Subsistence, Economy, and
Materialist Theories in
Anthropology
Human diversity understood in terms of
environment & technology
Emphasis on:
Constraints: land, technology, population
Systematic, integrative relationships
Adaptation
Major Theories & Theorists
19th century social & cultural
evolutionism (L.H. Morgan, E. B. Tylor)
Multilinear evolution & cultural ecology
(J. Steward, M. Sahlins)
Neo-evolutionism (L. White, M. Harris)
World systems theory (E. Wallerstein)
Political Ecology
Patterns of Subsistence
Food Getting – FORAGING
hunters & gatherers, gatherers & hunters, fishing
Food Production – CULTIVATION
The cultivation continuum
• horticulture (ecological agriculture)
• Agriculture
• Pastoralism
Industrialism
Adaptive strategies & constraints
Environment, technology, population
Subsistence
the market as economic organizing principle
is very recent in terms of human history
economy oriented toward subsistence (food
getting & production) the norm for most of
human history
agriculture (cultivation) also recent (10,000
yrs ago)
for 100,000 years of human history - foraging
(food getting) was the economy of human life
Adaptation and the Anthropology
of Subsistence
Long standing disciplinary concern
Cultural Ecology
Julian Steward - relationship between culture and
the environment
cultural variation found in adaptation to
environmental circumstances
Human ecology is the system & systematic
relationships between humans, material life, &
environment
environment not determinant -- societies react to
their ecology
typology of cultures, patterns, sequences
Specific or multi-linear evolution
specific evolution - adaptive processes in a particular
society in a particular environment; changes in one
society rather than human society in general
Multi-linear evolution - cultures have followed different
lines of development (rather than general processes),
particular to each environment
Strategies of adaptation - adjustments that individuals
make to obtain & use resources and to solve immediate
problems
Steward’s culture core
constellation of features which are most
closely related to subsistence activities
& economic arrangements
social, political, religious patterns as are
empirically determined to be closely
connected with those arrangements
Leslie White
degree of cultural development varies directly
as the amount of energy per capita per year
harnessed and put to work
amount of energy per capita harnessed & put
to work within the culture
technological means with which this energy is
expended
human need-serving product that accrues
from the expenditure of energy
E (energy) V T (technology) = P (product)
WORLD SYSTEMS (Wallerstein)
Global economic relations between
subsistence strategies, regions, nations
Capitalism and common political, social,
economic, structure
Core, peripheries, & semi-peripheries
Relationships of dependency
World economy — development and
predominance of market trade = capitalism
POLITICAL ECOLOGY
Putting cultural ecology in historical motion
Still strongly about human/environment
relations
inter-relationships between groups within a
world system of political, economic relations
Attention to an international division of labor
Temporal framework is history rather than
evolution
Levels of Socio-Cultural
Integration & Subsistence
From foragers to cultivators
band, tribe, chiefdom, state
Typology of ideal types
FORAGING
hunters & gatherers, gatherers &
hunters, fishing
food getting is dependent on naturally
occurring resources, plants & animals
Naturally occurring?
Little or no human modification
modern day foragers
few forgers remaining
San (!Kung) - Africa; Kalahari desert
Mbuti - equatorial forests of west &
central Africa
Madagascar and SE Asia
Aborigines of Australia
Inuit - hunters (now using snow mobiles
& rifles)
Features of Foraging
small communities in sparsely populated areas
few hundred people related by kinship & marriage
mobile lifestyle - no permanent settlements
no individual land rights
size of community may vary from season to season,
culture to culture
Band form of social organization
Foraging and Social
Stratification
Egalitarian band societies – little social
stratification
social stratification by age & gender (no
classes)
division of labor - age & gender
Foraging and Gender
gender - great deal of diversity
tendency is for men to hunt & women to
gather
gathering contributes more to daily diet
than hunting
women & men share equal status - more
or less, egalitarian society
Where hunting & fishing dominate - the
status of women is lower
Eleanor Leacock on Foragers
and Social Stratification
egalitarian societies do exist where men and
women can do different jobs and remain
separate but equal
Dual sex societies
Control over exchange of scarce resources is
related to social stratification in foraging
groups
The Problem of Man the Hunter
man the hunter model ignored evidence
for modern foragers: women do some
of the hunting
female gathered goods account for
more than half & at times nearly all of
what is eaten
Problem of the archaeological record
woman the gatherer
Re-focused model of human evolution
key importance of female gathering
"lost" female tools in arch. record - fiber
carrying nets & baskets
food sharing rather than hunting key to
human evolution
Food sharing & the need for social
relations
Forager Mode of Production
Collective ownership of means of production
(land and its resources)
Right to reciprocal access
Little emphasis on accumulation (ethos
opposing hoarding)
Total sharing throughout camp
Equal access to tools necessary to acquire
food
Individual ownership of tools
The Cultivation Continuum
Horticulture or ecological agriculture
Agriculture
Pastoralism
Horticulture or Ecological
Agriculture
Some human modification of environment
gardens & fields & technology
cultivation method that works in a variety of
environments - most common in temperate
and tropical forests & savannas
Cultivation that works with, and to varying
extents, mimics the natural ecology
Horticulture/Ecological
Agriculture
growing crops of all kinds with relatively simple
tools and methods, in the absence of permanently
cultivated fields
break up soil only using hand tools, hoes, spades,
sharpened sticks
clear land for planting with simple tools, knives,
axes, and fire is used to remove trees and grasses
Little if any use of fertilizers
Little if any effort towards increase supply of water
to the fields
Horticulture or Ecological
Agriculture
cultivation method that works in a variety
of environments - most common in
temperate and tropical forests & savannas
Horticultural Methods
Slash & burn
Associated with poor tropical soils
Initially big trees are cleared
Brush is cut and left to dry
Burned before arrival of rains providing a
little fertilisation and clears the plot of
weeds
After several years of use must lie fallow
Swidden- a garden cultivated by the slash
and burn technique.
