Economic Systems and Forms of Exchange.ppt
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Transcript Economic Systems and Forms of Exchange.ppt
Economic Systems, Subsistence,
& Forms of Exchange
Economic systems
Production, allocation, and consumption
of material goods and services
Do not operate in isolation of other
aspects of society
economic systems – three
interrelated aspects
Patterns of subsistence – the means by
which environmental resources are
converted for human use
Systems of distribution – the means by
which goods and services are made
available to members of a particular
group
Patterns of consumption
The Study of Economic Systems
Anthropological approaches and the
Formalist vs. Substantivist Debate
The birth of economic anthropology
The Formalist Approach
Adam Smith (19th cent.), western
capitalism, & the “invisible hand”
Profit motive as human universal
Maximizing utility
Scarcity, cost/benefit, price
Market governed by laws of supply and
demand
Rational economic behavior – human
universal
The Counter Formalist Approach:
Marxism and Neo-Marxism
Karl Marx (19th cent.) & the “critique” of
capitalism
Marxist and Neo-Marxist approaches
– How economic systems produce economic
relations
– How economic systems produce & sustain
relations of power & control over labor
– The “mode of production”
• Means/Forces of production
• Relations of production
• Superstructure (ideology)
Smith and Marx
Both Smith and Marx grappling with the
meaning of emerging industrial system
Both agreed on the notion of rational
economic behavior – everyone will work
to further his or her own individual
interests
Both see the profit motive
(accumulation) as universal
– Marx – utopia & communism
Anthropologists and the formalist
approach
look at activities in societies without a
market system, or that do not use
money in ways that make sense in a
system like a capitalist market
using language of formal economic
theory
emphasizing universals of economic
behavior
Substantivist Economic Theory
formal neoclassical theory cannot be
used to explain economic activities in
non-western societies
patterns of production, distribution
(exchange), consumption must instead
be interpreted within a society's cultural
context
Rational economic behavior is culturally,
not universally defined
The Substantivist Approach
Economic maximization and cultural
specificity
– Economizing: the rational allocation of
scarce means (or resources) to alternative
ends (or uses)
Socially embedded economy with other
values than profit and maximization
Idea of the moral economy
The Substantivists and Marx’s
modes of production
Marx’s Modes of Production
Emphasizes social relations & conflict
within the system
Emphasizes role of economy (a system
of production, distribution, and
consumption) in establishing and
maintaining social relations
Substantivist concern with the social
embeddedness of the economy
Production
Subsistence & adaptation
Making a living
Subsistence & social stratification
– The division of labor
– Differentiation & integration
– From minimal to complex
Environment, technology, society,
culture
Understanding Production
How humans as social groups adapt to
different kinds of environments
How human’s material conditions of life
are affected by power differentials and
relations within and between social
groups
Subsistence as Adaptive Strategies
From food getting to food production -From Foraging to Cultivation
Foraging – hunting and/or gathering
Horticulture (extensive or ecological
cultivation)
Pastoralism (food production –
cultivation)
Agriculture (intensive cultivation)
Adaptation and the Anthropology of
Subsistence
Long standing disciplinary concern
Basis for materialist theoretical orientations
– Theories of social & cultural evolution
Subsistence, Economy, & Materialist
Theories in Anthropology
Human diversity understood in terms of
environment & technology
Emphasis on:
– Constraints: land, technology, population
– Systematic, integrative relationships
– Evolution and adaptation
Major Theories & Theorists
19th century social & cultural evolutionism &
universal histories (L.H. Morgan, E. B. Tylor)
– General or universal evolution
cultural ecology (J. Steward, M. Sahlins)
– Specific or multi-linear evolution
Neo-evolutionism (L. White)
– General or universal evolution
World systems theory (E. Wallerstein)
– History
Political ecology (E. Wolf)
– history
Materialist Theories and Evolution
Universal/General Evolution
– All societies common evolutionary trajectory
• primitive/simple-complex/civilized-foraging to
food production
– technological determinism -- cultures
advanced through refinements in toolmaking
– tools & economic practices have social
implications
– major changes in technology soon followed
by changes in society and culture
FUNCTIONALISM and Materialist
Concerns (early 20th cent.)
