Modules 18-19: Subsistence Systems

Main Points

  • Food getting: may be the most important activity to our survival

  • Predicts other aspects of culture, such as:

    • Community size

    • Permanence of settlement

    • Type of economic system

    • Degree of inequality

    • Type of political system

  • Will look at how and why societies vary in food getting strategies

How Humans Practice Subsistence

  • Five categories

  • NOT THAT DISTINCT

  • Societies practice a blend of different strategies

  • NO CORRELATION between subsistence and capacities of people

Human Subsistence Practices

  1. Foraging/collecting - collecting what is available; hunting of game, fish

  2. Horticulture - simple agriculture, hand tools only on small plots of land

  3. Intensive agriculture - intensive application of labor to land using technology

  4. Pastoralism - raising of animals, usually cattle, sheep/goat; live off animal products but not usually meat

  5. Industrialization - application of machines to farm; manufacturing

Number of Hours Worked Per Day/Per Person

  • Hunter-gatherers: 3

  • Horticulturalists: 6

  • Intensive agriculturalists: 11-12

    • Increasing inefficiency in terms of energy used

  • Industrialized societies: 8-9

  • Hunter-gatherer and horticultural are the most efficient in terms of meeting needs

Foraging vs. Farming Strategies

Foraging (“Hunter-Gatherer”)

  • Fewer hours worked per person per day

  • Requires less energy to produce one calorie of food

  • Supports lower population density

Farming

  • Less energetically efficient

  • More manipulation of environment - creates disequilibrium

  • Doesn’t improve quality of life

  • More caloric production per unit of land

Forager-Collector Societies

  • Also known as hunter-gatherer

  • Least common today

  • Consists of and is dependent on naturally occurring resources

  • Small communities in sparsely populated territories

  • Nomadic

  • Highly Egalitarian

  • Typically quite utopian, and adapt to the changing world just like other societies

  • Examples:

    • Pedestrian

      • Paiutes & California Indians (North America), Pygmies & San (Africa), Australian Aborigines (Australia)

    • Equestrian

      • Sioux, Crow, Cheyenne, & others (North America), Tehuelche (South America)

    • Aquatic

      • Kwakiutl (Northwest Coast of North America)

Forager-Collector Society Egalitarianism

  • No individual land rights

  • Few material possessions

  • Very few to no social classes

  • No private property

  • Taboos built in for those who acquire too much wealth

  • Leveling mechanisms: social mechanisms that prevent one person gaining power over others (assures equality)

  • No political hierarchies

Forager-Collector Society Roles of Women

  • Bride service - groom goes to live with parents of bride to provide hunting services

  • Divorce is very common, women are allowed to choose this and monogamy is not sacred

  • No sexual double standards, taboos, stigma regarding sexual relationships

  • Women own their own arrows*

    • *Both women and men have power in the society, as whoever’s arrow kills the animal is in charge of the meat

  • Territories are controlled by lineages - females can own (control access) territories

Forager-Collector Population Size

Carrying capacity: maximum population that environment will support given the level of technology

Population control through:

  • Infanticide

  • Postpartum sex taboos

  • Extended periods of breastfeeding which suppresses ovulation

  • Low-fat diet tends to decrease fertility

  • Tend to practice monogamy - helps reduce birth rate

Horticulture

  • Live on small plots of land

  • No complex technology

  • ONLY hand tools; no animals, ploughs, or irrigation

  • Grow just what they need for small family or community

  • Produce more food than hunter-gatherers, can support a slightly larger population

  • Examples:

    • Amazon Basin (Yanomami), Congo Basin (Birom), Sumatra, Borneo, Melanesia, & Philippines (Hanunoo)

Horticultural Societies

  • “Slash and burn” or swidden farming

    • Tropical areas with acidic soil (not enough nutrients to extensively cultivate it) are left untouched and for wild plants, then burned for more nutrients for a short period of time

  • Supplement crops with hunting or fishing

  • More sedentary than hunter-gatherers

  • Social organization

    • Slightly larger population sizes, which means social and political systems are needed

      • Social differentiation

      • Political leaders

    • Can lead to war for territory and property between neighboring populations of societies

Yanomami, Brazil

Horticultural society that developed in a rainforest with a slightly larger population size

  • Practices slash and burn

  • 80% gardening, 15% hunting

  • Not very specialized (grow what they can)

  • Live in barricaded villages arranged in a circle

    • One of the most violent societies on Earth in terms of death by warfare

      • 30% of men die by warfare

      • Often due to raiding villages for women

      • All members of a village are related by birth or marriage, so to prevent inbreeding they raid other villages

All of this is to say that there is a sense of private property - there is a fight to maintain it

Intensive Agriculture

  • Intensive use of technology and labor for farming

  • Produce extremely large quantities

  • Larger population size

    • Towns and cities

  • High degree of craft specialization

  • Complex political organization

  • Large differences in wealth and power

  • Work more: men avg. 9 hours of work 7 days a week, women avg. 11 hours

  • Also more likely to face famines & food shortages

  • Associated with individual ownership of land resources, but not always

    • Partly a subsistence issue, partly a political/social one

Pastoralism

  • Subsistence on raising domesticated animals

  • Don’t eat meat but live off products from animals

  • Also gather plants

  • Often nomadic, depending on land and water resources (very conditional)

  • Low population density

  • Very specialized way of life

  • Work fewer hours

  • Practice polygyny

    • One man and many wives

    • Bride wealth - a system in which each time a man marries, his wife comes to live with him and he gives her family livestock

      • Serves not just as a form of subsistence, but a form of wealth, currency, resources, and solidifies social relationships

  • Political organization

    • Not a single head (less stratification than agricultural), but livestock have symbolic value in addition to financial value

      • Whoever has more “cattle” has both a certain amount of wealth but also the ability to foster social relationships and good will

  • Land is viewed as communal - no private property

    • Whoever has more livestock gets more land, but there are incentives against owning too many

      • Certain land is off limits

  • Less warfare because they are more nomadic and less sedentary

  • Examples:

    • Masai, Kikuyu, & Zulus (Africa), Saami (Europe), Mongols (Asia)

Industrialism

  • The use of machines and manufacturing to convert food and other goods into resources

  • Opportunity to obtain a particular technology is not universal

  • Other necessary resources are also privately owned

  • Access to means of survival is very complex, exists through specialists

    • Not everyone can control, access, or contribute

  • Very different than all other societies

    • Gas, roads, trading, purchasing

  • Energetically expensive

  • Individuals are typically very removed from resources

  • Was very unusual and rare until about 1850, and the origin is Western Europe ca. 1725, then spread to North America ca. 1790-1860

Changes Brought by the Industrial Revolution

  • Cities begin to dominate the western world

  • Creates a new social order with the rise of an influential middle class

  • Poor working conditions for lower classes eventually lead to new social and political movements

  • Need for markets and resources force Europeans to take over foreign lands (imperialism)