making a living

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

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©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Making a Living

• Adaptive Strategies

• Foraging

• Cultivation

• Pastoralism

• Modes of Production

• Economizing and Maximization

• Distribution, Exchange

• Potlatching


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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.


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Adaptive Strategies

– Foraging– Horticulture– Agriculture– Pastoralism– Industrialism

• Yehudi Cohen included 5 adaptive strategies


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Yehudi Cohen’s Adaptive Strategies (Economic Typology) Summarized


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Foraging

– 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

• Foraging economies have relied on nature to make their living


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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

• Correlates of Foraging


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Foraging

– 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

• Typical characteristic of foraging societies is mobility


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Horticulture

– Field not permanently cultivated• Slash-and-burn cultivation• Shifting cultivation

• Cultivation that makes intensive use of none of factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery

– Use simple tools


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Agriculture

• Domesticated animals– Many agriculturalists use animals as

means of production

• Cultivation that requires more labor than horticulture does, because it uses land intensively and continuously


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Cultivation

– 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

• Terracing


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Cultivation

– Long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable

– Agriculture societies tend to be more densely populated than are horticultural ones

• Costs and Benefits of Agriculture


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The Cultivation Continuum

– 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

• Intermediate economies, combining horticulture and agricultural features, exist


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Intensification: People and the Environment

• 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

• Intensive cultivators are sedentary people


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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


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Pastoralists

– 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

• Before the Industrial Revolution, pastoralism almost totally confined to the Old World


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• 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)

Modes of Production

• Economy – system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources


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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


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Means of Production

• 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

• Means, or Factors, of Production – include land, labor, technology, and capital


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Modes of Production

– 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

• Labor, tools, and specialization


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Economizing and Maximization

• 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

• How are production, distribution, and consumption organized in different societies?


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• 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


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– Maximize profit– Wealth– Prestige– Pleasure– Comfort– Social Harmony

• Some economists recognize individuals may be motivated by other goals


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– 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

• Alternative Ends


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• 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


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Distribution, Exchange

– “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

• The Market Principle


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– Exchange between social equals, normally related by kinship, marriage, or close personal tie

– Dominant in more egalitarian societies

• Reciprocity


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– 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

• Three types of reciprocity


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Coexistence of Exchange Principles

• Also support redistribution and generalized reciprocity– Balanced reciprocity would be out of place in

foraging band

• In North America, market principle governs most exchanges


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Potlatching

– Some tribes still practice the potlatch– Potlatches traditionally gave away food,

blankets, pieces of copper, or other items

• Festive event within a regional exchange system among tribes of the north Pacific Coast of North America


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Potlatching

– Potlaching also served to prevent the development of socioeconomic stratification, a system of social classes

• If profit motive universal, how does one explain the potlach, in which wealth is given away?


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Location of Potlaching Groups

making a living

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