B. Malinowski - all cultural traits serve
the needs of individuals in a society;
they have a function
basic needs - food, clothing, shelter give
rise to secondary needs i.e. need for
food leads to the need for cooperation
in food collection or production
all linked together to form an integrated
whole - everything functioning together
NEO-EVOLUTIONISM (20th cent.)
Leslie White
– culture as an energy capturing system
– more advanced technology gives humans
more control over energy
– all societies move through same system technology changes related to capturing
energy influence social and cultural forms
From foragers to horticulturalists to
intensive agriculturalists
Cultural Ecology
Julian Steward - relationship between
culture and the environment
cultural variation found in adaptation to
specific environmental circumstances
Human ecology is the system & systematic
relationships between humans, material life,
& environment
environment not determinant -- societies
react to their ecology
typology of cultures, patterns, sequences
Specific or multi-linear evolution
specific evolution - adaptive processes in a
particular society in a particular
environment; changes in one society rather
than human society in general
Multi-linear evolution - cultures have
followed different lines of development
(rather than general processes), particular to
each environment
Strategies of adaptation - adjustments that
individuals make to obtain & use resources
and to solve immediate problems
Steward’s culture core
constellation of features which are most
closely related to subsistence activities
& economic arrangements
social, political, religious patterns as are
empirically determined to be closely
connected with those arrangements
WORLD SYSTEMS (Wallerstein)
Global economic relations between
subsistence strategies, regions, nations
Capitalism and common political, social,
economic, structure
– Core, peripheries, & semi-peripheries
Relationships of dependency
World economy — development and
predominance of market trade =
capitalism
POLITICAL ECOLOGY
Putting cultural ecology in historical motion
Still strongly about human/environment
relations
inter-relationships between groups within a
world system of political, economic relations
Attention to an international division of labor
Temporal framework is history rather than
evolution
Patterns of Subsistence
Food Getting – FORAGING
– hunters & gatherers, gatherers & hunters,
fishing
Food Production – CULTIVATION
– The cultivation continuum
• horticulture (ecological agriculture)
• Agriculture
• Pastoralism
Industrialism
Adaptive strategies & constraints
– Environment, technology, population
Subsistence
the market as economic organizing principle
is very recent in terms of human history
economy oriented toward subsistence (food
getting & production) the norm for most of
human history
agriculture (cultivation) also recent (10,000
yrs ago)
for 100,000 years of human history - foraging
(food getting) was the economy of human life
Foraging
Humans have practiced foraging longer
than any other subsistence strategy in
human history
Aka. Hunting and/or gathering (H & G)
Not a form of cultivation
Food getting
FORAGING
hunters & gatherers, gatherers &
hunters, fishing
food getting is dependent on naturally
occurring resources, plants & animals
– Naturally occurring?
