1. Subsistence, Economy, and Distribution: How Humans Do It
Making A Living
Subsistence, Economy, and Distribution: How Humans Do It

2. Survival of Those Who Eat
All cultures must solve certain problems
Control people’s behavior
Pass on traditions
Mate
Rear children
Procure food from environment

3. Importance of Subsistence
Securing food is critical
Human survival without food
Systematic and regular food procurement

4. Subsistence Strategy The pattern of behavior Used by a society
To obtain food
In a particular environment

5. Economic Production as an Adaptive Strategy
Food is necessary for survival; the means of subsistence of a given group has been called their adaptive strategy.
Five adaptive strategies: foraging, horticultural, agriculture, pastoralism, and industrialism.

6. Human Adaptation Human adjustment to environment
Influence on people and culture
Cultural influence on environment

7. Human Adaptation Continued
Cultural adaptation
Cultural ecology
Ecological Functionalism
Response to cold climates
Fire
Clothes
Eating more fats and carbs

8. Biological Adaptation
Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
Chukchi

9. “Sophisticated” Technology
Better adaptation to environment?
Environment and technology
Eskimo groups and wolves
Wolves- dangerous environmental feature

10. Terms and Concepts Carrying Capacity Optimal Foraging Theory
Environmental factors set an upper limit
Productivity of any food getting system
Size of population possible to support
Optimal Foraging Theory
Foragers will choose animals and plants
Maximize caloric return
For time spent searching, killing, collecting, and preparing
Ex. Ache of Paraguay

11. Foraging (a.k.a. Hunting and Gathering)
Foraging was the only means of subsistence for the first 5 million years of human history.
Hunting and gathering continued to exist after the multiple inventions of agriculture in those areas ill suited to growing crops.

12. What is Foraging?
Fishing, hunting, and collecting vegetable food.

13. The Importance of Gathering
For much of the 20th century, anthropologists assumed hunting was more important than gathering.
Subsequent ethnographic work showed plant resources usually make up 80% of the diet.

14. Foragers live off the land, usually in small groups called “bands”
Because foragers are highly mobile and frequently live in marginal environments, they tend to live in groups of 100 or less.
This mobile lifestyle leads to temporary housing structures.

15. Other Forager Characteristics or Correlates
Most members of bands related.
Practice band exogamy.
Membership of band may change during the course of a year.
Practice seasonal transhumance.
Egalitarian.
Sexual division of labor.
Original “affluent society”- Sahlins.

16. Examples of Foragers California Indians (balanophagy).
Great Basin Indians (Paiute, Shoshone, Ute).
Inuit (a.k.a. Eskimos).
Australian Aborigines.
!Kung San of South Africa.
Baka.

17. Foragers

18. Cultivation Cultivation is food production rather than food gathering.
The three forms of food production are horticulture, agriculture, and pastoralism.
Horticulture and agriculture focus on plant resource production; pastoralism focuses on herding and “harvesting” their animals.

19. What is horticulture?
Horticulture is the small-scale planting and harvesting of food plants using simple tools and small garden plots.
Horticulturalists frequently use swidden or “slash-and-burn” techniques for fertilization of the soil.
Shifting cultivation common.

20. Slash-and-Burn Horticulture

21. Location of World Horticulturalists

22. Advantages and Disadvantages of Horticulture
Can sustain large groups (example: Kuikuru of South America).
Allows for flexible sedentism (staying in one place).
Disadvantages:
Limited carrying capacity.
Leads to rapid soil exhaustion.

23. Horticultural Groups Yanomami. The tribes of Papua New Guinea.
The Maya of Mexico.
Hawaiian Islanders
Various Bantu-speaking tribes of Africa.

24. Agriculture
Differs from horticulture in that it is more labor intensive, uses more sophisticated tools (such as plows), engages the use of draft animals, may use terracing, and employs irrigation.
More land is used, and greater quantities of crops are produced.

25. Domesticated Animals and Farming
Domesticated animals (cattle and horses) have played an important role in raising crops, providing both labor (plowing) and fertilizer.

26. Costs and Benefits of Agriculture
Human labor input greater for agriculture,
time and energy required to build and maintain canals and terraces
as well as to feed and care for animals.
Yields are much greater with agriculture over horticulture
Provides long-term, dependable crops that translates to lower labor costs per unit.

27. Intensive Agriculture
Intensive agriculture allows for large populations.
However, large populations combined with intensive agricultural practices result in extreme environmental degradation.
Intensive agriculture often leads to specialization in certain crops (i.e., rice, maize, potatoes), thereby sacrificing dietary diversity.

28. Intensive Agriculture Gone Wrong
The ancient Maya civilization collapsed about A.D. 800
A combination of agricultural intensification and population growth

29. Pastoralism Pastoralists are herders
Focus on animals such as goats, sheep, cattle, camels, and yaks.
Traditional pastoralists are found in parts of north and eastern Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

30. Pastoralism as a living
Pastoralists use their herds for food (milk, blood, meat).
Pastoralists frequently trade with farmers for grains and vegetables, or may engage in limited horticulture or foraging.
Pastoralists practice pastoral nomadism (the whole group moves) or transhumance (only certain members of the group follow the herd animals).

31. Industrialism
Large scale, industrial production, involving factories and mechanization.
Industrialism relies on corporate agriculture.

