5. subsistence

• 200,000 → AMH

• 190,000 → hunter and gathering - no surplus

• 10,000 → food production

• 300 → industrial

adaptive strategies

• traditional societies do not delineate work from family.

• economic gain primary motivator for human behavior?

  • socially decided. it is one of our motives but not our only motive.

• group’s main system of economic production

  • economy and social features

    • 1. foraging - hunting and gathering, only a few left that all live in nation states and are no longer able to roam freely.

      • band societies - groups of no more than 50. flexible seasonably. nomadic. egalitarian - is no inequality.

    • 2. horticulture - growing simple plants with simple technology.

      • plant cultivation. cyclical, noncontinuous use of the land. they burn the land after we used it’s nutrients. shifting cultivation through slash and burn.

    • 3. agriculture - continuous use of the land.

      • needs fertilizers- manure from domesticated animals. water - simple irrigation system. more labor intensive. produces more food, food surplus. we are free from seasonal patterns. terracing - more surface area on hills so seeds do not wash down.

    • 4. pastoralist - rely on domesticated herd animals

      • animal products such as meat, milk, hide, blood.

      • pastoral nomadism

        • herding year round.

      • transhuman pastoralism

        • part of the group herds and part of the group grows their own food.

    • 5. industrialism - modes of production studied by economic anthropologists. comparative perspective.

      • economy is a system for the production, distribution of goods and services.

  • cultivation continuum

  • ←————————————————————————→

    • more than 50% you are a food producer

• people and the environment

  • humans have ecological dominance.

    • transforming a wide range of environments

    • increase in food → increase in population growth

    • sedentism

    • increase in social complexity and social structure

      • regulating interpersonal relationships

      • coordinate land, labor, etc.

• modes of production

  • comparative perspectives - life ways: participant observation

    • economy is a system for the production, distribution, consumption

  • social relations

    • labor: age and gender

    • extracts energy

      • nature

    • uses tools, skills, organization, and knowledge

  • adaptive strategies

    • environmental particularities

    • cultural traditions

• means of production

  • land, labor, technology, capital

• industrial economies

  • worker becomes alienated from their work

  • machines are taking over their jobs

  • beginnings of capitalist economy

  • alienation : less personal investment

• economizing and maximization

• distribution and exchange

  • market principle

    • exchange rates

      • monetary standard

  • redistribution

    • goods and services or equivalents move from the local level to central location

      • reorganized → portion sent back to local level

  • reciprocity

    • generalized - close relationships

      • giving with no specific expectation of return

    • balanced

      • giving with expectation of an equivalent return

      • not necessarily immediate

    • negative - distant relationships

      • attempt to maximize profit