ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES
The advent of food production fueled major changes in human life
Adaptive strategy: means of making a living; productive system
Cohen: typology of societies
Foraging Add Maritime
Horticulture
Agriculture
Pastoralism
Industrialism
FORAGING
Foraging economies relied on nature to make their living
All foragers rely on natural resources for subsistence, rather than controlling plant and animal reproduction
Foraging has survived mainly in environments that posed major obstacles to food producti
SAN: THEN AND NOW
Dobe Ju/'hoansi San are in southern Africa surrounded by waterless belt
An estimated 100,000 San live in poverty on society's fringes
Botswana relocated the San Bushmen outside their ancestral territory to create a wildlife area
The high court reversed th
CORRELATES OF FORAGING
Correlation: association or covariation between two or more variables
Typically, foraging groups are mobile
People who subsist by hunting, gathering, and fishing often live in band-organized societies
Band: basic social unit among foragers; fewer than 10
CULTIVATION
Horticulture: cultivation that makes intensive use of none of the factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery
Horticulturists use simple tools
Fields not permanently cultivated
Slash-and-burn cultivation
Shifting cultivation
Agriculture: cu
THE CULTIVATION CONTINUUM
intermediate economies that combine horticultural and agricultural features
Horticulture always uses a fallow period; agriculture does not
Main form of cultivation in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, Mexico, Central America, and South Ame
INTENSIFICATION: PEOPLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Intensive cultivators are sedentary
Agricultural economies grow increasingly specialized
One or a few caloric staples
Animals that are raised
Agricultural economies pose a series of regulatory issues that central governments often have arisen to solve
PASTORALISM
herders whose activities focus on such domesticated animals as cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and yaks
Attempt to protect their animals and to ensure reproduction in return for food and other products
Typically make use of herds for food
Before the Industr
MODES OF PRODUCTION
Economy: system for the 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 kn
PRODUCTION IN NONINDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
Division of economic labor related to age and gender is a cultural universal, but specific tasks assigned to each sex and age vary
Betsilio of Madagascar have two stages of teamwork in rice cultivation
MEANS OF PRODUCTION
Means, or factors, of production include land, labor, technology, and capital
Land
Less permanent among foragers than for food producers
Among food producers, the rights to means of production also come through kinship and marriage
MODES OF PRODUCTION
Labor, tools, and specialization
In nonindustrial societies, access to land and labor comes through social links
Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil
ALIENATION IN INDUSTRIAL ECONOMIES
When factory workers produce for sale and for their employer's profit, rather than for their own use, they may become alienated from the items they make
A case of industrial alienation:
Malaysia�one response to factory relations of production has been spi
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 economic systems and motivations in a cross-cultural per
ALTERNATIVE ENDS
People in various societies put their scarce resources toward building
Subsistence fund
Replacement fund
Social fund
Ceremonial fund
Peasants: small-scale agriculturalists who live in nonindustrial states and have rent fund obligations
Live in states�o
DISTRIBUTION, EXCHANGE
Three principles orienting exchanges: market principle, redistribution, reciprocity
Society usually dominated by one
Dominant principle of exchange is the one that allocates means of production
THE MARKET PRINCIPLE
Market principle: buying, selling, and valuation are based on supply and demand
Bargaining is characteristic
Have to have a place (real or virtual) to conduct exchange
REDISTRIBUTION
flow of goods into a center, then back out; characteristic of chiefdoms
Grow surplus foods or make surplus products
Chief or leadership decides how to divide goods and give out to people
RECIPROCITY
exchange between social equals, normally related by kinship, marriage, or close personal ties
Reciprocity continuum: running from generalized reciprocity (closely related/deferred return) to negative reciprocity (strangers/immediate return)
Generalized re
COEXISTENCE OF EXCHANGE PRINCIPLES
In North America, the market principle governs most exchanges
Also redistribution and generalized reciprocity
Balanced reciprocity would be out of place in a foraging band
Give me some examples of each you do.
POTLATCHING
festive event within regional exchange system among tribes of North Pacific Coast of North America
Some tribes still practice the potlatch
Canada has legally banned potlatch
Potlatches traditionally gave away food, blankets, pieces of copper, or other ite
WHAT IS "THE POLITICAL"?
Substantial variation in power, authority, and legal systems
Power: ability to exercise one's will over others
Authority is formal, socially approved use of power. The role you have, but you may not have any power.
