Chapter 11

Subsistence and Exchange

Chapter Outline

Adaptation Modes of Subsistence Subsistence and Economics Distribution and Exchange Local Economies and Global Capitalism

Cultural Adaptation

A people’s cultural adaptation consists of a complex of ideas, activities, and technologies that enable them to survive and thrive.

The process of adaptation establishes an ever-shifting balance between the needs of a population and its environment.

Ecosystem

Defined as a system composed of the natural environment and all organisms living within it.

The system is bound by the activities of the organisms, as well as by such physical processes as erosion and evaporation.

Cultural Evolution

Human groups adapt to their environments by means of their cultures.

Culture evolution is the change of cultures over the course of time.

Progress is the notion that humans are moving forward to a better, more advanced stage in their development toward perfection.

Convergent Evolution

In cultural evolution, the development of similar cultural adaptations to similar environmental conditions by different peoples with different ancestral cultures.

Parallel Evolution

In cultural evolution, the development of similar cultural adaptations to similar environmental conditions by peoples whose ancestral cultures were already somewhat alike.

Modes of Subsistence

Food-foraging societies Food-producing societies

– Horticulture •Slash-and-burn

– Agriculture– Pastoralism

Industrial societies

Food-Foraging

The oldest type of human adaptation. Requires that people move their

residence according to changing food sources.

Local group size is kept small. The carrying capacity of the land is the

number of people that the available resources can support at a given level of food-getting techniques.

Neolithic Revolution

Domestication of plants and animals by peoples with stone-based technologies, beginning about 10,000 years ago and leading to radical transformations in cultural systems.

Led to radical transformations in cultural systems with foragers developing new social and economic patterns based either on plant cultivation or pastoralism.

Crop Cultivation: Horticulture

When small communities of gardeners work with simple hand tools, using neither irrigation nor the plow.

One widespread form of horticulture is swidden farming (slash-and-burn). – A form of horticulture in which the

natural vegetation is cut, the slash is burned, and crops are planted among the ashes.

Slash-and-burn

INSERT PHOTO P. 209

Crop Cultivation: Agriculture

Crop cultivation that involves using technologies other than hand tools, such as irrigation, fertilizers, and the wooden or metal plow pulled by harnessed draft animals.

Agriculturalists are able to grow surplus food—providing not only for their own needs but for those of various full-time specialists and nonproducing consumers as well.

Characteristics of Crop-Producing Societies

Emergence of fixed settlements Division of labor was altered

– Development of tools, pottery, clothing, and housing

Social stratification began

Pastoralism

A means of subsistence that relies on raising and managing herds of domesticated migratory grazing animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats.

Pastoralists are usually nomadic, moving as needed to provide animals with pasture and water.

Transhumance is a strategy in which people move grazing animals from winter pastures in low steppe lands to summer pastures on high plateaus.

Industrialization

The Industrial Revolution began 200 years ago with the invention of the steam engine.

It replaced human labor and hand tools with machines and resulted in massive culture change in many societies.

Subsistence and Economics An economic system is an

organizational arrangement for producing, distributing, and consuming goods.

In every society, customs and rules govern the kinds of work done, who does the work, attitudes toward the work, how it is accomplished, and who controls the resources.

The primary resources in a culture are raw materials, technology, and labor.

Land and Water Resources

All societies regulate the allocation of land, water, and other valuable resources.

In nonindustrial societies, individual ownership of land is rare; generally land is controlled by kinship groups, such as the lineage or band.

Technology Resources

The number and kinds of tools a society uses, together with knowledge about how to make and use them constitute its technology.

Food foragers and pastoral nomads who are frequently on the move are apt to have fewer and simpler tools than more settled peoples such as sedentary farmers.

Technology

The tools people use is related to their mode of subsistence.

Food foragers and pastoral nomads who are frequently on the move are apt to have fewer and simpler tools than more settled peoples such as sedentary farmers.

Labor Resources and Patterns

In addition to raw materials and technology, labor is a key resource in any economic system.