Little or no human modification
modern day foragers
few forgers remaining
San (!Kung) - Africa; Kalahari desert
Mbuti - equatorial forests of west &
central Africa
Madagascar and SE Asia
Aborigines of Australia
Inuit - hunters (now using snow mobiles
& rifles)
Features of Foraging
small communities in sparsely populated
areas
– few hundred people related by kinship &
marriage
mobile lifestyle - no permanent
settlements
– no individual land rights
size of community may vary from
season to season, culture to culture
Band form of social organization
Foraging and Social Stratification
Egalitarian societies – little social
stratification
social stratification by age & gender (no
classes)
division of labor - age & gender
Foraging and Gender
gender - great deal of diversity
tendency is for men to hunt & women to
gather
gathering contributes more to daily diet
than hunting
women & men share equal status - more
or less, egalitarian society
Where hunting & fishing dominate - the
status of women is lower
Eleanor Leacock on Foragers and
Social Stratification
egalitarian societies do exist where men
and women can do different jobs and
remain separate but equal
Control over exchange of scarce
resources is related to social
stratification in foraging groups
– Important insight for all economic systems
The Problem of Man the Hunter
man the hunter model ignored evidence
for modern foragers: women do some of
the hunting
female gathered goods account for
more than half & at times nearly all of
what is eaten
Problem of the archaeological record
woman the gatherer
Re-focused model of human evolution
key importance of female gathering
"lost" female tools in arch. record - fiber
carrying nets & baskets
food sharing rather than hunting key to
human evolution
– Food sharing & the need for social
relations
– Cooperation and competition
Conceptualizing Foragers
The gender problem
The “analogy” problem
– “living fossils of early humans,” in 19th
century unilineal evolutionism
Noble savages or maximizing brutish
life
The “affluent society” (Sahlins)
Generalized Forager Model
Cultural Ecology
Egalitarianism (lack of private property;
no accumulation; constraint of mobility)
Low population density
Lack of territoriality
Minimum of food storage
Flux in band composition
Forager Mode of Production
Collective ownership of means of
production (land and its resources)
Right to reciprocal access
Little emphasis on accumulation (ethos
opposing hoarding)
Total sharing throughout camp
Equal access to tools necessary to
acquire food
Individual ownership of tools
Foragers: World Systems & Political
Ecology
H-G do not exist apart from more
complex societies
ecological “symbiosis” & wider social
relations
rural proletariat of the political economic
(world system) model
“freedom fighters” of indigenous
perspectives
The Cultivation Continuum
Horticulture or ecological agriculture
Agriculture
Pastoralism
Horticulture
Aka.
– Swidden
– Slash and burn
– Extensive agriculture
– Ecological agriculture
Horticulture or Ecological
Agriculture
Some human modification of
environment
– gardens & fields & technology
cultivation method that works in a
variety of environments - most common
in temperate and tropical forests &
savannas
Cultivation that works with, and to
varying extents, mimics the natural
ecology
Horticulture/Ecological Agriculture
growing crops of all kinds with relatively
simple tools and methods, in the absence of
permanently cultivated fields
break up soil only using hand tools, hoes,
spades, sharpened sticks
clear land for planting with simple tools,
knives, axes, and fire is used to remove trees
and grasses
Little if any use of fertilizers
Little if any effort towards increase supply of
water to the fields
Horticultural Methods
Slash & burn
– Associated with poor tropical soils
– Initially big trees are cleared
– Brush is cut and left to dry
– Burned before arrival of rains providing
a little fertilisation and clears the plot of
weeds
– After several years of use must lie
fallow
Swidden- a garden cultivated by the
slash and burn technique.
Slash and Burn
Ecological agriculture
Ecological Agriculture
Destroyers of the rain forest?
Public Perceptions of
Horticulturalists
they’re inefficient, wasteful, ignorant
Destroyers of the rain forest
• or
they rotate crops
they’re efficient and sustainable
they have great knowledge of forest
resources and desire to maintain the forest
their livelihoods are threatened by state and
international political and economic
processes
characteristic features - horticulture
size of settlements are larger than foragers
– more stable sources of food available
tend to aggregate into villages - settlements are
more permanent, investments of labor into
fields, encourages sedentism
compared to foragers horticulturalists their
family and kin invest labor in improving a
specific and relatively well defined territory
– property rights = access to resources
– each group laying claim to a specific area for
clearing, plantings, residence by applying their labor
to it
Social Stratification
more densely populated areas, sedentary
lives
divisions of labor - age & gender
land & inheritance - family claims to
land; heads of families, resources,