32. Correlates of Foraging
Exogamy- Expanded Kin Network
Mobility: Adaptive strategy
Egalitarian- Contrasts in Status Minor
Status based on age and gender
Ownership- Land Not Owned
Flexible or open borders
Follow migratory patterns of animals
Claiming and defending territory- resources
Territoriality leads to conflict and warfare

33. Examples Inuit- Canada (open) Ju/’hoansi- Kalahari (flexible)
Food scarce= Open or flexible
Food plentiful= Greater control

34. Correlates of Horticulturalists
Land: Communally Controlled
Farmers must be in good standing
Must work the land
Example: Samoans of Polynesia
“Matai” holds land title
Other family members work the land

35. Correlates of Pastoralists
Require extensive territory
Marginal environment- free access
Not so marginal- greater control over land
Extremes in land ownership
East African vs. Middle East

36. Correlates of Intensive Agriculture
Permanent use of land
Property Rights
Buy, sell, rent, lease
Wrong Questions during ethnography
East African horticulturalists
“Who owns that brown cow?”
Swahili- no word for own
I am with- nina

37. Continued- Correlates of Agriculture
Occupational Specialization
Sedentary Lifestyle
Rise of Urban Centers
Civilization

38. Chapter 6 Economics Classic Economic Theory Ultimate Dictator Results
Individuals act rationally
To maximize profits
Ultimate Dictator
Dictator game
Ultimatum game
Proposers and Responders
Results
Tendency toward generosity
Culture affects economic activity
Chapter 6 Economics

39. Definitions Economy or Economic System Economics
System of production, distribution, and consumption of resources
Economics
-Study of the systems of production, distribution, and consumption
Tends to study modern nations
Capitalist systems
Anthropologists- non-industrial economies
Economic Anthropology- comparative perspective

40. Definitions Continued
Division of Labor- The pattern of apportioning different tasks to different members of a society.
Gender, age, caste
In all human societies, some tasks are considered appropriate for women and others appropriate for men.
At some level, the sexual division of labor is biological since only women can bear and nurse children.
Caring for infants is almost always a female role and usually central to female identity.

41. Specialization in Complex Societies
The division of labor becomes more specialized as the population increases and agricultural production intensifies.
Occupational specialization spreads as individuals are able to exchange services or products for food and wealth.
Specialists- soldiers, government officials, members of the priesthood, artisans, craftsmen, merchants.

42. Questions Economic Anthropologists Ask
How are production, distribution, and consumption organized in different societies?
What motivates people in different societies to produce, distribute, and consume?
Classic Economic Theory
Wants are infinite
Means are limited
People must choose how to use resources
Resources such as time, money, labor
People will choose to maximize profit
There may be other goals than maximizing profit

43. Goals other than maximizing profit
Prestige- status, social honor, respect
Linked to:
Increased consumption
Display of goods and services
Generosity
Pleasure, comfort, social harmony, personal ambition, family ambition etc.

44. Production Five Adaptive Strategies Foraging Horticulture Pastoralism
Agriculture
Industrialism

45. Distribution- Patterns of Exchange
Reciprocity
Redistribution
Market

46. Types of Reciprocity
Generalized: Distribution of goods with no specific return expected
Buying a friend a drink/birthday present
Balanced: Exchange of goods of equal value, with an obligation to return them
Buying at a supermarket/Christmas gift exchange
Negative: Exchange conducted for material advantage
Neighbor’s car

47. Activity
With a partner, on a single sheet of paper, discuss and write down instances from each of your own lives where you remember using balanced, generalized, and negative reciprocity.
Provide specific examples of each type of reciprocity.

48. Generalized Reciprocity
Generalized reciprocity involving food is an important social mechanism among foraging peoples.
Hunters distribute meat among members of the kin group or camp.
Each person or family gets an equal share or a share dependent on its kinship relationship to the hunter.

49. Generalized Reciprocity
Hunters gain satisfaction from accomplishing a highly skilled and difficult task.
Because all people in the society are bound by the same rules, the system gives them all opportunity to give and receive.

50. Balanced Reciprocity
Involves greater social distance and includes the obligation to return
within a reasonable time limit
goods of nearly equal value to those given
Characteristic of trading relations among non-industrialized peoples without market economies

51. Kula Ring
Pattern of exchange among trading partners in the Trobriands and other South Pacific islands
The kula trade moves two types of prestige goods from island to island.
Soulava (necklaces of red shell)
Mwali (bracelets of white shell)

52. Kula Ring
Kula trading partnerships are lifelong affairs, and their details are fixed by tradition.

53. Redistribution
Exchange in which goods are collected from members of the group and then redistributed to the group.

54. Leveling Mechanism
A practice, value, or form of social organization that evens out wealth in a society
If generosity rather than the accumulation of wealth is the basis for prestige, those who desire prestige will distribute much of their wealth.

55. Potlatch
A form of redistribution involving competitive feasting practiced among Northwest Coast Native Americans

56. Cargo System
A ritual system common in Central and South America in which wealthy people are required to hold a series of costly ceremonial offices

57. Market Exchange Economic system in which
goods and services are bought and sold
at a price determined by supply and demand
Impersonal and occurs without regard to the social position of the participants
When this is the key economic institution, social and political goals are less important than financial goals.

58. Capitalism Economic system in which: People work for wages
Land and goods are privately owned
Capital is invested for individual profit
A small part of the population owns most of the resources or capital goods.

59. Socialism and Communism
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Communal ownership with ownership ascribed to the state/government.
Socialism-
From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution. Communal ownership with ownership ascribed to workers.

60. Comparison