Two features are almost always present in human cultures: a basic division of labor by gender and by age.

Division of Labor

The division of labor is commonly governed by rules according to gender and age.

Whether men or women do a particular job varies from group to group, but typically work is divided into the tasks of either one or the other.

Division of Labor: Flexible/Integrated

Most common often among food foragers and subsistence farmers.

Men and women perform up to 35 percent of activities with equal participation.

Boys and girls learn to value cooperation over competition.

Adult men and women interact with each other on a relatively equal basis.

Division of Labor: Segregated Pattern

Societies in this pattern define almost all work as either masculine or feminine, so men and women rarely engage in joint efforts.

This pattern is frequently seen in pastoral nomadic, intensive agricultural, and industrial societies, where men’s work keeps them outside the home for much of the time.

Division of Labor: Dual Sex Configuration

In this pattern, men and women carry out their work separately, as in societies segregated by gender, but the relationship between them is one of balanced complementarity rather than inequality.

Although competition is a prevailing ethic, each gender manages its own affairs, and the interests of both men and women are represented at all levels.

Child Labor in Pakistan

INSERT PHOTO P. 215

Division of Labor by Age

Division of labor according to age is typical of human societies.

In traditional farming societies, children and older people make a greater contribution to the economy in terms of work than in industrial or postindustrial societies.

In industrial societies, where poor families depend on every possible contribution to the household, children often work.

Cooperative Labor

Cooperative work groups can be found in every type of society.

If the effort involves the whole community, a festive spirit permeates the work.

Reciprocity

A transaction between two parties whereby goods and services of roughly equivalent value are exchanged.

Types of Reciprocity

Generalized - The value of the gift is not calculated, nor is time of repayment specified.

Balanced reciprocity - Giving and receiving are specific as to the value of goods and the time of their delivery.

Negative reciprocity - The aim is to get something for as little as possible and may involve hard bargaining, manipulation, cheating, and theft.

Trade and Barter

Barter is a form of reciprocity by which scarce items from one group are exchanged for desirable goods from another group.

Although each party seeks to get the best deal, both may negotiate until a balance has been found and each feels satisfied.

The Kula Ring

Balanced reciprocity that reinforces trade relations among a group of seafaring Melanesians inhabiting a ring of islands off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea.

Participants are influential men who travel within the Trobriand ring to exchange prestige items such as soulava (red shell necklaces), which are circulated clockwise around the islands, and mwali (white shell armbands), which are carried in the opposite direction.

The Kula Ring

Redistribution

A form of exchange in which goods flow into a central place where they are sorted and reallocated.

Three motives in redistribution:– Gain a position of power through a display of

wealth and generosity.– Assure those who support the leadership an

adequate standard of living.– Establish alliances with leaders of other groups.

Conspicuous Consumption

Display of wealth for social prestige. Potlatch

– On the northwest coast of North America, a ceremonial event in which a village chief publicly gives away stock-piled food and other goods that signify wealth.

Potlatch among the Tlingit

INSERT PHOTO P. 220

Prestige Economy

Creation of a surplus for the express purpose of gaining prestige through a public display of wealth that is given away as gifts.

Leveling Mechanism

A cultural obligation compelling prosperous members of a community to give away goods, host public feasts, provide free service, or otherwise demonstrate generosity so that no one permanently accumulates more wealth than anyone else.

Market Exchange

To an economist, market exchange has to do with the buying and selling of goods and services, with prices set by rules of supply and demand.

Personal loyalties and moral values are not supposed to play a role, but they often do.

Money

Something used to make payments for goods and services and to measure their value.

Items used as money include salt, shells, stones, beads, feathers, fur, bones, teeth, and metals, from iron to gold and silver.

Informal Economy

A network of producing and circulating marketable commodities, labor, and services that for various reasons escape government control (enumeration, regulation, or other type of public monitoring or auditing).

May encompass a range of activities, including: gardening, house cleaning, child care, doing repair or construction, lending money, picking pockets, and gambling.