Chapter 10, food getting and economics. So this chapter is focused on subsistence and it is really only the second chapter in this textbook written from a cultural anthropology perspective. The other one was chapter 8 which covered culture as a concept as well as some of the main research methods used by cultural anthropologists. The other chapters have been written primarily from either a biological anthropology perspective in the case of human evolution or an archaeology perspective in the case of examining the human past. And then chapter 9 examining language as a communication system was from a linguistic anthropology perspective. Subsistence is a particularly rich topic within cultural anthropology because it has a strong impact on other facets of a society such as what religion is practiced or how people form families. And as we go through the main subsistence patterns, we'll see some of its impact on social organization. So here Mako Gonzalez and camp point out that food getting strategies also known as subsistance patterns and in economics lay the foundation for a society. There is a general distinction between food foragers which is a synonym for hunter gatherer. It refers to people who rely on wild foods for all of their diet versus food producers. And that is divided into several distinct patterns. So again, the main subsistence patterns contrast food foragers with food producers. And we'll look at each one of these patterns separately. Foragers have been extensively studied by cultural anthropologists. They are of great interest because even though today only a very small proportion of the world's people make a living from foraging, it's estimated that all humans made a living from foraging for up to 99% of our cultural past. So examining foragers can tell us quite a lot about humans in general. For example, our psychology. We're evolved to care about the people in front of us. Why is that? Because foragers lived in small face-to-face groups, right? So, you would know if someone who was with you was in difficulties and it would make sense to help them because if you were in difficulties later, they would help you. Whereas in today's world, we can know about a war that's happening halfway across the world within minutes of it starting. However, we're typically not impacted in the same kind of psychological way. And that's because up until very recently, humans had no idea what people on the other side of the world were doing. Another example is our physical adaptations. Many of us sit at a desk for eight hours a day and this can cause various problems. Everything from high blood pressure to obesity. And again, why is that? Because our bodies are really evolved for the foraging lifestyle. Both men and women in foraging societies are very active, walking several miles a day with the men hunting, the women gathering. So our bodies are evolved to be very active. And then of course today we compensate for that by doing activities like going to the gym which would have made no sense at all to foragers. And in the next couple of slides, we'll look at foraging lifestyles in more detail. Foraging is primarily a synonym for hunting and gathering. The only exception is fishing in today's world. Many commercial fishermen make a living from harvesting wild fish such as salmon or cod, but overall foraging is more associated with hunting and gathering. And that's the pattern we'll be focusing on. So typically men hunt or fish while women gather plants. Although today we recognize that these gender roles are not necessarily set in stone. That women may help with hunting if it's necessary or if there are for example no game animals available on a particular day, men may engage in gathering. Foragers typically live in small bands with a gender division of labor. So again, men hunt, women gather. Both of these tasks are very challenging. And often people who live in foraging societies prefer to eat meat and the g the getting of meat hunting may be a focus of cultural activities such as religion, magic, and storytelling. However, many foraging peoples derive the majority of their calories from women's gathering activities. Foragers are egalitarian in that there are no formal divisions in status. An individual may be recognized as particularly wise or a good hunter, but overall there are no formal status differences. All adults are considered about equal. One of the reasons for this is because foragers are nomadic, meaning that they are moving around most of the time because they have to carry all of their belongings with them. They don't accumulate goods the way people in sedentary societies do. And since they don't live in permanent houses or have large storage spaces for their goods, they have fewer things to indicate social status. Whereas if you think about our society often we show social status by living in a good neighborhood by having a large house by having that house be made of luxurious materials. So for people who live in light portable housing there are fewer ways of showing status and therefore these status differences don't develop. Forgers are also very cooperative, which makes sense. Not just because they're nice people, but from a practical perspective. If one group of men go out hunting and they catch animals, whereas another group don't, then it makes sense to give food to the ones who didn't, right? Because foragers don't have deep freezers. Their ways of preserving meat, such as smoking or drying, are somewhat limited. So it makes sense to share everything you have. And it's the same for women's gathering activities that if one group is more successful than another, again, it makes sense to share. Reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange are some ways in which people exchange goods in all different kinds of societies. Foragers are especially characterized by relationships of reciprocity where people share everything and there may be specific specialized types of gift giving and receiving. Fred distribution can refer to