Anthro Exam 2
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55 Terms
What do we mean by a subsistence system?
A subsistence system refers to the way in which a society transforms the material resources of the environment into food
What are the five subsistence systems we discussed in class?
Foraging relies on the use of plant and animal resources naturally available in the environment.
Pastoralism primarily relies on domesticated herd animals, whose dairy and meat products are a major part of the pastoral diet.
Horticulture produces plants using simple, non-mechanized technologies and lots of human labor, with land left to fallow for long periods of time.
Traditional agriculture produces food using intensive cultivation, draft animals and a plow, and more complex techniques of water and soil control so that land is permanently cultivated and needs no fallow period.
Industrial agriculture uses machine technology and chemical processes for the production of food and other goods.
What are some key aspects of foraging societies?
The technology of foragers are typically simple but effective
As a result of low population densities, foragers tend to have minimal
impacts on the environment
There is little or no occupational choice in foraging societies.
Foraging societies, like every other type of society, have a sexual division of labor (e.g. men do most of the hunting, women engage in gathering plants).
Foragers typically live in communities of 20 to 50 people and have a flexible social system.
In the harshest environments, foraging cannot support year-round settlements. As a result foragers move around seasonally to gain access to food and water.
Foraging requires independence and mobility.
Foraging bands tend to have highly flexible social arrangements.
The flexibility of forager social arrangements means there is little hierarchy in foraging societies.
What are some key aspects of pastoralist societies?
*Pastoralist societies tend to have social systems that are more complex than foragers and larger groups.
Group sizes range from a few hundred to a few thousand people.
Social status is wealth-based, often related to the size of the herd owned.
Pastoralist societies are often patrilineal, in which kinship is reckoned through the father’s line (more on this term in the kinship lecture), and polygynous, in which one man can marry multiple women.
Pastoralist societies often have a pronounced sexual division of labor, in which men and women engage very different kinds of activities and there is little overlap between the sexes.
There is often an emphasis on high fertility as children are an important source of labor.
Compared to foragers, children are weaned much sooner.
Pastoralists have ready access to milk, which is a great weaning food.
Early weaning allows women to have shorter inter birth intervals and more children more quickly.
What are some general patterns in the way that the specific subsistence system in a society correlates with other aspects of society?
Industrialization dramatically increases productivity.
In a foraging or horticultural society, all of the adult population is involved in food production.
In an agricultural society, the vast majority of the adult population are involved in food production.
With industrialized agriculture, the fraction of the population engaged in food production plummets.
To see this, let’s look at the United States:
In 1800, 90 out of 100 people were farmers.
By 1850, only 65 out of 100 were farmers.
By 1900, about 38 out of 100 were farmers.
By 1950, it was down to 12 out of 100.
Today, it’s below 1 out of 100.
As agriculture becomes more intensified, fewer adults work in food production.
With foragers and horticulture, most of the adult population are involved in food acquisition and/or production.
In poor, developing agricultural societies, like Bangladesh or Guatemala, where farming hasn’t been significantly industrialized, more than half of the population work in food production
In the US today, less than 1% do.
What are some key aspects of horticultural societies?
Horticulturalists use simple, non-mechanized technologies (e.g. hoes, digging sticks).
This means that horticulture is labor intensive, rather than capital intensive, like agriculture.
Horticulturalists do not use draft animals, plows, irrigation, or fertilizers.
Horticulture makes extensive use of land, as opposed to agriculture which is intensive.
Put another way, horticulturalists farm a piece of land until the nutrients are exhausted and then move on to find new land, leading the depleted land to fallow for long periods of time if not indefinitely.
By contrast, agriculturalists permanently cultivate a piece of land, adding fertilizers to make up for depleted nutrients in the soil.
Horticulture produces a lower yield per acre than agriculture.
Horticultural groups are larger than forager groups.
Social organization patterns of horticulturalists.
Most horticulturalists live in semi-permanent houses, moving after farming land for a few years.
Some horticulturalists remain in permanent villages.
There is typically a sexual division of labor with some overlap in work.
Women often do a significant amount of the agricultural labor.
If there is hunting, this is typically a male activity.
Horticulturalists often have kinship based on matrilineal descent (i.e. tracing ancestry through the mother’s line) and matrilocal residence (i.e. newly married couples live in the wife’s mother’s village).