Kinds of Horticulture or Ecological
Agriculture
Slash & burn or
shifting cultivation
Swidden
extensive agriculture
dependence on tree crops
Long term use
Slash and Burn
characteristic features - horticulture
size of settlements are larger than foragers
more stable sources of food available
tend to aggregate into villages - settlements are
more permanent, investments of labor into fields,
encourages sedentism
compared to foragers horticulturalists their family
and kin invest labor in improving a specific and
relatively well defined territory
property rights = access to resources
each group laying claim to a specific area for clearing,
plantings, residence by applying their labor to it
Social Stratification
more densely populated areas, sedentary
lives
divisions of labor - age & gender
land & inheritance - family claims to
land; heads of families, resources,
claims, political & judicial orgs
increased specialization - food
producers vs. non food producers
Public Perceptions of
Horticulturalists
they’re inefficient, wasteful, ignorant
Destroyers of the rain forest
• or
they rotate crops
they’re efficient and sustainable
they have great knowledge of forest
resources and desire to maintain the forest
their livelihoods are threatened by state and
international political and economic processes
Agriculture - intensive cultivation
a variety of techniques employed that enable
the cultivation of permanent fields
Large-scale human modification of land,
plants, animals
Agricultural Techniques
nutrients back into the fields, use of fertilization
and multi cropping
Plant species are manipulated & fully domesticated
domesticated animals and fertilization, turned
loose into fields after harvest, manure, nutrients
back into soil
more intensive weeding
Irrigation, dams and runoff, stored water &
reservoirs, streams rechanneled, terracing controls
water on hillside & mountains
Investments
greater control over land ->increased
outputs/yields
Increased inputs – Leslie White
long term production, dependable output
characteristic features
sedentism, large permanent communities - villages,
towns, cities
growth in population size & density
surpluses - a cultivator can feed many more people
than just him or her self and family
more need to coordinate land, labor, resources
more need to regulate relations through governing
bodies
tributes, taxes, rents, private property
Social Stratification
Surpluses and people
more people who don't produce food
high degree of craft specialization
more complex political organization
larger differences in wealth and power
food growers & non-food
growers
rural peoples who are
integrated into a larger
society politically
(imposed laws, taxes,
rents, etc. from outside
their community) &
economically (exchange
products of their labor
for products produced
elsewhere)
Increased Coordination – land,
labor, resources
increased need to regulate social
relations -- governing bodies arise
4 major civilizations of the old
world: association of intensive
agriculture with large scale
political organization: the state
Tigris & Euphrates rive
valleys of Mesopotamia
Indus river valley
Pakistan
Shan cities of China
Nile river
Agriculture as Maladaptation
(J. Diamond)
Homo sapiens from genetic standpoint
humans are still late paleolithic preagricultural
hunters and gatherers (35,000yrs ago)
Rise of new disease profile
Decline in environmental/ecological diversity
Decline in food diversity
Pastoralism
Pastoral societies are those in which a
sizeable proportion of their subsistence
is based on the herding of animals
within a set of spatially dispersed
natural resources (vegetation, water,
etc.).
Pastoralism
herders acquire much of their food by raising,
caring for, and subsisting on the products of
domesticated animals
many pastoralist/herders cultivate
many acquire bulk of their calories from their crops
rather than their animals or through trade
herds subsist on natural forage and must be moved
to where the forage naturally occurs
Some move all the time, others move
seasonally
characteristic features
nomadism - entire group moves or
transhumance - only part of the group
moves; some groups sedentary
interdependence between pastoral and
agricultural groups
trade animal products for agri. products from
cultivators
sell livestock, hides, meat, wool, milk, cheese, or
other products for money
use livestock as beasts of burden
advantages of herding as adaptation
vegetation of grasslands & arid savannas &
of tundra is indigestible by humans
livestock turn it into milk, blood, fat, meat
all of which can be eaten or drunk by
herders
livestock provide insurance against
unpredictable environments of drought &
low yields
mobility - herds can be moved to fresh grass
and water, avoid the tax man
Pastoralists and the State
Problems nomads pose for territorial
states
Alberta Pastoralisms or Industrial
Beef Production?
First Nations Pastoralisms or
Foraging?