anything from taxes in present day society to a chieftdom where the chief collects goods from members of his community and then redistributes them to those most in need. Market exchange is what most of you are probably familiar with, right? Uh this is refers to prices set by supply and demand. Here the authors note that foragers practice reciprocity. However, all human societies practice reciprocity in various forms. Generalized reciprocity refers to an ongoing social relationship where the specific value of gifts is not specified and neither is the time period when they will be paid back. However, all parties assume that exchanges will equal out in the end. The most commonly used example for this is the relationship between parents and children. Your parents provide you with food, clothing, shelter, education until you're 18 in the present day United States, but they don't give you a bill for that when you turn 18, right? Um, however, when you get older, as you finish your education, you get a full-time job, and your parents may retire or start to suffer from health problems. Often, it's very common that younger adults will take care of their parents. Um, you know, you may take them to doctor's appointments, you may pick up their prescription medications, you may help them with chores around the house. uh later when you have a family your parents may help you with child care right so the value of these actions is never specified but overall it's a relationship where your parents help you and you help them that it's based on both emotional connections and practical help given to each other over a lifetime balanced reciprocity refers to a situation where the value of gifts exchanged is equal and usually there is a specified time period. So the classic example is birthday gifts. If my friend gives me a birthday gift in February of around $50, then I will give her a birthday gift of around $50 in when her birthday happens in August. Right? So there the value of the gift is specified around $50 and so is the time period. She gives me a gift on my birthday and I give her a gift on her birthday. Negative reciprocity refers to a situation where one party is trying to get something at the expense of the other party. In this well it's negative. Um so this does not include things like charitable giving because in those cases while you may be giving money to the charity and not getting a monetary return on that you get the good feeling of having done something to improve the world and perhaps the prestige of having donated. Your name might for example be featured in the organization's newsletter. This type of negative reciprocity that's mentioned here basically refers to one party trying to rip off another party during an exchange. Uh while I was conducting field work in Northern Ireland, uh the most common example was that supermarkets would attempt to get agricultural products like milk or beef from farmers at less than the cost of production. So whatever it costs the farmer to produce a liter of milk, the grocery store would want to pay less, right? Um and then especially with milk, farmers would often be stuck because fresh milk goes bad. So it's sort of a situation where they have to take the price given by the grocery store or they may end up with nothing. So negative reciprocity is always viewed as a bad practice. Uh here Michael Gonzalez and Camp also point out that sharing is a survival strategy among foraging groups. Yes. Um because they don't have the technology to preserve food for long periods of time, it makes sense to share what you have and then maybe someone will share with you tomorrow. So although reciprocity has been studied in great detail among foragers, it's important to note that all societies have practices of reciprocity. So within cultural anthropology, there's a real distinction between food foragers who rely on wild foods, both plants and animals, and food producers. And we'll look at these patterns one at a time. Horiculturalism often occurs after a foraging group's population exceeds the carrying capacity of the land available to them. What that means is that foraging is a very healthy way of life and foragers typically have excellent nutrition. However, it does require access to a fairly large area of land. If you have more people in your group than you have access to land for getting them enough wild food, you may have to start producing food. So often what happens at this point is that foragers start to plant smallcale farms because they're already very familiar with the characteristics of wild plants in their area. And then this causes the population to expand making it necessary to plant even more farms. And this is sort of one way in which the transition from for foraging to horiculture happens. Horicultural people are sedentary because their crops need to be planted, weeded, watered, so they can't move around all the time. However, many horicultural people do not have access to fertilizers, which means that once the soil has been exhausted, they have to move their village in plant farms with fresh soil. Often for horicultural people have leveling mechanisms to prevent the formation of social classes such as a chief giving away all of his possessions to show generosity. Sweden cultivation or what's known as slash and burn is also practiced. Horicultural people often have redistribution occurring through balanced reciprocity, meaning that there are specific trading partners who will exchange goods of an equal value over a specified period of time. Bronislam Malinowski documented that extensively when he studied the cooler ring of the Troian Islanders in which shell armbands travel around the islands in one direction and shell necklaces travel around the island in another direction. So that's a form of balanced reciprocity where these kula valuables are being traded by people who have specific relationships with each other. The Dani people of West Papua in Indonesia are an example of a horicultural people. They rely primarily