Horticultural societies tend to be more violent than foraging societies.
What do we mean by a culture of honor?
Honor culture: cultures where you must be brave and strong and tough, be willing to respond aggressively
What are some key aspects of agricultural societies?
With traditional agriculture, the same piece of land is permanently cultivated through the use of technology.
Traditional agriculture can support more people compared to horticulture.
Traditional agriculture requires more labor and capital than horticulture.
Agriculture requires much more capital investment
Need plows and draft animals.
Land may need to be transformed.
Fertilizers need to be purchased.
Traditional agriculture poses systemic risk, compared to horticulture.
Agriculturalists typically rely on one or two crops, whereas horticulturalists plant many different crops.
With one crop, failure or disease can lead to economic disaster.
The increased risk associated with agriculture is more than offset by the surplus food production.
Traditional agricultural communities typically have more complex social organization compared to horticulturalists.
Agricultural societies are characterized by a complex division of labor with far more occupational diversity compared to horticultural societies. In addition to farmers, there are merchants, craftsmen, soldiers, priests, rulers, and bureaucrats.
What are some key aspects of industrial societies?
Characteristics of industrialized agriculture
Dependence on petrochemicals (e.g. fertilizers, insecticides, fuel)
Machinery
Mono-cropping
Severe landscape modification
The focus of production moves away from only food to the production of other goods and services.
In other subsistence systems, most of the population is involved in food production.
In industrial societies, only a small fraction of the population works in food production.
Describe some of the general trends in subsistence and other aspects of social life over the last 10,000 years.
Until 10,000 years ago, a period covering 95% of our species’s history, humans lived by foraging.
Around 10,000 years ago, some human groups started domesticating plants and animals, and engaging horticulture at first and then traditional agriculture.
Around 5,000 years ago, some human societies started engaging in intensive agriculture.
Starting in the late 18th century, we see the rise of industrial agriculture.
Why do some people think agriculture was the “worst mistake in the history of the human race”?
Monoculture leads to poor nutrition.
Specialization increases risks of systemic failure.
Increased population densities led to more disease.
Farming societies were very unequal. While the elites did well, the poor did much worse.
What are some of the ways in which the economy and culture are related?
Culture influences the preferences people have (i.e. what people want).
Culture influences the means by which people can achieve their goals (e.g. access to resources).
Culture structures the ways in which people interact with one another.
The economic system influences other aspects of culture (e.g. families atomize with industrialization and capitalism).
How can we use games to study social preferences? Are humans entirely self-interested?
The “ultimatum game” is one such game and is useful for studying how people bargain with one another.
Suppose I give one person (the proposer) $100 and ask them how they would like to allocate this money between themself and another person, in another room, whom they will never meet.
If the other person (the responder) accepts the proposed division, both go home the amounts specified by the allocation. If, instead, the responder rejects the allocation, then neither player goes home with any money.
If you were the proposer, what would you offer?
If you were the responder, what is your minimum acceptable offer?
One takeaway from these studies is that people are not entirely self-interested.
Another takeaway is that there is a lot of cultural variation in how people play the Ultimatum Game.
What do we mean when we say that someone is “rational”?
Ultimatum Game: The most common offer from proposers is 50% of the total amount.
The average proposal (i.e. the mean not the mode) is 40–50% of the total.
Responders typically reject offers less than 20% of the total amount.
Given that responders reject low offers, proposers are “rational” to offer 40–50% of the total.
How are access to productive resources differentially distributed across foraging, horticultural, agricultural, and industrial societies?
Among foragers, horticulturalists, and pastoralists:
All adult men and women are actively engaged in food production.
There are few specialists.
There is little to no division of labor beyond sex and age.
Among agricultural societies and industrialized societies:
As we discussed in the last lecture, agriculture is much more productive than other modes of subsistence. Put another way, agriculture generates a surplus. This means that fewer people need to be engaged in food production, freeing up others to do different things.
The division of labor expands and jobs become more and more specialized.
There is a huge growth of specialists, including soldiers, government officials, priests, artisans, craftsmen, and merchants.
With the Industrial Revolution, these patterns become much more exaggerated and, as a result, lead to unprecedented increases in wealth, a topic we’ll return to in the lecture on globalization.
