Adaptation and Production

Adaptation: Process by which a stress in the environment is accommodated by physical or culture changes

Stress: anything that forces an organism out a stable-state (homeostasis)


How do humans adapt to the environment?

  • What does nature really mean?

    • Is the dichotomy between human world/ nature real?

  • Our species adapts to the environment primarily through culture

  • Adaptation is through technology

  • environment can mean both the physical and social environment


Subsistence

  • Subsistence: cultural strategies (modes) for “making a living” in an environment

  • Strategies can be categorized as pre-industrial or industrial. 5 Modes of Subsistence


Hunting and Gathering (Foraging)

  • 90-95% of our existence, humans have practiced this

  • exercise very little control over their environment

    • most food is from gathering, not hunting


Characteristics of Hunter-Gathers (Foraging)

  • labor organized by age and gender

  • seasonal mobility/congregation

  • small groups

  • reciprocity (give and take/share)

  • little “property”; universal rights to resources


Domestication

  • Domestication: biological alteration of a species to serve human needs

  • Domestication of plants and animals starting 15,000 years ago permanently changed humans


Pastoralism

  • Pastoralism is intensive production of animal stocks, also known as herding

  • Cattle, camels, sheep, and goats are usually kept. These animals have an added benefit of being mobile

  • Some pastoralists are nomadic, others live in semi-permanent villages (transhumance)


Characteristics of Pastoralists

  • larger groups than hunter-gather

  • mobility

  • greater recognition of “property” (your livestock)

  • age and sex specific social roles

  • male dominate and polyamous


Advantages of Pastoralism

  • animals can digest plants that humans cannot

  • animals provide renewable resources (milk) and in times of hardship, can be eaten

  • in a drought, you can move


Horticulture

  • use of human labor to clear land, plants, weed + harvest

  • Swidden (slash and burn) is a common type horticulture done in the tropics

  • dry land cultivation used in SW USA + Africa


Cultural Consequences of Horticulture:

  • higher productivity

  • increased population and population density

  • necessity to organize labor (by Kinship)

  • property rights are better defined, usually assigned by family. Inheritance becomes important


Agriculture

  • Intensive cultivation where human labor is supplemented by animal or mechanical labor. Cultivation of just a few “crops”

  • requires fertilization and irrigation

  • most productive form of subsistence, but the least effective


Cultural Consequences of Agriculture:

  • Surplus: population growth; leads to specialization

  • Emphasis on male social roles/status

    • large demand

  • Growing population leads to new forms of social organization, legal systems (provide property)

  • birth of cities, trade, and civilization


Industrialism

  • Industrialism: use of fossil fuels to supplement or replace human and/or animal labor

  • surplus energy leads to mass production

  • high productivity with enormous environmental consequences


Cultural Consequences of Industrialism:

  • specialized labor not needed for assembly line work; education as the “gatekeeper” between skilled and unskilled labor

  • need for raw materials put indigenous people and developing countries on an “uneven” footing w/ developed countries

  • necessity for ever increasing amounts of energy-unlimited? no