Population, environment
and sustainability
Lecture three
Anthropology and environmental
issues
• The world is confronted with a number of
environmental problems: global warming,
pollution, loss of habitat and diversity, depletion
of resources
• Ideas of sustainability and self-sufficiency have
become popular.
• Band, tribal and peasant societies as models
• These societies most under stress from
environment change and threats to ‘wilderness’
How many people can spaceship
earth carry?
• Here is a big issue – is the world’s
population sustainable? What can
anthropology tell us about this issue?
• History of world population. (Graph)
• Why have populations increased?
• What have been the consequences?
• What is a sustainable increase?
What are the causal links?
• Three kinds of explanation of population
increase
– Natural increase,
– Human inventiveness,
– Social change.
• Why do hunters and gather populations
historically remain roughly stable?
Definitions of Hunters and Gatherers
• Can be defined by relationship to environment or
defined by a particular set of social relationships
• Hunters and gathers, also known as foragers,
sustain themselves by taking from what their
environment provides but do not seek to
transform that environment for example by the
use of domesticated plants or animals.
• Borderline cases,
– Plains Indians and the horse,
– NW Coast Indians and marine migrations – nature
comes to them,
– Sami – manage wild herds.
Hunters and Gatherers
• Where did/do these people still live? Worldwide
but in remote/refuge areas of forest and desert.
• There are groups of hunters in Canada (e.g.
Cree, Dene, Inuit, Naskapi, Montagnais,
Chipeweyan), USA (e.g. Ute, Paiute), South
America (Guayaki-Ache), Africa (Mbuti, Dorobo,
!kung, G/Wi, Baswara et al), India (MalPantaram), South East Asia (Montagnards,
Negritos), and Australia (Yirrkala, Pitjantjatara).
http://anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/
Acquatic foragers
Iniut
Social definition – Band society
Band society –
• size and composition of groups,
–
–
–
–
small,
fluid,
nomadic, low population density,
kinship. ‘Eskimo’ is our system
• Minimum social roles,
– gender, age,
– no set leaders or leadership roles,
– minimum economic specialisation.
Hadza woman searching for tubers –
Tanzania, East Africa
• Foragers are frequently
opportunists taking what
is readily available and
what they fancy
• Typically, but not
exclusively, men hunt
women gather. Women
contribute more reliable
nutrition, hunting output is
riskier.
• Hadza 2hr work a day, no seasonal
shortages, and healthier children than
neighbours. Sleep and gamble.
• Hunters and gatherers as the • “original affluent society”
•
Marshal Sahlins
• Sahlins, M. (1974)
Stone Age Economics
London : Tavistock
Publications.
!kung San
• San people of the
Kalahari
• Studies by many
including Richard Lee
• "Why should we plant
when there are so many
mongongo nuts in the
world?" ," /Xashe, "
• In terms of our standard
eight-hour workday, a
San adult works between
2.2 and 2.4 hours a day
• Elsie Vaalbooi
•
• Born approximately August
1895 on the farm Grondneus
outside Upington, Gordonia
District. Died 7 October, 2002
Her parents were !Uxe "Vaal"
and ||Qoisi "Marie", both of
them N||n=e San. They were
hunters and gatherers who
later became itinerant farm
workers.
• http://www.san.org.za/index.ht
m
Vincent, John On the Sexual Division of Labour, Population, and
the Origins of Agriculture Current Anthropology > Vol. 20, No. 2
(Jun., 1979), pp. 422-425
Pre – neolithic population equilibrium
• Nomadic women limit births
How – prolonged breast feeding, infanticide, and
abstinence
On settlement – fertility rates increase rapidly
• low population density means resources remain
abundant
• social inequality limited by the inability of any to
monopolise the necessities (or even the good things) in
life.
• Risks spread, through social relationships, no concept of
property, generosity prime virtue, !kung and the fat ox
• A model for contemporary sustainability in the face of
environmental problems?
Cautionary tales
• Culturalist re-appraisal
•
•
Bird-David, Nurit (1992) Beyond the “Original Affluent Society”: a culturalist
reformulation. Current Anthropology 33(1), pp. 25-35.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743706
• Problems of extrapolation, can we use current hunters
and gathers as models of past
•
W.G. Runciman. “Stone Age Sociology”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, Volume 11, Number 1 (March 2005), pp. 129-142,
http://ejscontent.ebsco.com/ContentServer/FullTextServer.asp?format=fulltext&ciid=81191B007A9E93DDBA41AA93F7F74D8EC21F979
6B2EEE0F74B1A7E2974D70052F505F5C2DE5FB3B0&ftindex=1&ext=.pdf
• Gypsy's, bandits, refuge areas. Need for history of
“timeless” people.
•
Gordon, Robert (1983) “The !Kung San: A Labor History” Cultural Survival Quarterly
Issue 7.4 December 31, 1983
•
http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/the-kung-san-a-labor-history