Making a LivingEconomic Systems in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Making a Living

Adaptive StrategiesForagingCultivationPastoralismModes of ProductionEconomizing and MaximizationDistribution & ExchangePotlatching

Making a Living

What are the major adaptive strategies found in nonindustrial societies?

• What is an economy, and what is economizing behavior?

• What principles regulate the exchange of goods and services in various societies?

Adaptive StrategiesFood collection vs. food production: The

advent of food production fueled major changes in human life

•Yehudi Cohen used term “adaptive strategy:” a system of economic production•Regular correlations exist between economic systems and their social features.

Adaptive Strategies

Foraging Horticulture Agriculture Pastoralism Industrialism

• Cohen discusses 5 adaptive strategies

Yehudi Cohen’s Adaptive Strategies (Economic Typology) Summarized

Foraging

All foragers rely on natural resources for subsistence, rather than cultivating plants or herding animals.

Foraging survives in environments that posed obstacles to food cultivation

• Foraging economies have relied on direct use of natural resources to make their living

Hunter-Gatherers: Societal Features

Land: use rights rather than land ownership; territoriality

Nomadism

Awá of Ecuador/Photo: F. Watson

Hunter-Gatherers: Societal Features

Technology: simple but needs knowledge of resources

no /little storage

Photo:Ituri Forest Peoples Fund

Hunter-Gatherers: Societal Features

Kinship: sharing, fluid, bilocal residenence

Photo © David SangerSouth Africa, Western Cape , Kalahari San family, Kagga Kamma

Hunter-Gatherers: Societal Features

Religion: based on nature

Ona (Tierra del Fuegan) Shaman

Hunter-Gatherers: Societal Features

Div of Labor: By Sex and Gender, no institutionalized specialists or leaders

www.peacefulsocieties.org

Recent Foragers

Historically known foraging communities that have few or no families that actively forage for food and materials, and who have thus transferred from mainly food collecting to a mixed economy

Luiseño/Kumeyaay elder workingon cultural resources managementProject/Photo: J.Fortier

Environment & Diet

Group Celsius Biomass H% G% F%

Inuit 8.5 45 40 10 50

Ainu 12 661 20 30 50

Kumiai 14.6 26 40 50 10

Hadza 17.7 1508 35 65 0

Walpiri 18.4 209 30 70 0

Siriono 20.6 2,358 25 70 5

Vedda 23 2800 35 45 20

Celsius=mean temp/year; Biomass=#kilos/km3 of vegetation; H=hunting; G=Gathering; F=fishing

Modern Foragers

People who collect their food from grocery stores

The Cultivation Continuum: Degrees of plant domestication

Manipulation - controlled burnsActive management - saving seedCultivation - keeping a seasonal gardenDomestication - selecting, cross-

breeding

There is a continuum from foraging to farming

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

+Intensity of Energy/Labor sedentary intensive foragers agriculturalists

+ Collection horticulturalists +Cultivation nomadic nomadic pastoralism foragers

- Intensity of Energy/Labor

Social Space ofEconomic Systems

Horticulture

Field not permanently cultivatedSlash-and-burn cultivationShifting cultivation

• Cultivation that makes extensive (not intensive) use of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery

– Use simple tools

Horticulturalists

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 productsHerders typically make direct use of their herds for food

Pastoralists

Products: urine, blood, hides, feces, bone, hair + meat & milk

Land: little ownership Tech: simple, movable, for

weaving, carving, leatherworking

Kinship: patrilineal Religion: animal-based Div of labor: some

specialists Depend on trade

Water buffalo herding, Nepal;Photo: J. Fortier

Agriculture

Domesticated animals Many agriculturalists use animals as

means of productionIrrigation

Can cultivate a plot year after year Capital investment that increases in value

• “Intensive” Cultivation that requires more labor than horticulture does, because it uses land continuously

Agrarian Intensive Land Use

Millet fields, Nepal. Photo: J. Fortier

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

Economic Anthropology

Economy – system of production, distribution, consumption, and reproduction of value, of resources

What forms can value take?

Sage collected for medicine;Kumeyaay of Baja collected ~5 tons& sold to Japan

Formalists: Focus on Maximization (Mini-Max Theories)

• Economics is the study of utility maximisation under conditions of scarcity.

• the individual will make rational choices based on full information

• Universalizing principles• We the Tikopia, R. Firth

Anthropologist Raymond Firth 1901-2002, London School of Economics

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

www.oeku.net/.../images/theogrundlagen-280_1.jpg

Economizing and Maximization

Maximize profit Wealth Prestige Pleasure Comfort Social Harmony

• Some economists recognize individuals may be motivated by other goals

Distribution, Exchange

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

Economic Integration

In North America, market principle governs many exchanges

Also support redistribution, generalized reciprocity, and Householding systems

Santa Clara Market

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

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?

Location of Potlaching Groups

Tsimshian Potlatch; Photo:www.civilization.ca/aborig/cxs/images/cxsm10b.gif