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)