How does the division of labor vary across societies that differ in subsistence?
In “traditional”, pre-industrial economies, the basic unit of production is the household.
The household is comprised of a group of people united by kinship or other links who share a residence and organize production, consumption and distribution of goods among themselves.
A household is not the same as a family as a household might include lodgers, servants, etc.
Household members use most of the goods they produce themselves.
Households have several goals, including financial, social, and religious goals.
In an economy based on households, labor is not a commodity bought and sold in the market.
Instead, labor is an important aspect of membership in a social group, situating people with respect to others and provides a sense of identity and meaning.
The gendered division of labor is a good example of the relationship between work and identity.
In all human societies, some tasks are considered appropriate for women, others for men.
In “modern”, industrial economies, the firm becomes an increasingly important unit of production.
A firm is an institution composed of kin and/or non-kin that is organized primarily for financial gain.
Individuals are tied to firms through the sale of their labor for wages.
Labor becomes a commodity, bought and sold in the market
Firms do not produce goods for the use of their members; they produce for profit.
Why do most societies have a division of labor?
To increase efficiency and productivity by allowing specialization and fostering expertise in specific areas
Why do we see a sexual division of labor among foragers in which men tend to hunt and women tend to forage?
The argument for why men tend to hunt and women tend to gather does not hinge on men being stronger than women.
Strength is probably not very important in human hunting; many hunters kill with poison and light bows, not with brute force.
Also, when women forage, they are often as productive as men.
Child care probably explains the difference. The exceptions to the rule seem to confirm this. In the Agta (in the Philippines) and Aka (in Central Africa), women hunt, and men provide lots of child care. In the Agta, 85% of adult women hunt; there are no physical differences between the women who hunt and the women who don’t; men and women hunt the same prey items; and women hunt as well as the men.
So, why don’t we see more of this in foragers? You need a cultural system in which others can care for children.
Describe the different patterns of exchange we discussed in class (reciprocity, redistribution, market exchange).
Reciprocity refers to the exchange of goods and services between individuals or groups based on social obligations and expectations of returns.
Redistribution involves the collection of goods by a central figure or institution, which then redistributes them among the group.
Market exchange involves the transfer of goods or services through a system of price-based transactions, often using money as a medium of exchange.
What do we mean by social differentiation?
The distinction between social groups and people based on biological, physiological, and cultural factors. Differentiation is the acknowledgement of the differences between various social groups. It is the basis for social stratification within societies.
Describe the three types of society we discussed in terms of different levels of social differentiation: egalitarian, rank, stratified.
Egalitarian: relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
Rank: involve greater differentiation between individuals and the kin groups to which they belong. These differences can be, and often are, inherited, but there are no significant restrictions in these societies on access to basic resources.
Stratified: strong degree of social hierarchy
What is the difference between power and authority?
Power refers to the ability to influence or control the behavior of others or the course of events
Authority refers to the legitimate or socially accepted use of power
What do we mean by political ideology? What is an example?
Political ideology: the shared values and beliefs that legitimate the distribution and uses of power and authority in a particular society
Communism
What is cultural hegemony?
Cultural hegemony refers to dominance of a diverse society by a ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that the worldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural norm.
What are some of the different ways in which societies maintain social control?
Every society enforces social control through some combination of power, authority, and ideology.
Describe the different types of political organization we discussed in class: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states?
Political Organization | Subsistence | Economic Organization | Social Differentiation | Leadership |
Band | Foragers | Reciprocity | Egalitarian | Informal and situational |
Tribe | Horticulture, pastoralism | Reciprocity, sometimes redistribution | Egalitarian | more formalized than in bands, often with a “Big Man” or a council of elders |
Chiefdom | Agriculture, sometimes pastoralism | Reciprocity, redistribution | Rank | hereditary, often accompanied by religious or spiritual authority |
State | Intensive agriculture | Reciprocity, redistribution, sometimes markets | Stratified | power is formalized through institutions |
Nation-state | Industrialized agriculture | Reciprocity, redistribution, markets | Stratified |
What is a nation-state and how does it differ from a state?
The key distinction between a nation-state and a state has to do with the “nation” part. Nation-states have a shared national identity. The idea of a “nation” is created through various means including shared language, culture, history, and myth.
