Making a Living Nanda, Chapter 5

Culture is Patterned… Humans have needs in common: Food Water Shelter Humans Have Resources in Common: Ecology Environment Climate Technology Social Organization

Major Subsistence Strategies Foraging Pastoralism Horticulture Agriculture Industrialism

Subsistence Strategies Until about 10,000 years ago, humans lived by foraging. As tools improved, foragers spread out and developed diverse cultures, arriving in the Americas and Australia about 25,000 years ago.

Subsistence Strategies About 10,000 years ago, human groups in the Old World, and 4,000 years later in the New World, began to domesticate plants and animals. The domestication of plants and animals supported increased populations and sedentary village life became widespread.

Subsistence Strategies The Industrial Revolution involved the replacement of human and animal energy by machines. In a typical nonindustrial society, more than 80% of the population is involved in food production; in a highly industrialized society, 10% of the people produce food for the other 90%.

Subsistence Strategy Each subsistence strategy: supports a characteristic level of population density. has a different level of productivity. has a different level of efficiency.

Foraging Relies on food naturally available in the environment Strategy for 99% of the time humans have been on earth Limits population growth and complexity of social organization

Pastoralism Caring for domesticated animals which produce meat and milk Involves a complex interaction among animals, land, and people Found along with cultivation or trading relations with food cultivators

Transhumant Pastoralism Found mostly in East Africa Men and boys move the animals throughout the year as pastures become available at different altitudes or in different climatic zones. Women and children and some men remain at a permanent village site.

Nomadic Pastoralism The whole population moves with the herds throughout the year There are no permanent villages.

Maasai With Cattle Here, East African Maasai are “bloodletting” on this calf. What kind of relationships would you expect between pastoralists and their animals?

Horticultural Production of plants using non-mechanized technology Typically a tropical forest adaptation that requires cutting and burning the jungle to clear fields Swidden (slash and burn): Clearing fields by felling trees and burning the brush

Agriculture Production of plants using plows, animals, and soil and water control Associated with: Sedentary villages Occupational diversity Social stratification

Peasants Food-producing populations that are incorporated politically, economically, and culturally into nation-states

Transitions to Industrial Economy Affected many aspects of society: Population growth Expanded consumption of resources International expansion Occupational specialization Shift from subsistence strategies to wage labor

Globalization Industrialism today has outgrown national boundaries. The result has been great movement of resources, capital, and population, as the whole world has gradually been drawn into the global economy.

Economic Behavior Nanda, Chapter 6

Economics: Studies the Way People Organize to make Use of Resources Behavior: People want more than the natural resources provide People are social creatures An economic system is constructed to govern production, distribution and consumption

Economic System The part of society that deals with production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services The way production is organized has consequences for the family and the political system. Economics is embedded in the social process and cultural pattern.

Economic Behavior Choosing a course of action that pursues the course of perceived maximum benefit

Allocating Resources Each society has rules to regulate access to resources. Productive resources are used to create other goods or information. Land, water, tools, and knowledge are productive resources.

Productive Resources: Foragers Foraging requires people to spread out over a large area. Boundaries can be adjusted as the availability of resources change. Where resources are scarce and large areas are needed to support the population, boundaries are not usually defended. Where resources are abundant, groups may be more inclined to defend their territory.

Productive Resources: Pastoralists The most critical resources are livestock and land. Livestock are owned and managed by individuals, land and water are generally not owned.

Productive Resources: Pastoralists In the rainy season, cattle graze in areas unsuitable for farming. In the dry season, they move to areas occupied by farmers. Agreements with landowners allow animals to graze on the stubble from harvested fields.

Productive Resources: Horticulturists In horticulture societies, land is communally owned by an extended kin group. Designated officials allocate rights to use land, which may not be sold. Since almost everyone belongs to a land-controlling kin group, few are deprived of access to this basic resource.

Productive Resources: Horticulturists Often involves investing labor in clearing, cultivating, and maintaining land The rights to cleared land and its products are vested in those who work it. Individuals may die while the land is still productive, so a system of inheritance is usually provided.

Productive Resources: Agriculturists Enormous amounts of labor are invested in the land and large quantities of food are produced. Control of the land becomes an important source of wealth and power. Land ownership moves from the kin group to the individual or family. The owner has the right to keep others off the land and dispose of it as he or she wishes.

Productive Resources: Intensive Cultivation Land and other productive resources are likely to be owned by an elite group. Most fieldwork is done by laborers, often referred to as peasants. Landowners enjoy relatively high standards of living, but peasants do not.

Organizing Labor In small-scale preindustrial and peasant economies, the household or some extended kin group is the basic unit of production and consumption. Labor is just one aspect of membership in a social group such as the family.

Organizing Labor In Western society, work has important social implications. For many people, particularly members of the middle classes, work is a source of self-respect, challenge, growth, and personal fulfillment.

Households In most nonindustrial societies, production is based around the household. The household is an economic unit, people united by kinship or other links who share a residence and organize production, consumption, and distribution among themselves.

Gendered Division of Labor 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.

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 are likely to include soldiers, government officials, and members of the priesthood as well as artisans, craftsmen and merchants.

Specialized Labor How does this work in a sneaker factory in Mexico differ from that of a forager?

Patterns of Exchange Reciprocity Redistribution Market

Types of Reciprocity Generalized – Distribution of goods with no specific return expected Balanced – Exchange of goods of equal value, with an obligation to return them. Negative – Exchange conducted for material advantage

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.

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.

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

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 around the Kula circle. Soulava, necklaces of red shell, move in a clockwise direction. Mwali, bracelets of white shell, move counterclockwise.

Kula Ring Although Kula items can be owned and may be taken out of circulation, people generally hold them for a while and then pass them on.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.