Subsistence System & Exchange Pattern

Question 1

Why are homo sapiens able to survive?

Answer 1

Biological & cultural factors.

CF:
- Developed organized system of food production, distribution, and consumption.
- Use tools for making their livings.
- Each culture develop a food-getting strategy in relation to the environment
and ecology.
- Environment and culture determine the limit and possibilities of food pattern

Question 2

What are patterns of sustenance strategies?

Answer 2

• patterns of obtaining foods; linked to human survival; economic base for every
  society; an adaptation strategy developed in interaction with natural environment.
• Vary depending on the ecological and environmental settings

Question 3

What are foodways?

Answer 3

• cultural norms and practices associated with preparing and consuming foods.
• Some use chopsticks, some pray for their food etc.

Question 4

Anthropologists broadly categorized two forms of subsistence strategies

Answer 4

a) food collectors
b) food producers

Question 5

What are food collectors?

Answer 5

• people of a particular society who depends on collecting foods such as wild plant, fish, hunted animals (ex. Ju/’huansi people)
  • Don’t know how to produce food, rely on natural environment and collect berries etc.
  • Hunter gatherers
  • Complex foragers

Question 6

What are food producers?

Answer 6

• depend on domesticated plants and/or animals for food.
  
  • Also store food
  • Herders - factory farming of animals and fish
  • Earliest form is horticulturalists (small garden, hoes, use for own consumption not markets)
    
    • Intensive agriculture
      
      • More dependent on human labor then technology
    • Extensive agriculture

Question 7

What are food producing societies?

Answer 7

• No longer rely on searching foods in the nature but begin to produce foods.
• Neolithic Revolution made the shift possible resulting in dramatic increase of population and sedentary life.
  
  • Humans started to produce food because they created agriculture
• Developed the notion of property rights and ownership.
• Food storage enabled the rise of non- food-producing activities and division of labor.
• Egalitarianism is replaced by increasing forms of inequality, conflict, war etc.

Question 8

How do substance systems vary?

Answer 8

• can be varied in terms of finding & consuming food.
  • Immediate Return System
    
    • Get food and immediately eat
  • Delayed Return System
    
    • Have to wait several months to harvest crops then have to process them then eat then store

Question 9

From cross-cultural perspective, what are the four modes of subsistence:

Answer 9

1. Foraging
2. Pastoralism
3. Horticulture
4. Agriculture

Question 10

Describe foraging?

Answer 10

• Don’t have an form of hierarchy that we usually have
• Egalitarian = all people equals (can’t claim u should have more food as you went out ad found it)
• Don’t produce food just collect and hunt
• Less gender division of labor so men can look after kids and women can hunt

Question 11

Describe Pastoralism

Answer 11

• Depend largely on cattle economy
• Cattle complex = society depends on cattle but also about their religion and beliefs, social position linked to how much cattle you own

Question 12

Describe Horticulture

Answer 12

• small garden but also go hunting and collect food
• Mixing different ways like foraging
• Early forms of food production

Question 13

Describe Agriculture

Answer 13

• Hierarchy and social divisions
• Non-egalitarian (people not equal)
• Gendered division of labor (women in home men produce food)
• See concept of authority - this is my land, you do this
• Beginning of technology (irrigation systems etc.)
• Notions of private property started to evolve

Question 14

What do modes of sustenance help us understand?

Answer 14

help us understand the pattern of social relationship, social structure and uneven power relationships.

Question 15

Why do we exchange gift? What is the function of gift?

Answer 15

• Exchange to show gratitude, displaying your wealth, strengthen bonds or connections, celebrations/ceremonial,
• Function to show/better your status, trading, build trust, enhance social bonds/wealth

Question 16

What is central to understanding our economic and social lives?

Answer 16

Exchange

Question 17

What are the three types of exchanges used for distribution of goods & services?

Answer 17

a) reciprocity,

b) redistribution,

c) market exchanges

Question 18

Describe reciprocity

Answer 18

• ancient mode of exchange of goods and services of roughly equal value between two parties involving no money.
• Marshal Shahlin in his “On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange” (1974) identified three
  forms of reciprocity which relies upon our social distance:
  1. Generalized Reciprocity
  2. Balanced Reciprocity
  3. Negative Reciprocity

Question 19

What is Generalized Reciprocity?

Answer 19

• **exchanges between close members/circles without expecting an immediate return and specifying the value of return; involves
  highest level of moral obligation (ex. a gift from parents); foragers and hunter- gatherers have this form reciprocity.
  
  • Very close distance - friends, siblings, partner
  • Don’t feel obligation to repay the gift

Question 20

What is Balanced Reciprocity?

Answer 20

• exchanges that involve expectation of give and take
  (return) within a specific time period (such as gift giving); involves formal
  relationships, greater social distance, and a strong obligation to repay;
  repayment needs not to be immediate but at a specific time period. (ex.
  exchange of hxaro among !Kung people; Kula ring among Trobriand Islanders)
  
  • Medium distance - formal relationships

Question 21

What is Negative Reciprocity?

Answer 21

• exchanges in which both party attempt to take
  advantage, try to get something for nothing or get better deal; impersonal
  social relations that involve hard bargaining and desire for personal gain
  is higher than social and moral obligation.
  
  • Long distance - very formal, strangers, other country
  • Try to bargain

Question 22

What is redistribution?

Answer 22

mostly in societies with centralized political system and/or power
involving an inward flow of goods or services to a centralized authority and outward flow from central authority to the society. (chief gets from you then redistribution to the community EX. taxes)

Question 23

Describe Potlatch as a form of redistribution

Answer 23

• Practiced among many indigenous communities (ex. Kwakwakawakw people
  in BC).
• Performed with elaborate feasting, music, dance.
• Host, usually chief, will give away goods and materials to the guests.
• Function as economic institution and serve for redistribution of goods.

Question 24

What are Market Exchanges?

Answer 24

• most popular and recent mode of exchanges in which goods and services bought and sold through a standard currency or barter; value of a product or services is determined by market principle of supply & demand; less personal exchanges than other forms of reciprocity.
  
  • EX. I make rice and you make wheat so we trade, mostly now done with money

Question 25

What are some key characteristics of agriculture?

Answer 25

- reliance on a few staple crops, foods that form the backbone of the subsistence system (rice in china). monocropping can lead to decreased dietary diversity and carries the risk of malnutrition compared to a more diverse diet - the link between intensive farming and a rapid increase in human population density - the development of a division of labor, a system in which individuals in a society begin to specialize in certain roles or tasks. The division of labor was possible because higher yields from agriculture meant that the quest for food no longer required everyone’s participation.