Characteristics of nation-states
Defined territory with clear borders.
Centralized government claiming sovereignty over the territory.
Monopoly on legitimate use of force within the territory.
Nation-states are legally recognized by other nation-states, creating a system of international legitimacy.
What are features that different societies have in common in terms of marriage?
All societies have rules about marriage.
Rules defining who is and how is not an acceptable marriage partner.
Rules about who is a preferred marriage partner.
Rules about the number of spouses someone can marry.
Rules about what happens when a marriage is ended by death or divorce.
All societies have an incest taboo, which prohibits sex and marriage between people classified as close relatives.
What are some of the functions that marriage serves across societies?
Marriage regulates sexual behavior and limits sexual competition between people.
Marriage provides legitimacy and defines social relationships for children.
Marriage forms cooperative economic units (e.g. a household) based on a sexual division of labor.
Marriage forges, expands, and reinforces social connections between individuals and families.
Marriage confers or alters the social status of individuals within their community.
Have marriages always been the exclusive union of one man and one woman? If not, what are other examples?
Many Native American groups recognized the existence of Two Spirit people.
A two spirit was someone who identified with the gender not associated with their sex (i.e. a biological female who identified with the male gender role or a biological male who identified with the female gender role).
Two spirit people would adopt the clothing and occupations appropriate for their chosen gender.
In these societies, a biological male was permitted to marry a two spirit who identified as a woman or a biological female was permitted to marry a two spirit who identified as a man.
These couples were also permitted to adopt children or help raise their spouse’s children from a previous marriage.
In terms of relationships within families, which is the most basic and most common across societies: mother-father, mother-child, father-child?
In many societies, the most important bond is between lineal blood relatives (i.e. a father and his children or a mother and her children), or between brothers and sisters. In these societies, the ties between husband and wife may be weak.
The most basic family tie that we see in all cultures is the bond between a mother and her children.
What are some of the kinds of rules societies have about marriage?
Rules of exogamy specify that a person must marry outside a certain group.
Rules of endogamy specify that a person must marry within a certain group.
Most societies have rules about how many spouses a person may have at one time.
What is the difference between a love marriage and an arranged marriage? Which was more common across most of human history?
In most societies across human history, especially in small-scale, non-industrial societies, marriages were arranged.
The idea that love should precede marriage and be the basis of marriage is a recent phenomenon that developed alongside industrialization.
What do we mean when we say that societies have rules of endogamy and rules of exogamy when it comes to marriage? What are some examples?
Rules of exogamy specify that a person must marry outside a certain group.
In foraging groups, marrying outside of the band creates more alliances between bands which allows more flexibility in where people can live.
Rules of endogamy specify that a person must marry within a certain group.
Jewish people have traditionally married endogamously, which has helped to preserve their ethnic identity despite historically being minorities wherever they lived.
What are the differences between monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry? What about “walking marriages”? Which form of marriage was most common across most of human history?
In monogamy, only one man can be married to one woman at any given time.
In polygyny, one man is permitted to marry multiple women. (most common)
In polyandry, one woman is permitted to marry multiple men.
In walking marriages, there was no formal relationship between men and women.
Describe the three patterns of exchange that are associated with marriage: bride service, bride wealth, dowry.
In bride service, a husband must work for a specified period of time for his wife’s family in exchange for his marital rights.
In bride wealth, there is a net transfer of wealth from the groom’s family to the bride’s family.
In dowry, there is a net transfer of wealth from the bride’s family to the groom’s family.
What do we mean by kinship?
Kinship refers to culturally-defined relationships through blood and marriage.
What is a kinship system?
all relationships based on blood and marriage that link people in a web of rights and obligations
the kinds of groups that may be formed in a society on the basis of kinship
system of terms (kinship terminology) used to classify different kin
What functions do kinship serve?
Outlines rights and obligations between kin.
Specifies how people should act toward each other.
Helps determine the types of households and other social groups that are formed.
Regulates the system of marriage.
Regulates the system of inheritance.
Helps define authority in households or larger groups.
Defines group on whom a person can rely on for aid.
Describe the major types of descent rules across societies: unilineal, patrilineal, matrilineal, non-unilineal, bilateral, ambilineal?
In unilineal descent, group membership is based on links through either the paternal or the maternal line, but not both.
