Making a Living
Subsistence Strategies
Ways of Making a Living
• Determine all other aspects of culture
• Hunting and Gathering to
Industrialization=less leisured time
• Hunter and Gathers not harsh existence
• H&G work 2 to 3 days and rest 5 to 4 days
• H&G Social Organization based on kinship
• Flexibility in Camp Membership
Subsistence Strategies
• Ways in which societies transform the
material resources of the environment into
food clothing and shelter
• Understand the effects of the physical
environment on human activities and
cultures
• The effects of human cultures on the
physical environment
Strategies
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Hunting and Gatherers
Pastoralism
Horticulture
Agriculture/Peasants
Commercial Agriculture
Industrial Development
Foragers
• Up to 10,000 years ago humans lived by
foraging (hunting & gathering)
• Follow the food
• Territory
• Foraging set limits on population growth
and density and, consequently, on the
complexity of social organization in their
societies
Hunter and Gatherers
• Small population no more than 50 in a
group
• Egalitarian Society
• Division of Labor based on Sex and Age
• Women Gatherers contribute 85% of diet
in fruits, berries, nuts and tubers
• Men collaborate on hunting
• Generosity key social value
Foraging
• Includes hunting of large and small game,
fishing and the collecting of various plant
foods
• Strategy varies in productivity but in
general support lower population densities
• Rely mostly on vegetal collecting than
hunting
Exception
• Inuit of Arctic Circle. No plant collecting
• Culture adapted to availability of different
animals in different seasons
• Coastal Alaska Inuit depended on whaling
and seal hunting
• Animals provide not only food but also
resources for material culture, such as
layered clothing
Inuit Women
• No plant collection possible given Arctic
environment.
• Play less important role than women in
most foraging societies
• Do play vital role in distributing meat and
processing meat for storage, making and
repairing clothing, cooking and caring for
children
Aborigines Australian Desert
• Wide range of vegetal food
• Foraging not necessarily harsh existence
even in desert environment
• Less extreme environments, predictable
plant foods can be supplemented by
hunting
• Aborigines select from available food
items of high nutritional value
Hunter & Gatherers
• Original Affluent Society
• Time spent gathering and hunting food is
minimal
• Generalized Reciprocity key to survival
• Rich ritual and expressive culture
• Gossip and ignoring are social sanctions
• In extreme, force to leave camp
H&G Social Group
• Nuclear Family
• Age respected for wisdom and knowledge
of the environment
• Arranged Marriages
• Fathers help in Child raising
• Bilinear Kinship
Contemporary Hunters and
Gathers
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Botswana
Environments marginal
Do wage Labor
Generalized Reciprocity breaking down
Go on H&G trek 6 or 9 months and return
to wage labor to have cash with which to
buy consumer items
Pastoralism
• Food getting strategy that depends on the
care of domesticated herds
• Efficient way to exploit semi-arid natural
grasslands that are otherwise
unproductive
• Does not compete directly with humans for
the same resources
Major Areas of Pastoralism
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East Africa---Cattle
North Africa—Camels
Southwestern Asia---Sheep and goats
Central Asia---Yak
The Sub-Arctic---Caribou and Reindeer
Key to Pastoralism
• Herd Growth which depends on
reproduction primarily on reproduction by
herd animals
• The number of animals needed to support
a family is a constant source of
pastoralism decision making
• Herds constitute wealth
Social Organization
• Tend to be based in patrilineal kinship
• Political organization is the Tribe
• Among the Maasai, polygamous
marriages
• Women dependent on husband and son
• Women given cattle to start herd for her
sons
Yarahmadzai of Iran
• Varied seasons allow for varied diet, but
milk is the stable food
• Their flock are their capital: a renewable
resource
• Herding combined with other subsistence
strategies
• Camps migrate constantly between 5-25
miles each way to find grassland
Contemporary Pastoralist
• Depend less on consuming the direct
products of their herd and more on the
sale of their animal products for cash
• Successful in adapting their products to
local and global markets
• Governments try to restrict pastoralist
• Pastoralism cannot support an indefinitely
increasing population
Horticulture
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Tribal Society and Village Life
Extended Families
Do Some H&G
Horticulture: production of plants using a
simple non-mechanized technology
• No plow, no chemical fertilizer
• Cultivated fields not used permanently but
remain fallow for some time after
cultivation
Horticulturalist
• Plant and harvest with simple tools such
as hoes or digging sticks and do not use
draft animals
• Fields have lower yield per acre than
intensive agriculture; not much human
labor
• Grow enough for local group subsistence
but not enough for local markets
Local Groups
• Amazon Basin in South America
• Population densities are generally low,
usually not exceeding 150 people per
square mile
• Villages may be quite large, ranging from
100 to 1,000 people
• Horticulture is typically a tropical forest
adaptation
Swidden Cultivation
• (Slash&Burn)—a form of cultivation in
which a field is cleared by felling trees and
burning the brush
• Fields are used for a few years (one to
five) and then allowed to lie fallow for a
longer period (up to 20 years) so that
forest cover to rebuild and fertility restored
Social Organization
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Extended Family
Patrilineal Descent
Patrilocal Post-marital residence
Population about 300 to 400
Amazonian Indians
Males Dominant
Division of Labor
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Men fell trees and burn forest
Men clear the land
Men dig holes and women plant crop
Women weed and harvest crop
Men and women fish
Men hunt
Crop Cultivation
• Most cultivators plant several crops
• Most horticulturalists shift their residences
as they move their fields but some occupy
villages permanently or at least on a long
term basis
• Land belongs to the tribe. No notion of
private landownership