1. Making a Living Adaptive Strategies Foraging Cultivation Pastoralism
Modes of Production
Economizing and Maximization
Distribution, Exchange
Potlatching

2. Adaptive Strategies
Advent of food production fueled major changes in human life
Formation of larger social and political systems - eventually states
Yehudi Cohen used term adaptive strategy to describe a group's system of economic production
Developed typology of societies based on correlation between economies and social features.

3. Adaptive Strategies Yehudi Cohen included 5 adaptive strategies
Foraging
Horticulture
Agriculture
Pastoralism
Industrialism

4. Yehudi Cohen’s Adaptive Strategies (Economic Typology) Summarized

5. Foraging Foraging economies have relied on nature to make their living
All foragers rely on natural resources for subsistence, rather than controlling plant and animal reproduction.
Foraging survived mainly in environments that posed major obstacles to food production

6. Foraging Correlates of Foraging
Correlations – association or covariation between two or more variables
People who subsist by hunting, gathering, and fishing often live in band-organized societies
Band – small group of fewer than 100 people

7. Foraging Typical characteristic of foraging societies is mobility
Fictive Kinship – personal relationships modeled on kinship
All human societies have some kind of division of labor based on gender
Men typically hunt and fish
Women gather and collect
All foragers make social distinctions based on age

8. Horticulture
Cultivation that makes intensive use of none of factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery
Use simple tools
Field not permanently cultivated
Slash-and-burn cultivation
Shifting cultivation

9. Agriculture
Cultivation that requires more labor than horticulture does, because it uses land intensively and continuously
Domesticated animals
Many agriculturalists use animals as means of production

10. Cultivation Terracing Irrigation
Labor necessary to build and maintain a system of terraces is great
Irrigation
Can cultivate a plot year after year
Capital investment that increases in value

11. Cultivation Costs and Benefits of Agriculture
Long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable
Agriculture societies tend to be more densely populated than are horticultural ones

12. The Cultivation Continuum
Intermediate economies, combining horticulture and agricultural features, exist
Horticulture always uses a fallow period whereas agriculture does not
Until recently, horticulture was main form of cultivation in Africa, Southeast Asia, Pacific islands, Mexico, Central America, and South American tropical forest

13. Intensification: People and the Environment
Intensive cultivators are sedentary people
Agricultural economies grow increasingly specialized – focusing on:
One or a few caloric staples, such as rice
Animals that are raised
Agricultural economies also pose a series of regulatory problems – which central governments often have arisen to solve

14. Pastoralism
Pastoralists – herders whose activities focus on such domesticated animals as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and yak
Herders attempt to protect their animals and to ensure their reproduction in return for food and other products
Herders typically make direct use of their herds for food

15. Pastoralists
Before the Industrial Revolution, pastoralism almost totally confined to the Old World
Pastoral Nomadism – members of pastoral society follow herd throughout the year
Transhumance – part of group moves with herd, but most stay in the home village

16. Modes of Production
Economy – system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources
Mode of production – way of organizing production; “set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge” (Wolf, 1982)

17. Production in Nonindustrial Populations
Division of economic labor related to age and gender a cultural universal, but specific tasks assigned to each sex and age varies
Betsilio of Madagascar have 2 stages of teamwork in rice cultivation

18. Means of Production
Means, or Factors, of Production – include land, labor, technology, and capital
Land
Land less permanent among foragers than it is for food producers
Among food producers, rights to means of production also come through kinship and marriage

19. Modes of Production Labor, tools, and specialization
In nonindustrial societies, access to land and labor comes through social links
Alienation in Industrial Economies
When factory workers produce for sale and for their employer's profit, rather than for their own use, they may be alienated from the items they make

20. Economizing and Maximization
How are production, distribution, and consumption organized in different societies?
What motivates people in different cultures to produce, distribute or exchange, and consume?
Anthropologists view both economic systems and motivations in a cross-cultural perspective

21. Economizing and Maximization
Economizing – rational allocation of scarce means (or resources) to alternative ends
Idea that individuals choose to maximize profits basic assumption of classical economist of 19th century

22. Economizing and Maximization
Some economists recognize individuals may be motivated by other goals
Maximize profit
Wealth
Prestige
Pleasure
Comfort
Social Harmony

23. Economizing and Maximization
Alternative Ends
People devote some of their time and energy to building up subsistence fund
Citizens of nonindustrial states also allocate scarce resources to a rent fund, resources that people render to an individual or agency that is superior politically or economically

24. Economizing and Maximization
Alternative Ends
Peasants – small-scale agriculturalists who live in nonindustrial states and have rent fund obligations
Live in state – organized societies
Produce food without elaborate technology
Pay rent to landlords

25. Distribution, Exchange
The Market Principle
“Organizational process of purchase and sale at money price” (Dalton 1967)
Value set by supply and demand
Redistribution
Operates when goods, services, or their equivalent, move from local level to a center

26. Distribution, Exchange
Reciprocity
Exchange between social equals, normally related by kinship, marriage, or close personal tie
Dominant in more egalitarian societies

27. Distribution, Exchange
Three types of reciprocity
Generalized reciprocity – giving with no specific expectation of exchange
Balanced reciprocity – exchanges between people who are more distantly related than are members of the same band or household
Negative reciprocity – dealing with people outside or on the fringes of their social systems

28. Coexistence of Exchange Principles
In North America, market principle governs most exchanges
Also support redistribution and generalized reciprocity
Balanced reciprocity would be out of place in foraging band

29. Potlatching
Festive event within a regional exchange system among tribes of the north Pacific Coast of North America
Some tribes still practice the potlatch
Potlatches traditionally gave away food, blankets, pieces of copper, or other items

30. Potlatching
If profit motive universal, how does one explain the potlach, in which wealth is given away?
Potlaching also served to prevent the development of socioeconomic stratification, a system of social classes

31. Location of Potlaching Groups