Good morning.
WebCT is fixed.
The study guide is on the class web (No answers until the evening!)
About the exam
 Exam:
 40 Multiple choice (40p)
 20 True-False (20p)
 5 Fill in the blanks (each 2 points)(10p)
 One short (choice of two) (5p)
 One essay (choice of two) Miller (10p)
 One essay (Hedican)Choice of two (15p)
Today
 Consumption and exchange
 Miller ch.4 and
 Hedican- Up in the Nipigon Country
The KEY Questions
 How do modes of production relate to consumption?
 How do modes of production
relate to exchange?
 What are some examples
of how contemporary global
economic changes affect nonmarket modes of consumption and
exchange?
Summary
Potlatching
 Potlatches, as once practiced by northwest coast Native American groups, are
a widely studied ritual in which sponsors (helped by their entourages) gave
away resources and manufactured wealth while generating prestige for
themselves.
Potlatching
 Potlatching tribes (such as Kwakiutl and Salish peoples) were foragers but
lived in sedentary villages and had chiefs—this political complexity is attributed
to the overall richness of their environment.
Potlaching
 Remember?
 nonindustrial economies do not always fit cleanly into the distinct categories as
we saw.
 Now you can see why we learned to talk about foragers for example.
Redistribution
 In a redistributive system, product moves from the local level to the
hierarchical centre, where it is reorganized, and proportion is sent back down
to the local level.
Redistribution
 Goods, services or their equivalent which are collected or accumulated by
members of a group then are given away in a new pattern (usually in a
ceremonial feast).
Redistribution
 Center
 
 Local level
Centre

Local level
Homo-economicus?
 Classical economic theory assumed that individuals universally acted
"rationally" by economizing to maximize profits, but comparative data shows
that people frequently respond to other motivations than profit (i.e. maximazing
prestige)


Maximizing status, sharing, caring, starving to death for ones beliefs.
Consumption
 Intake
 Output in terms of spending
 Measurement of consumption as comparative tools
 Cash, time, labour, goods (cross cultural variations).
Cash
 Cash: A medium of exchange that has an assigned value independent of its
intrinsic value (nickels, paper not necessarily golden coins).
 The process of consumption and exchange
 Market vs. non-market
Consumerism
 Consumerism: What we do when we go to Chapters to look at the books and
buy a funky purple plastic address book (see Miller pg.xx, right column).




120 % of worlds resources who eats the biggest piece of the cake?
Past fifty years' consumption = previous consumption of all homo-sapiens
Consumption fund
 a category of budget to meet needs.
Alternative ends?
 People devote their time, resources, and energy to five broad categories of
ends: subsistence, replacement, social, ceremonial, and rent. (Miller makes
the distinction entertainment fund)
Funds
 Subsistence fund
 Replacement fund
 Social fund
 Ceremonial fund
 Rent fund
Subsistence fund
 Subsistence fund: work is done to replace calories lost through life activities.
E.g. ?
Replacement fund
 Replacement fund: work is expended maintaining the technology necessary
for life (broadly defined).
Social fund
 Social fund: work is expended to establish and maintain social ties. E.g. ?
Ceremonial fund
 Ceremonial fund: work is expended to fulfil ritual obligations.
 E.g. ?
 $$$$ Thanksgiving meal.
Rent fund
 Rent fund: work is expended to satisfy the obligations owed (or inflicted by)
political or economic superiors.
 (Klein-me)
Entitlement Bundles
Entitlement at 3 Levels
 Global
– The global economy means some countries are more secure than others
– Famine
 National
 Household
Consumption categories
 Class
 Gender
 Race
 Age
Budgeting
 Household expenditures (and who they are spent on) depend on the decision
maker
– Male budgetary control
– Female budgetary control
– Pooling system
– Non-pooling system
Food taboos
 Cultural materialists believe that
 culture is based on the need to convert energy to human use
 cultural practices are based on making the maximum use of energy resources
India’s sacred cow
 Protection of cows (Marvin Harris)
 Cows are worth more alive than dead because they provide a myriad of
economic benefits


Hindus do not kill cows because they get more energy from the living cow's
labor, milk and dung than a dead cow would provide in meat protein.
Food taboos
 Value of food as a way of communicating meaning

 "Matter out of place" Marry Douglas

 Cloven hoofs versus those that chew cud
Exchanges
 Material goods
 Symbolic goods
 Labour
 Money
 People
Modes of exchange
 Balanced exchange
 Redistribution
 Market exchange
 Unbalanced exchange
Distribution and exchange
 The market principle
 The market principle applies when exchange rates and organization are
governed by an arbitrary money standard.




Price is set by the law of supply and demand.
The market principle is common to industrial societies.
Redistribution
 Redistribution is the typical mode of exchange in chiefdoms and in some
nonindustrial states.
Redistribution
 In a redistributive system, product moves from the local level to the
hierarchical centre, where it is reorganized, and a proportion is sent back down
to the local level.
Reciprocity
 Reciprocity is exchange between social equals and occurs in three degrees:
generalized, balanced, and negative.
Generalized reciprocity
 Generalized reciprocity is most common to closely related exchange
partners and involves giving with no specific expectation of exchange, but with
a reliance upon similar opportunities being available to the giver (prevalent
among foragers).
Balanced reciprocity
 Balanced reciprocity involves more distantly related partners and involves
giving with the expectation of equivalent (but not necessarily immediate)
exchange (common in tribal societies, and has serious ramifications for the
relationship of trading partners).
 Negative reciprocity involves very distant trading partners and is
characterized by each partner attempting to maximize profit and an
expectation of immediate exchange (e.g., market economies, silent barter
between Mbuti foragers and horticulturalist neighbours).
Coexistence of Exchange Principals
 Most economies are not exclusively characterized by a single mode of
reciprocity.
Changes in Consumption and Exchange
 Lure of Western goods
 Cash cropping and declining nutrition
 Effects of privatization
 Credit cards
Edward J. Hedican
 Up in the Nipigon Country
 Anthropology as a Personal Experience
Hedican
 What is the purpose of the book?
 What is the purpose of reading this book in this class?
 What is the main point which differentiates it from other examples of
knowledge production?
 “how experience shapes eventual interpretation and textual presentation”
(p.18).
 “I” versus royal “we” in knowledge transmission.