claims, political & judicial orgs
increased specialization - food
producers vs. non food producers
Agriculture - intensive cultivation
a variety of techniques employed that enable
the cultivation of permanent fields
Large-scale human modification of land,
plants, animals
Agricultural Techniques
nutrients back into the fields, use of
fertilization and multi cropping
Plant species are manipulated & fully
domesticated
domesticated animals and fertilization, turned
loose into fields after harvest, manure,
nutrients back into soil
more intensive weeding
Irrigation, dams and runoff, stored water &
reservoirs, streams rechanneled, terracing
controls water on hillside & mountains
Investments
greater control over
land ->increased
outputs/yields
Increased inputs –
Leslie White
long term
production,
dependable output
characteristic features
sedentism, large permanent communities villages, towns, cities
growth in population size & density
surpluses - a cultivator can feed many more
people than just him or her self and family
more need to coordinate land, labor, resources
more need to regulate relations through
governing bodies
tributes, taxes, rents, private property
Social Stratification
Surpluses and people
–
–
–
–
more people who don't produce food
high degree of craft specialization
more complex political organization
larger differences in wealth and power
Leslie White
degree of cultural development varies directly
as the amount of energy per capita per year
harnessed and put to work
amount of energy per capita harnessed & put
to work within the culture
technological means with which this energy is
expended
human need-serving product that accrues
from the expenditure of energy
E (energy) V T (technology) = P (product)
food growers & non-food growers
rural peoples who
are integrated into a
larger society
politically (imposed
laws, taxes, rents,
etc. from outside
their community) &
economically
(exchange products
of their labor for
products produced
elsewhere)
Increased Coordination – land, labor,
resources
increased need to regulate social
relations -- governing bodies arise
Agriculture as Maladaptation (J.
Diamond)
Homo sapiens from genetic standpoint
– humans are still late paleolithic
preagricultural hunters and gatherers
(35,000yrs ago)
Rise of new disease profile
Decline in environmental/ecological
diversity
Decline in food diversity
Pastoralism
Pastoral societies are those in which a
sizeable proportion of their subsistence is
based on the herding of animals within a set
of spatially dispersed natural resources
(vegetation, water, etc.).
Pastoralism
herders acquire much of their food by raising,
caring for, and subsisting on the products of
domesticated animals
many pastoralist/herders cultivate
many acquire bulk of their calories from their
crops rather than their animals or through
trade
herds subsist on natural forage and must be
moved to where the forage naturally occurs
Some move all the time, others move
seasonally
characteristic features
nomadism - entire group moves or
transhumance - only part of the group
moves; some groups sedentary
interdependence between pastoral and
agricultural groups
– trade animal products for agri. products
from cultivators
– sell livestock, hides, meat, wool, milk,
cheese, or other products for money
– use livestock as beasts of burden
advantages of herding as adaptation
vegetation of grasslands & arid
savannas & of tundra is indigestible by
humans
livestock turn it into milk, blood, fat,
meat all of which can be eaten or drunk
by herders
livestock provide insurance against
unpredictable environments of drought
& low yields
mobility - herds can be moved to fresh
grass and water, avoid the tax man
Alberta Pastoralism or Industrial
Beef Production?
First Nations Pastoralism or
Foraging?
Subsistence Strategies, Resources,
Social relations and Stratification
Cultural rules & social regulations
(social stratification = society)
governing:
• Patterns of labor
• Control of land
• Technology
Patterns of Labor
Sexual Division of Labor
Found in every society
Flexibile
Rigid segregation & Dual sex
– women and men form separate socio-cultural
entities, and make decisions in their own separate
spheres
– severing domestic space from political-economic
space
Patterns of Labor
Age Division of Labor
– Typical of human societies
Cooperation
– Household is the basic unit
Craft Specialization
– Found in both industrial and nonindustrial
societies
Control of Land
Societies allocate (distribute) land
resources
– Culture makes those allocations
meaningful
Food Foragers -- Where to hunt and gather
Horticulturalists -- Distribution of farmland
Pastoralists -- Water and grazing rights
Agriculture – formalized land rights & tenure
Industrial societies -- Private ownership
prevails
Non-industrial societies -- Often controlled
by kinship groups
Technology
Tools and other material equipment,
together with the knowledge of how
to make and use them
• Foragers and pastoralists generally have
fewer and less complex tools than
sedentary peoples
Forms of Exchange (Distribution)
Formalist approach ignores some forms
of exchange
– Reciprocity
– Redistribution
– Market (contract)
What Can be Exchanged or
Distributed?
