unproductive. They disprove unilineal evolution because it most likely came after agriculturalist, not before. May have originated as agriculturalists who lost their land.
Handicap principle
The idea that elaborate male secondary sexual characteristics are handicaps, so if a male can survive with such a handicap, it shows that he has superior genes
Current Amazon
The patches are becoming connected and larger, and the land is less able to recover. Also, there is more intentional deforestation, as it is now incentivized to deforest the land in Brazil so that you can get ownership rights.
Political ecology
The relationship between cultures and their environments is often due to politics.
Garret Hardin
Tragedy of the commons, in that property held in common would lead to environmental degradation because there is no incentive for the herder to limit the number of animals he puts on the shared lands.
Milpa, chitemene
Type of word for extensive farming in Mexico and South Africa
Deforestation
While it is asserted that deforestation is caused by slash and burn farming and increased population, it is mainly owed to political factors. Before, population was much higher, but deforestation was much lower.