Too Many Bananas
Not enough pineapples
No watermelons at all
Ecological Materialism
Marvin Harris first organized the theory
Cultures that have similar subsistence strategies ….
will likely develop broadly similar social and cultural institutions.
• Harris was a determinist.
• But subsistence strategies don’t determine social and cultural institutions
• Yet there are some broad patterns.
Major subsistence strategies
• Hunting and gathering (foraging): no domesticated food production or
domestication of animals.
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• Horticulture: production of plants using a simple, non-mechanized technology.
• Pastoralism (herding): food getting strategy that depends on the care of
domesticated herds.
• Agriculture: fields in permanent cultivation using plows, animals, and techniques of
soil and water control.
• Industrialization: mechanization of production.
Foragers
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Humans have been foragers for most of their existence.
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Political organization: band – small group of people from 20 to 80 individuals.
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Basis of economics: reciprocity.
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Social stratification: fairly egalitarian, even between males and females
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Leadership style: no centralized leadership. Flexible and leaders have no power to
coerce or demand.
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Ownership of property: little or no sense of personal ownership.
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Kinship: family is of extreme importance. Bilateral kinship. Band exogamy. Ties
between bands established through marriage.
A group of Netsilik Inuit inside their snow-block constructed igloo. Women in
some foraging groups had significantly less power than men because meat
was so important. Other types of food were scarce in some climates.
Foraging social control
• Social control is through gossip, ridicule, avoidance, but no formal laws
or punishments.
• Violators are often considered ill.
• Violence between members of the band occurs (mostly quarrels over
women), but warfare is quite rare.
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• Religion: no religious hierarchy or full-time specialists.
Horticulturalists
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Political organization: tribe
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Basis of economics: reciprocity and redistribution
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Social stratification: egalitarian
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Leadership style: headman with some authority in group decision-making, but no
real power
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Ownership of property: leaders, but not centralized
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Type and importance of kinship: groups (extended families) develop along with
population growth that comes with horticulture.
• Dani women, Indonesia
Social control
• Social control often includes importance of age sets (groups of same-sex individuals
of similar age who move through many or all of life’s stages together).
• Informal methods include: Gossip, ridicule, avoidance
• Formal methods include: formalized punishment or requirements of compensation.
• Religion: “Bigman” or shamans emerge in some tribes.
• Relatively high warfare in some groups, but not in others.
Three object lessons in living with reciprocity by David
Counts
• Kandoka Village on the island of New Britain in Papua New
Guinea
• Counts were graduate students living in the village
Watermelon
Woman sold the Counts a watermelon.
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The Counts were pretty pleased with their purchase as their diet
had been rice and beef.
The leader of the village was angry about the purchase. Why?
Lesson 1
• In a society where food is shared or gifted as part of social life, you may
not buy it with money.
• The Counts learned to give gifts to people, rather than buy food.
Bananas
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Lots of food was brought to the Count family in the village
Sweet potatoes, taro, papaya, pineapple
Lots and lots of bananas
One day a woman came bringing yet another stalk of bananas
The Counts asked her if she couldn’t give them to someone else.
The village leader came again. They had made the woman ashamed.
Lesson 2
• Never refuse a gift and never fail to return a gift.
• If you cannot use it, you can always give it away to someone else – there is no such
thing as too much – there are never too many bananas.
Pineapples
• One of the village women made a habit of coming by the Counts’ home
for gifts.
• She grabbed from them, even.
• One day the Counts decided to ask her to bring them something once in
awhile, maybe a pineapple.
• She brought them a beautiful pineapple in a few days. They
congratulated themselves on dealing well with a woman who tended to
take and not give.
• One of their friends came by after they had eaten it and asked about it.
Apparently it had been stolen and was going to be a gift to them when it
ripened.
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Lesson 3
• Where reciprocity is the rule and gifts are the idiom, you cannot demand
a gift, just as you cannot refuse a request.
Generalized reciprocity
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Distribution of goods and no overt account is kept of what is given
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No specific return is expected
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Ideally altruistic (without thought of economic or other self interest)
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Assistance is given and if possible and if necessary it is returned
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In Western society this occurs mostly between parents and children
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In foraging societies it is an important social mechanism – especially involving food
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The good opinion of others is necessary for survival in these societies
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The desire not to be stingy is a strong motivation to share and do one’s share
Balanced Reciprocity
• Clear obligation to return within a specified time limit goods of nearly equal value
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It is most often called gift giving but it is economically important
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We give gifts at weddings and birthdays but we know that if we don’t return a gift or
reciprocate there will be negative feelings.
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A refusal to receive or a failure to reciprocate is taken as a withdrawal from a social
relationship
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More often the payoff is not immediate.
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Receiving means an indication of willingness to be obligated and shows a trusting
social relationship
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Often characteristic of trading relations among non-Western peoples without market
economies
Pastoralism and Farming
Economic strategies
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Pastoralism
• Nomadic strategy of herding domesticated animals such as
cattle, reindeer, sheep, goats, yaks, etc.
• Pure pastoralists a rare. Usually pastoralists are interdependent
upon agriculturalists and horticulturalists for plant foods.