In a patrilineal system, people belong to the descent group of their father.
In a matrilineal system, people belong to the descent group of their mother.
In non-unilineal descent, both maternal and paternal lines may be used to reckon descent.
In a bilateral system, both maternal and paternal lines are used to reckon descent.
In an ambilineal system, individuals may choose to affiliate with either their mother’s or father’s descent group, but not both simultaneously.
Do most animals provide the same amount of parental care to offspring or does it vary across species a lot?
The amount of parental care varies greatly across the animal kingdom.
In mammals, why is it the case that females are usually the ones doing most of the parental care?
In mammals, including primates, pregnancy and lactation commit females to invest in their young and limit the benefits of male investment in offspring.
What do we mean by sexual selection?
Sexual selection is a special category of natural selection that favors traits that increase success in competing for mates.
For mammals, which sex is typically under stronger sexual selection: males or females?
In mammals, male reproductive success is primarily constrained by access to fertile females.
What are the differences between intra- and inter-sexual selection?
Intrasexual selection: out-competing same-sex rivals
Intersexual selection: being preferentially chosen by the opposite sex
What do anthropologists think the mating system of our ancestors was like?
Putting together multiple lines of evidence, it appears that the mating system of our Homo sapiens ancestors was mildly polygynous.
What do we mean by sex? What do we mean by gender? Are these the same or different? If different, what is the relationship between sex and gender?
Sex refers to the biological classification of people into male, female, and inter-sexed.
Gender refers to the cultural and social classification of individuals, behaviors, and roles into the masculine and the feminine.
Do all cultures recognize two genders? If not, what are some examples?
Parts of India had a third gender category, often called hijras.
Hijras were traditionally inter-sexed people or men who dress, act, and live as women.
They are considered “neither man nor woman” because they can act as neither reproductively.
In some cases, hijras perform voluntary castration.
Traditionally, hijras had one of the following occupations: blessing children and brides, singing and dancing, and begging.
Today, many hijras engage in prostitution. Some have engaged in politics, advocating for others like them who have been traditionally marginalized.
What do we mean by patriarchy, matriarchy, and gender egalitarian? How would you describe the United States?
A patriarchy refers to a society in which men systematically have more power than women. This was the most common form of gender hierarchy across cultures and across time, but the degree of patriarchy varies a lot from one place to the next.
A matriarchy refers to a society in which women systematically have more power than men. Many anthropologists argue that there are no true matriarchies.
A gender egalitarian society is one in which neither men nor women have more systematic power.
What types of factors influence the gender hierarchy in societies?
The degree to which one sex controls the production, distribution, and exchange of goods and services outside the household influences the gender hierarchy. In patriarchies, men tend to dominate economic activities outside the household.
The degree to which one sex dominates participation in the public sphere, including prestige-related, religious, and political roles, influences the gender hierarchy. In patriarchies, men tend to dominate the public sphere (e.g. holding political office).
The more a society experiences warfare and conflict, the more likely it will be a patriarchy.
How does gender hierarchy vary across societies by subsistence type?
Foraging societies are relatively egalitarian, compared to horticultural and agricultural societies.
There is a tremendous amount of variation in gender relations among horticultural societies.
Agricultural societies tend to be patriarchal, ranging from moderate to extreme.
Gender relations are highly variable in industrial societies.
What is a rite of passage?
The transition from childhood to adulthood is marked in many societies by a “rite of passage.”
Which life stage is sometimes not marked by a rite of passage: birth, adolescence, marriage, death? Why?
But, many societies do not culturally and ritually mark the process of birth. As we discussed in a previous lecture, when infant mortality rates are very high, birth may not be marked by a rite of passage.
What are some common features of male initiation rites across societies?
They often involve extended periods of separation during which initiates learn knowledge, beliefs, and skills necessary to act as an adult man in society.
They often involve painful or stressful rituals such as circumcision, subincision, or scarification.
What are some common features of female imitation rites across societies?
Girls often go through initiation rites at menarche (the age of first menstruation) or shortly after.
This marks the transition from childhood to womanhood and often means the girl is ready for marriage.
These are more common than male initiation rites.
Examples of female initiation rites include Quinceanera, Debutante Balls, and Sweet 16 parties.