Material goods
Symbolic goods
Labor
Money
Services
Rights
People
Reciprocity
two individuals or groups pass goods
and/or back and forth with the aim of:
– helping someone in need by sharing goods
with him or her
– creating, maintaining, or strengthening
social relationships
– obtaining goods for oneself
Forms of Reciprocity
generalized - those who give goods or
services do not expect the recipient to
make a return of goods and services at
any definite time in the future
balanced - goods and services are
given to someone with the expectation
that a return in goods and services of
roughly equal value will occur
negative - both parties attempt to gain
all they can from the exchange while
giving up as little as possible
Reciprocity and Social Distance
In time (social/historic) and space (social)
Establishes and maintains social distance
Can change already established social
distance
Reciprocity and “the Gift”
(M. Mauss)
Obligatory & interested exchanges
The gift received has to be repaid
The persons represented are moral
persons (relational) -- clans, tribes,
families, castes, classes
Redistribution
the members of an organized group
contribute goods, services, or money
into a common pool or fund
usually a central authority has the
privilege and responsibility to make
decisions about how the goods,
services, or money later will be
allocated (distributed) among the group
as a whole
– i.e. taxation
Market or contract exchange
forces of supply and demand determine
costs and prices, goods or services are
sold for money, which in turn is used to
purchase other goods, with the ultimate
goals of acquiring more money and
accumulating more goods
– Disinterested
– Legally defined
Ceremonial Exchange & Sacrifice
Embodies all forms of exchange
"dramatic enactment of other subjugations," –
social & supra social relations
E.B. Tylor (1889) who associated the sacrifice
with the gift,
Durkheim (1972), and Hubert & Mauss (1964)
whom portrayed sacrifice as opening the
barriers between the sacred and profane.
Evans-Pritchard (1940) described the victim
of the sacrifice as the embodiment of
community
the social dimension of sacrifice, its
celebration and consumption of the fruits of
common labor
The functions of sacrifice
to mediate the arrival or the departure of
the divine
balances the sacred and the profane.
a mimesis of death and rebirth
Sacrifice as gift
a request made to a deity as if he were a
human, so sacrifice is a gift made to a deity
as if he were a human"
food features centrally and persistently in
sacrifice: insofar as sacrifice is a species of
social eating
distinguish between the actual value the deity
might ascribe the gift, and the interest of the
deity in the homage or the self-abnegation
which might be involved in the offering
Transformation of actual sacrifices into
substitutions or symbols
– the "essence" of what is offered, rather than in the
thing itself.
Consumption
Not just what we eat but the resources we
use
The economist treats the desire for objects as
an individual urge grounded in psychology
according to the anthropologist it is for
fulfilling social obligations and represents the
distribution of goods as a symptom of the
form of society
Demand (consumption) and desire
Consumption is an aspect of the overall
political economy (Baudrillard & Marx)
Consumption
consumption goods communicate, create
identity and establish relationships
Consumption -- Not culture free
Collective regulation of demand/consumption
Social regulation of the desire for goods and
services
– Free trade
– Ethos of limited good
Consumption
Consumption excludes as well as includes
– the pattern of their flow shows up the form of
society
consumption is the framework of desire that is
in each individual's head (psychological),
itself a manifestation of the collective
(cultural) construction of a structure of
meaning of objects of consumption and a
parallel structure of people
Goods and services consumed circulate
regimes of value (Appadurai)
Prestige group, class, and
taste/demand/consumption (Bourdieu)
– The social life of things (Appadurai)
Substantivist Approach Redux
Economic systems (production,
distribution, consumption) socially and
culturally produce and reproduce social
differences (social stratification or
structure)
Economic systems enacted within and
between societies (social structure)
– This action (agency) made meaningful
through and in culture
Economic systems always social &
cultural systems