• They trade for these with their animal products.
Pastoralists and states
• Because pastoralists are nomadic, they do not historically respect national
boundaries.
• They often come into violent conflict with national governments, such as the Kurds in
Iraq.
• The Forest Department is forcing pastoralists in India to abandon their traditional
livelihood.
• In Rajasthan, department officials have prohibited herders from grazing their animals
on land they have used for generations.
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With nowhere to graze, pastoralists are forced to sell their animals - so the camel is
gradually becoming extinct in Rajasthan.
• Local breeds of goats and cattle are also endangered.
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Tanzania has the third largest cattle herd in Africa, yet the contribution of livestock to
the national economy remains small (30% of agricultural GDP).
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One of the reasons for this is that 80% of livestock exist in pastoral and agro-pastoral
systems and is part of subsistence and trade.
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In pastoralist areas, government policy supports crop farmers, tourism and other
initiatives which the government perceives as more valuable to the economy.
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Pastoralists are therefore actively marginalised from Tanzania’s development
process and the current policies are increasing their poverty.
Typical pastoral social organization
• Political organization: members define themselves as descended from the same
ancestor
• Basis of economics: reciprocity and redistribution. Greater wealth and more hierarchy
than hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists.
• Social stratification: more egalitarian among men. Usually patrilineal.
• Ownership of property: communal ownership of cattle or other animals
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• Leadership style: headman with some authority in group decision-making but no real
power.
• Kinship: Unilineal kinship – patrilineal
Social control
• Social control: importance of age sets
• Informal social control is predominant, but some formal methods
may exist.
• Religion: strong emphasis on initiation rites and other rites of
passage that unite lineages
• Relatively high warfare
Chiefdoms (horticulturalists or pastoralists where there are large
food surpluses)
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Ranked societies, increasing inequality between men and women
Rise of centralized governing center (chief and his political authority)
Redistribution of economic goods under chief’s control
Surplus is used to support the chief and his governing body
Chief has authority over many economic and political matters
Chief often uses magic as a form of social control
Intensive agriculture
Agriculture is associated with:
- the emergence of cities
- complex political organization
- the appearance of impersonal bureaucracies
Social organization in agriculture
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Sovereign leader supported by an aristocratic bureaucracy
State demands loyalties over family ties
Access to power is based on ranked kin groups
Direct hereditary succession of sovereign: increasing appointment of
bureaucratic functionaries
• Redistribution of economic goods that is based on formal tribute and or
taxation
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Social control in agriculture
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Formal laws and punishments; state holds all legitimate access to use of physical
force
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Full-time priesthood provides sacral legitimization of the state
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Class stratification
Private and state ownership of property increases the expense of communal
ownership
The worst mistake in the history of the human race by
Jared Diamond
“… the adoption of agriculture - supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.”
Examples:
- Disease and despotism
- Gross social and sexual inequalities
• We assume that we are better off in almost every respect than people of
the Middle Ages
• We assume that people in the Middle Ages were better off than early
humans.
For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and
gathering
• Philosophers portrayed foraging life as brutish, nasty and short.
• We have always learned that domestication of plants and animals
facilitated our escape from misery.
Can we prove that the lives of people 10,000 years ago improved with
agriculture?
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Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average hunter and gatherer
toward the end of the ice age was 5’ 9” for men and 5’ 5” for women
• By 3000 B.C., with the adoption of agriculture, average height was 5’ 3” for men and
5’ for women
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Skeletons of burial mounds in Illinois and Ohio river valleys show health changes with
adoption of intensive maize farming. A.D. 1150
• Farmers showed 50 percent increase in enamel defects that indicate malnutrition
• Fourfold increase in iron deficiency anemia
• A threefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infections diseases
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An increase in degenerative conditions of the spine
Life expectancy decreased by seven years compared with the pre-agricultural
community
Why the decrease in health?
• Foragers had access to a varied diet.
• Farmers got most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. They gained cheap
calories at the cost of poor nutrition.
• Farmers ran the risk of starvation if a crop failed.
• Agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies.
• Those who traded with other crowded societies, spreading parasites and disease.
• Crowding encourages agriculture and agriculture encourages crowding.
• Epidemics can’t take hold when populations are scattered in small bands that
constantly move.
Deep class divisions
• Hunters and gatherers live on wild plants and animals.
• There can be no kings, no class of people who seize wealth from others.
In U.S. it seems ridiculous to talk about virtues of hunting and
gathering
Americans are an elite
• Depend on oil and minerals imported from countries with poor health and nutrition
Even in the beginning of agriculture
• An elite became better off
• Most people became worse off
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Agriculture supports more people but with a poorer quality of life for most
Agriculture causes population issues because farm women can bear a child every
two years
Hunters and gatherers spaced their children by at least four years.
Being a peasant farmer in many African societies is no picnic
People elsewhere might prefer being more like Bushmen of the Kalahari before
European colonialists pushed them into some of the world’s worst lands
- Plenty of leisure time
- Work less hard than farming neighbors
- 12 to 19 hours of work per week
- Early studies showed average daily food intake for a Bushman was 2,140 calories
and 93 grams of protein
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Jared Diamond’s conclusion
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Hunters and gatherers who chose not to farm, chose to limit their population.