on sweet potatoes and domesticated pigs. And this is something that's very common with horicultural people that they may rely on one or two plants and one or two domesticated animals that they typically do not have the extensive range of domesticated plants and animals that we find with agricultural peoples. Pastoralism is another pattern of food production. It refers to a way of life centered around hurting pasture animals breeding and caring for these animals known as animal husbandry. And this way of life is often adopted by foragers when again the caring capacity has been exceeded for them to continue practicing a foraging way of life. but where it's not practical to plant even small gardens uh such as desert areas. However, in areas where it's impossible to grow crops, it may still be very possible to have large herds of animals that eat something people don't eat, such as grass. And then the animals can be utilized for products such as milk, cheese, yogurt. Some pastoralists also you use animal blood without killing the animal for cooking. Then leather and other animal products are used for housing and clothing. Pastoralists are often semi-nomatic with a home base. So they will move with their livestock from one place to another, letting the animals eat everything that's available and then taking them to another field where they have more food available. This form of transhumans actually encourages biodiversity of native plants because after domesticated animals have eaten all of the grass or whatever it is that they eat, often different kinds of plants will replace them. Pastoralists tend to have a gender division of labor. Often it's men caring for livestock while women take care of the home and the children and cooking. However, there is a considerable amount of cross-cultural variation in that. So among the Messiah of East Africa, for example, cattle are owned by men but cared for by women. In terms of economics, pastoralists use reciprocity with low social distance. Meaning that people from their own group, from their own community that they know will become partners in a form of reciprocity where they can exchange goods and services with each other informally with high social distance. usually meaning people from outside their community. The market economy may be used. So for example, a certain percentage of animals may be sold for cash at specific times of the year. The Tuareg people of North Africa are an example of a pastoralist group. They traditionally heard camels, goats, and cattle. The pattern of food production most familiar to us is agriculture. This refers to the year round cultivation of crops for a surplus which means that not everyone is involved in the production of food. Specialization occurs where other people from the community may for example work as blacksmiths, religious specialists, nobles or other leaders. Agricultural people typically have large settled populations. They have both domesticated plants and animals. And often what we see are cities and class divisions. So land may for example be owned by nobles but worked by peasant farmers. Often the type of economy that's important is redistribution via the market economy meaning money. So this applies to many societies today as well that farmers produce food primarily not for their own families but for selling on the market and then they use money to buy the things they need. And this is sort of a distinction between subsistance farming, which is a type of family farming where people grow what they need for their own families. They may have many different plants and animals in order to have a nutritious diet and to be able to have everything they need grown on the farm versus a more capitalistic farming where farmers may specialize in just one or two crops or animals but then they are very reliant on the market economy. So for example, corn farmers in Iowa, if the price of corn goes down, they may be in economic difficulties. Agriculture can also in terms of the social pattern it produces be sort of a combination. For example, while I conducted field work in Northern Ireland, most of the research participants I worked with were family farmers in terms of the farm had been in each family for many generations and it was considered a lifestyle in primarily a way of life in addition to a way of making a living. So there was a great desire for fathers to pass farms down onto their sons even if it was not particularly profitable from a a financial perspective. It was not subsistance farming in terms of being able to produce everything at home. Most of these farms specialized in beef and sheep. This is largely because Northern Ireland is very mountainous. So it's difficult to produce any crops, but it's fairly conductive to raising animals. So farmers would live in their farmhouses and then just move the animals around from one field to another because of negative reciprocity on the part of supermarkets that were supposed to buy these animals after they'd been butchered and sell them as cuts of meat. Often what would happen is the European Union would provide subsidies for farmers so that they continue could continue farming and producing food for the local market. So agriculture is a way of life that's greatly respected in Northern Ireland. This image shows farmers in Northern Ireland harvesting Pete which is used for heating homes. Because this is the chapter on economics, it also defines money. Uh this is something that's used to buy and sell goods and labor. It can take many forms. Teeth, shells, bones, beads, metals, and animals. Special purpose money refers to items only used to measure value in a marketplace. No value beyond the marketplace. So for example, if you think about present day cash, it's either paper which is considered valuable because the US government backs it with a specific amount of gold or coins uh which are largely today made out of nonvaluable metals. But it's the promise of the government to guarantee that the money is a symbol for gold basically