Prefer "sociopolitical organization" in
TYPES AND TRENDS
Elman Service: four types, or levels, of political organization
Band: small kin-based group among foragers
Tribe: economy based on nonintensive food production
Service (continued)
Chiefdom: intermediate form between tribe and state
Differential access: fa
FORAGING BANDS
Modern foragers live in nation-states and an interlinked world
All foragers now trade with food producers
Most contemporary hunter-gatherers rely on governments and missionaries
The San
Kent: tendency exists to stereotype foragers; stresses variation amon
TRIBAL CULTIVATORS
Tribes: typically have horticultural or pastoral economy and organized by village life and/or descent-group membership
Lack socioeconomic stratification and formal government
Regulatory officials are village heads, "big men," descent-group leaders, vill
THE VILLAGE HEAD
The Yanomami believe that the position of village head (local tribal leader with limited authority) is achieved; it comes with very limited authority
Must lead by example
Acts as mediator in disputes
Must lead in generosity
THE "BIG MAN
like a village head, except his authority is regional and may have influence over more than one village
Common to South Pacific
Must be generous
Serves as temporary regional regulator who can mobilize supporters
PANTRIBAL SODALITIES
groups that extend across whole tribe, spanning several villages
Best examples: Central Plains of North America and tropical Africa
Plains: leadership needed to raid enemy camps and manage summer bison hunt
NOMADIC POLITICS
Nomads must interact with a variety of groups, unlike most sedentary societies
Powerful chiefs commonly found in nomadic groups that have large populations
Example: Basseri and Qashqai
CHIEFDOMS
Transitional form of sociopolitical organization, between tribes and states
Carneiro: state is "an autonomous political unit encompassing many communities within its territory, having a centralized government with the power to collect taxes, draft men for
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS
Social relations based on kinship, marriage, descent, age, generation, and gender
Chiefdoms and states have permanent roles
Office: permanent position that must be refilled when it is vacated by death or retirement
Offices outlast individuals
Offices ensu
STATUS SYSTEMS
Based on seniority of descent
People in a chiefdom believed to have descended from common ancestors
The chief must demonstrate seniority of descent
Lack of sharp gaps between elites and commoners
Differential access to resources
Allocation of rights a
THE EMERGENCE OF STRATIFICATION
Weber: three dimensions of social stratification:
Economic status or wealth: all a person's material assets; the basis of his or her economic status
Power: the ability to control others; the basis of political status
Prestige: esteem, respect, or approval
STATE SYSTEMS
State specializations
Population control
Judiciary
Law enforcement
Fiscal systems
POPULATION CONTROL
States control population through administrative subdivision: provinces, districts, "states," counties, subcounties, and parishes
Aim is to foster geographic mobility and resettlement
Differential rights are assigned to different status distinctions
JUDICIARY
States have laws based on precedent and legislative proclamations
All states have courts and judges
The law is unique in that it governs family affairs
States attempt to curb internal conflict
Presence of laws has not reduced violence
ENFORCEMENT
Agents of the state mete out punishment and collect fines
Although states impose hardships, they offer advantages
Formal mechanisms designed to protect against external threats and to preserve internal order
FISCAL SYSTEMS
pertains to finances and taxation
States redistribute (through taxation), but generosity and sharing played down
The state does not bring more freedom or leisure to the common people
Elites of archaic states have reveled in the consumption of sumptuary go
SOCIAL CONTROL
those fields of the social system (beliefs, practices, and institutions) that are most actively involved in the maintenance of any norms and regulation of any conflict
HEGEMONY AND RESISTANCE
subordinates comply by internalizing rulers' values and accepting the "naturalness" of domination (Gramsci, 1971)
Make subordinates believe they will eventually gain power
Separate or isolate people while supervising them closely
Popular resistance most
WEAPONS OF THE WEAK
The oppressed may seem to accept their own domination, even as they question it offstage in private
Public transcript: open public interaction between superordinates and subordinates
Hidden transcript: critique of power that goes on offstage, where the p
SHAME AND GOSSIP
Informal" control through fear, stigma, shame, and gossip key in small-scale societies
Makua: three sanctions for social control:
Cadeia (jail): the last phase of an extended political and legal process
Enretthe (sorcery attack): was believed such a puni