They were killed off and run off by more populous agricultural societies. Some
foragers still exist.
“Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and long-lasting life style in human
history.”
• Hunters and gatherers who chose to farm, chose to increase food production and not
limit population.
“…and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.”
If human existence is measured as a 24-hour day, agriculture has been around for the
last four minutes of that day.
As a subsistence strategy,
is it sustainable? (Diamond)
Discussion Questions
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Is intensified, large-scale agriculture as a source of food the only choice humans
have?
Are there other choices that humans may be too creatively limited to consider?
Why do many people say that’s just the way things are and we can’t change? Are
they right, or do they have an investment in the way things are?
What are the problems with reconsidering an ‘agriculture’ without so much social
stratification and inequalities?
What are the problems with reconsidering ‘agriculture’ without population issues?
What can we learn from alternative examples such as horticulture and foraging
economic values and strategies?
What are we afraid of losing when we discuss these issues?
Industrialization
The mechanization of production (machines replace human and
animal energy)
Industrialization and Market Economy
Industrialization
• We talked about industrialization and its influence on perceptions of time.
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• Wherever industrialization is introduced, social/cultural time-values change
• Today the topic is industrialization/capitalism and social stratification
Industrialization:
Involves extreme occupational specialization.
• Led to the Market Exchange economic system in which goods and services are
bought and sold.
• Its main purpose is to maximize material gain.
• Is associated with intensification of bureaucratization.
Capitalism:
• An economic system in which most people sell their labor for money.
• Land and capital goods are privately owned by a small portion of the population.
• Workers receive less than the value of their contribution.
• The purpose of business is to make a profit.
Capitalism social/cultural ideology
• Individualism and a focus on individual accomplishments
• Competitiveness
• Domination as a social, political and economic model
• Consumption as a way of life
Social stratification (part of agricultural and capitalist subsistence
strategies)
• Caste: Ascribed Status
• Class: Achieved Status
Americans, for example, often believe that through hard work, all people
have a crack at getting to the top.
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Functionalist View
Class structure:
1. provides a competitive arena. A class structure allows the best to rise to the top of
the social strata.
2. provides a motivating force. It offers prizes that challenge people to work hard.
3. provides opportunity.
Within this ideology those who don’t reach their goals:
- likely weren’t smart enough
- likely weren’t motivated enough
- likely didn’t work hard enough
Stratification
Conflict View
Michael Harrington
• Inequalities in income and wealth are generally institutionalized.
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Only on rare occasions do Americans break through the class barrier.
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Few people actually succeed at social advancement through sheer hard work.
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There are some heroes.
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Generally, birth determines one's position in society.
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Rich fathers have rich children while poor fathers have poor children.
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Changes in class position require a complex mixture of luck, inheritance, and effort,
and probably in that order of importance (Harrington, 1984).
Structural Mobility
Occurs when the economic status of people changes as a result of structural changes in
the economy.
The argument is made that the U.S. has a very fluid class-structure.
Many families have improved their class position over the past 100 years.
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As the U.S. became industrialized, the occupational structure itself was transformed.
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When the structure itself changes, everyone's position changes.
There are at least three types of social
differentiation
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Egalitarian society: no individual or group has more privileged access to resources,
power, or prestige than any other.
• Rank society: institutionalized differences in prestige, but few restrictions on access
to basic resources.
• Stratified society: formal, permanent social and economic inequality.
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Social stratification is a hierarchical relationship between different groups of people
who are arranged in layers or strata. People in these strata have unequal access to
wealth, power and prestige.
Unequal access on a variety of measures:
material resources
power
human welfare (such as health care)
education
symbolic attributes
Who controls the wealth in the U.S.?
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Who controls the wealth in the U.S.?
FROM Wealth, Income, and Power by G. William Domhoff, University of California Santa
Cruz, September 2005 (updated December 2006)
Figure 5: Share of capital income earned
by top 1% and bottom 80%, 1979-2003
(From Shapiro & Friedman, 2006.)
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CEOs' average pay, production workers' average
pay, the S&P 500 Index, corporate profits, and the
federal minimum wage, 1990-2005 (all figures adjusted for inflation)
Robertson (1989:180) contends that, while the US is
philosophically indebted to the
notion that "all men are created equal," the US is, in fact, a
very stratified society.
Ideology
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An ideology is a set of beliefs which explain or justify some
actual or potential social arrangement (Robertson, 1989:176).
• An ideology confers legitimacy on a social system.
Hegemony
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937):
• Used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over
others.
• This represents not only political and economic control.
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• Hegemony is the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the
world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and
'natural'.
• Common sense, suggests Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, is 'the way a subordinate class
lives its subordination.'
Who’s Counting?
• Film provides one way to confront hegemony – question the obvious (common sense) and
see what happens
• Film was made in 1995 but is still very relevant
• It questions economic rules that are required of all nations since World War I who want to be
a part of the market economy
• It focuses on Marilyn Waring, an economist from New Zealand
• She was elected to the New Zealand parliament when she was 22
• She traveled all over the world to see how people, especially women, really lived and worked
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