Culture and the Environment:
How Culture Affects How People
Materially Sustain Themselves
Some Basic Tenets
• Both culture and the environment are
complex systems made up of multiple
interacting and interlocked forces and
processes.
• Part of a society’s culture is its use of
material resources provided by the
environment. The ways that societies have
done so is quite diverse.
Hunter-Gatherer Societies
• People live off the land and do not produce
food themselves
• Low population densities
• Detailed knowledge of the environment
required
• Moving with the seasons and moving to
areas with resources
Hunter-Gatherer Societies
• They are often very egalitarian societies
• There was no way to store food
• Those who participated in food gathering
and hunting expeditions were given a share
of the food
• The social ties were temporary: people left
and joined bands as they felt like it
Hunter-Gatherer Societies
• The “original affluent society”: needs are
met for minimal labor in 2-3 days of work
per week
• Sustainable ecologically because needs are
modest
• The system breaks down when outsiders
place restrictions on land use
• When resources become limited, more
emphasis on hunting
Hunter-Gatherer Societies
• Hunter-gatherer societies only gave up this
form of livelihood and turned to horticulture
or pastoralism when they ran out of wild
game.
• Only small proportion of world’s population
today lives by hunting-gathering because
they have been pushed into marginal areas
by agricultural peoples.
Pastoralists
• Pastoralists depend on the products of
domesticated herd animals
• Primarily cattle, sheep, goats, yaks, or
camels, because they produce both meat and
milk (as well as skins for clothing and other
products)
• They may trade these products with their
neighbors for other kinds of items or food
Pastoralists
• Specialized adaptation to environments that
cannot support a human population through
agriculture (hilly terrain, dry climate, or
unsuitable soil) but produces grass (which
humans cannot eat).
• Major areas of pastoralism: East Africa
(cattle), North Africa (camels),
southwestern Asia (sheep and goats),
central Asia (yak) and the subarctic (caribou
and reindeer).
Cattle Herd in the Sudan
Transhumant Pastoralists
• Men and boys move the animals regularly
throughout the year to different areas as
pastures become available in different
altitudes or climate zones
• Women and children and some men remain
at permanent village site
• Found mostly in East Africa
Nomadic Pastoralism
• The whole population---men, women, and
children---moves with the herds throughout
the year
• There are no permanent villages
Pastoralism
• Key to pastoralist economy is herd growth
• Animals are the form of wealth; increase in
wealth through reproduction
• Risky because of drought, disease, theft
• Pastoralists need to know the carrying
capacity of the land as well as how many
animals needed to support a family
Pastoralists
• Nomadic pastoralist societies tend to be
based on patrilineal kinship.
• The animals are inherited through the male
line.
• Animals often significant in human rituals:
marriage exchanges, deaths, and in
resolving conflicts.
Pastoralists Today
• Pastoralists also being edged out by
agriculturalists
• They are increasingly turning to other forms
of livelihood (e.g. selling animal products
for cash) and becoming sedentary
• Governments like sedentary populations
that they can control and bring services to
Pastoralists Today
• Nomads in Afghanistan and Iran are highly
integrated into national and international
trade markets: sell meat animals to local
markets, lambskins to international buyers,
and sheep intestines to meet the huge
German demand for natural sausage
casings.
Horticulturalists
How is horticulture different from agriculture?
Are the Maisin horticulturalists or agriculturalists?
Horticulturalists
• Production of plants using simple, nonmechanized technology (no draft animals,
irrigation techniques, or plows)
• Cultivated fields not used permanently, year
after year, but become fallow after several
years of use
• Lower yield per acre than intensive
agriculture but less human labor also
Horticulturalists
• Grow enough to support their families and
local group but not enough to produce
surpluses to sell to non-agricultural peoples
• Population densities are low, but villages
may be large (100-1,000 people)
• Mainly used in tropical rainforests: SE Asia,
sub-Saharan Africa, some Pacific Islands,
and the Amazon rainforest
Slash-and-Burn or Swidden
• A field is cleared by felling the trees and
burning the bush
• The burned vegetation is left on the land,
preventing drying out of the soil
• Ash serves as fertilizer
• Fields used for a few years and then
allowed to lie fallow (up to 20 years) so that
the forest cover can be rebuilt and soil
fertility restored
Swidden Agriculture in Belize
Horticulture and the Environment
• So long as the land is allowed to remain
fallow until it rejuvenates, the system is
sustainable.
• However, access to land by ranchers,
miners, tourists, and farmers;
horticulturalists’ desire to increase
production for cash; and population growth
can mean that the land becomes degraded.
Agriculturists
• Same piece of land is permanently
cultivated using the plow, draft animals, and
more complex techniques of water and soil
control than horticulturalists use.
• Domestication of wild plants: wheat, barley,
etc.
Rice Paddy in Thailand
Agriculturalists
• Plowing requires more thorough clearing of
the land (e.g., removal of stumps), but it
allows land to be used year after year.
• Irrigation techniques like terracing and
ditches
• Agriculture can support population
increases by more intensive use of the same
piece of land
Agriculturalists
• Java comprises only 9% of the total land in
Indonesia, but supports two-thirds of the
Indonesian population through intensive
wet rice cultivation (1250 people per square
mile)
• The “outer islands,” which have 90% of the
land, but practice horticulture, have about
145 people per square mile.
Agricultural Societies
• Increased productivity comes not only from
more sophisticated technology but also
more intensive use of labor: ditches must be
dug and kept clean, sluices constructed and
repaired, land must be fertilized (with
animal manures), and terraces leveled and
diked.
• Growing rice under swidden system: 241
worker-days per yearly crop
• Under wet rice cultivation: 292 worker-days
Rice Terracing in Java
Agriculturalists
Associated with the rise of:
• sedentary villages
• cities and the state
• occupational diversity
• social stratification
Why does the Effect of Culture
on the Environment Matter?
• Social: People’s ways of making a living
from the environment (land, tools, labor) are
deeply connected to social systems (the
state, kinship structures) and forms of social
inequality.
• Environmental: People’s ways of making a
living affects the sustainability of the
environment
Why does the Effect of Culture
on the Environment Matter?
• Lack of resources are as much the result of
social inequalities and the way that
resources are distributed among different
groups as about overall scarcity of
resources.
The Case of the Maisin
• What mode of production do they use to sustain
themselves?
• Theodora Muluh’s question: “Why were the gardens so
important to the Maisin people?”
– When do children start having a garden?
– In what other ways are gardens significant to the Maisin?
• What do their gardens produce?
• How do they get access to the resources to get food (in this
case to land)?
• Is there a division of labor by gender?
• Is there a division of labor more generally?Are there
occupational specialties? Do some people not grow food?
• Are there political elites? How powerful are they?