Transcript Subsistence

Subsistence
Subsistence
• Subsistence:
• Types of Subsistence Strategies
– Food Collectors
– Food Producers
• Horticulturalists
• Pastoralists
• Intensive (and mechanized) agricultualists
Variation of Food-Getting
& Associated Features
Food Collection
• Food-getting strategy of obtaining wild plant and
animal resources through hunting, gathering,
scavenging, and/or fishing
• Foragers or hunter-gathers: human groups that
primarily obtain food this way
• Strategy utilized by people for most of human
(pre)history, but rare today
• Examples: !Kung (southern Africa), Inuit (Arctic circle)
Food Collectors – General Features
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Small communities
Sparsely populated territories
Marginal environments
Nomadic
Egalitarian
Gender- and age-based division of labor
Food Collectors: !Kung
• Inhabit Kalahari desert
in Namibia and
Botswana
• Maintained foraging way
of life into 1960s
• Film: N!ai, The Story of a
Kung Woman
Diamphidia poison on arrow tips
Food Collectors: The Inuit
Food Producers
• Food production: Cultivation and domestication of
plants and animals
• Originated around 10,000 years ago
• Most cultures today rely on food production rather
than food collection
• Three types of food production systems: Horticulture,
Pastoralism, and Intensive Agriculture
Horticulture
• Horticulture: Small scale, low-intensity farming
• Use of simple tools and absence of permanently
cultivated fields
– Extensive or shifting cultivation, slash-and-burn
• Usually supplemented with hunting and gathering
• Today practiced in tropical areas, more common in
other regions in past
• Examples: Yanomamo (the Amazon), Samoans (South
Pacific)
Major horticulturalist regions during
the 20th century
Horticulturists: General Features
• Larger, denser communities than food collectors
• More sedentary than food collectors; may move
every few years
• Minimal social differentiation – some differences
in wealth, power
• Part-time craft specialization and political officers
Horticulturists: The Yanomamö
Horticulturists: The Yanomamö
Pastoralism
• Pastoralism: Reliance on domesticated herds of
animals feeding on natural pastures
• Two main types of pastoralists: Nomadic,
Transhumance
• In recent history – usually grassland and other
semi-arid habitats not suitable for cultivation
• Examples: Basseri (Iran), Saami or Lapps
(Scandinavia), Massai (Eastern Africa)
Pastoralism – Two Main Types
• Nomadic:
– Seasonal migratory pattern that varies year to year
– No permanent settlements
– Usually self-sufficient
• Transhumance:
– Follow a cyclical pattern of migrations between same two locations
– Regular encampments or stable villages often with permanent houses
– Usually depend somewhat less on their animals for food than do
nomadic ones:
» small scale vegetable farming , more likely to trade animal
products with agriculturalists for food and other necessities
Pastoralists: General Features
• Small community size with low population
density
• Nomadic or semi-nomadic
• Some degree of craft specialization
• Formal political officials
Pastoralists: The Lapps
Pastoralists: The Lapps
Intensive Agriculture
• Intensive agriculture: use of techniques enabling
permanent cultivation of fields, e.g. fertilization,
irrigation systems, etc.
• Generally rely on more complex tools than
horticulturalists, but extreme variety in degree of
dependence on mechanization
• Examples: Rural Greece, Mekong Delta (Vietnam)
Intensive Agriculture: General Features
• Larger, more dense populations- towns, cities
• Permanent settlements
• Craft specialization
• Complex political organization
• Social differentiation – unequal distribution of
wealth and power
Intensive Agriculturalists: Mekong Delta
Intensive Agriculturalists: Mekong Delta
Intensive Agriculture & Mechanization
• Commercialization: increasing dependence on
buying and selling, usually with money as
medium of exchange
• Increasing commercialization of agriculture
associated with mechanization, rather than
relying on hand labor
• Leading to spread of agribusiness (large
corporation-owned farms), less of general
population directly engaged in food production
Environment & Subsistence
• Environment has a restraining, not
determining, effect on subsistence
Summary
• Two main categories of subsistence strategies:
– Food Collection (also called foragers or huntergatherers)
– Food Production (three sub-categories)
• Horticulture
• Pastoralism
• Intensive agriculture
• A culture’s primary subsistence strategy is
strongly linked to political organization, economic
system and other aspects of social life