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.