is what makes it valuable, right? That the government promise is what creates value. On the other hand, multi-purpose money refers to items with intrinsic value or usefulness such as cacao which can be made into things like chocolate, right? Uh multi-purpose money is probably less familiar to most of us than specialurpose money which is used in most present day economies. Muckl Gonzalez and Camp also distinguish between agriculture and industrialism. They argue that industrialism is a very specific type of agriculture which is focused on producing food at very low cost using highly mechanized technology. Often the crops are monocultured, meaning that there will be only one type of plant on a farm and then farmers sell that plant for money and use the money to buy everything else they need. This is not necessarily very good for the environment. Uh, one type of crop exhausts the soil faster than mixed farming. Industrialism also often includes genetically modified crops. So they may be modified for example so that they require fewer pesticides or less fertilizer. They may be more drought resistant. But they remain controversial because although humans have been modifying plants and animals for tens of thousands of years simply by breeding together desired individuals, GMOs involve taking genes from a an entirely different organism and inserting it into a plant or animal. And we still don't know whether that is safe to do over the long term because that technology has not been around for very long. Um, industrialism can be problematic because of the heavy environmental and health costs. Significant chemical inputs may be needed despite the use of genetically modified crops. So, you know, this refers to chemical fertilizers. Mechanized production can be tough on the environment. It's not necessarily very healthy for the humans who are working in this way. So for example, many pork production plants are very unhealthy for the workers in them. This image shows a highly mechanized form of cotton harvesting. Here, Muckle, Gonzalez, and Camp are explaining the social organization of industrial farms themselves rather than societies that produce food using this pattern. So on an industrial farm often there may be a confined animal feeding operation in which large numbers of animals are kept in very small spaces often especially pork and chicken are produced in this way. Conventional operations require antibiotics because animals are kept confined very tightly together. disease spreads rapidly. So using antibiotics is a way to prevent that. However, there are ethical questions about whether it's right to keep animals so tightly confined that they cannot engage in behavior that's normal for their species. And there are also medical questions about whether this is healthy for people who may become overexposed to antibiotics through eating a diet of animals that have taken antibiotics extensively, right? Because we know that antibiotics become less effective the more they're used. So, you know, this raises potential scenarios where a person needs antibiotics and the antibiotics no longer work because they've been exposed through their food. Um, social organization on industrial farms also is usually consists of a hierarchy of production where landowners are on top and workers who are labeled unskilled are at the bottom. Often these workers are undocumented migrant laborers. Anthropologists such as Seth Holmes, who has studied especially strawberry farming extensively, point out that being able to harvest a crop such as strawberries actually requires a great deal of skill. You have to remain in a crouching position. You have to move very quickly. you have to separate the ripe fruit from the unripe fruit which you leave. So it even though it is officially labeled unskilled work, it actually requires quite a lot of skill. So then that sort of raises questions about why do we call these workers unskilled? Is it a way to justify paying them less or denying them the proper paperwork for doing their jobs? Um, it leads to toler tolerating a system where many migrant laborers are forced to be undocumented because there are no realistic ways for them to become documented and often that is because they're labeled unskilled whereas workers who are labeled skilled have various ways of getting visas for the United States. So industrialism as a social organization on these farms certainly produces many problems, but the reason it's ubiquitous in the United States is that it allows for the cheap production of food. This is an image of an industrial factory farm that produces eggs. As you can see, the chickens are very tightly confined and then the eggs go on a conveyor belt like any factory product. Here the authors return to the idea of the human diet. They point out that a variety of diets can be healthy for the human body. However, a major nutrition transition usually occurs with a shift from traditional to industrial foods. So whether these traditional foods are from foraging, from horiculture, pastoralism or traditional family farming where there are many crops and animals being produced, typically when we get to industrial farming, the quality of the food goes down. In order to make it much cheaper, it has to be raised intensively using antibiotics in practices which may not be very safe or ethical such as genetically modified organisms. And here Michael Gonzalez and Camp point out that a focus on local whole foods can restore and maintain health. So, the idea that the fewer highly processed foods we eat, uh, the more fresh fruits and vegetables and meats, for example, the healthier we're likely to be. And here, the authors finished a chapter by showing us an image of a young caribou camp. So these are indigenous people in Canada who even though in some ways they are living perhaps in ways that are similar to other Canadians, they have maintained elements of their foraging lifestyle that are culturally meaningful and nutritionally rich. And this is the end of chapter 10.