This chapter introduces students to the variety of economic systems
that are present in human societies. It especially focuses on the
distinctions between foraging, horticulture, agriculture, and
pastoralism, and on models of distribution and exchange.
Chapter 16
Making a Living
Adaptive Strategies
• Yehudi Cohen (1974) used the term
adaptive strategy to describe a group’s
system of economic production.
• Ethnoatlas
Adaptive Strategies
• Cohen has developed a typology of cultures
using this distinction:
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Foraging
Horticulture
Agriculture
Pastoralism
Industrialism
Adaptive Strategies
– Cohen’s typology refers to a
relationship between economies and
social features
• arguing that the most important
reason for similarities between
unrelated cultures is their possession
of a similar adaptive strategy.
Foraging
• Human groups with foraging economies are
not ecologically dominant.
• The primary reason for the continuing
survival of foraging economies is the
inapplicability of their environmental
settings to food production.
Correlates of Foraging
• Band organization
• Typically are socially mobile
• Gender-based division of labor
– women gathering
– men hunting and fishing
– All foraging societies distinguish among their
members according to age and gender, but are
relatively egalitarian compared to other
societal types.
Horticulture
• Horticulture is nonintensive plant
cultivation, based on the use of simple
tools and cyclical, noncontinuous use crop
lands.
• Slash-and-burn cultivation and shifting
cultivation are alternative labels for
horticulture.
Agriculture
• Agriculture is cultivation involving continuous use
of crop land and is more labor-intensive than
horticulture.
• Domesticated animals are commonly used in
agriculture,
• Irrigation is one of the agricultural techniques
that frees cultivation from seasonal domination.
• Terracing is an agricultural technique which
renders land otherwise too steep for most forms
of cultivation
The Costs and Benefits of
Agriculture
• Agriculture is far more labor-intensive and
capital-intensive than horticulture
• Agriculture’s long-term production (per
area) is far more stable than
horticulture’s.
The Cultivation Continuum
• Nonindustrial economies do not always fit
cleanly into the distinct categories given
above
• Sectorial fallowing: a plot of land may be
planted two to three years before shifting
then allowed to lie fallow for a period of
years.
• Horticulture requires regular fallowing (the
length of which varies), whereas
agriculture does not.
Intensification: People and
the Environment
• Agriculture, by turning humans into
ecological dominants
• Intensified food production is associated
with sedentism and rapid population
increase.
• Most agriculturalists live in states because
agricultural economies require regulatory
mechanisms.
Pastoralism
• Pastoral economies are based upon
domesticated herd animals
– but members of such economies may get
agricultural produce through trade or
their own subsidiary cultivation.
Pastoralism
• Pastoral nomadism:
– all members of the pastoral society
follow the herd throughout the year.
• Transhumance or agro-pastoralism:
– part of the society follows the herd,
while the other part maintains a home
village (this is usually associated with
some cultivation by the pastoralists).
Modes of Production
• Economic anthropology studies economics in
a comparative perspective.
• An economy is a study of production,
distribution, and consumption of resources.
Modes of Production
• Mode of production:
– a way of organizing production--a set of social
relations through which labor is deployed to
wrest energy from nature using tools, skills,
organization, and knowledge.
• Similarity of adaptive strategies between
societies tends to correspond with
similarity of mode of production:
variations occur according to environmental
particularities.
Production in Nonindustrial
Populations
• All societies divide labor according to
gender and age
– the nature of these divisions varies greatly
from society to society.
• Valuation of the kinds of work ascribed to
different groups varies, as well.
Means of Production
• Means of production include land, labor,
technology, and capital.
• Land: the importance of land varies
according to method of production — land
is less important to a foraging economy
than it is to a cultivating economy.
• Labor, tools, and specialization:
nonindustrial economies are usually but not
always characterized by more cooperation
and less specialized labor than is found in
industrial societies.
Alienation in Industrial
Economies
• A worker is alienated from the product of her or
his work when the product is sold, with the profit
going to an employer, while the worker is paid a
wage.
• A consequence of alienation is that a worker has
less personal investment in the product, in
contrast to the more intimate relationship existing
between worker and product in nonindustrial
societies.
• Alienation may generalize to encompass not only
worker-product relations, but coworker relations,
as well.
Economizing and
Maximization
• 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
Economizing and
Maximization
• Alternative Ends
– People devote their time, resources, and energy
to five broad categories of ends:
– Subsistence fund
– Replacement fund
– Social fund
– Ceremonial fund
– Rent fund
The Market Principle
• The market principle occurs 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 some
nonindustrial states.
• In a redistributive system, product moves
from the local level to the hierarchical
center, where it is reorganized, and a
proportion is sent back down to the local
level.
• Examples in U.S.?
Reciprocity
• Reciprocity is exchange between social
equals and occurs in three degrees:
generalized, balanced, and negative.
• 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).
Reciprocity
• Balanced reciprocity involves more
distantly related partners and involves
giving with the expectation of equivalent
(but not necessarily immediate) exchange
• Negative reciprocity involves very distant
trading partners and is characterized by
each partner attempting to maximize
profit and an expectation of immediate
exchange
Coexistence of Exchange
Principles
• Most economies are not exclusively
characterized by a single mode of
reciprocity.
• The United States economy has all three
types of reciprocity.
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 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.
• Dramatic depopulation resulting from postcontact diseases
and the influx of new trade goods dramatically affected the
nature of potlatches, which began to extended to the entire
population.
Potlatching (cont.)
• The result of the new surplus, cultural trauma, and
the competition caused by wider inclusion was that
prestige was created by the destruction of
wealth, rather than the redistribution of it
• Potlatches were once interpreted as wasteful
displays generated by culturally induced mania for
prestige, but Kottak argues that customs like the
potlatch are adaptive, allowing adjustment for
alternating periods of local abundance and
shortage.
• The Northwest Coast tribes were unusual in that
they were foraging populations living in a rich,
nonmarginal environmental setting.