Chapter Outline

1
Chapter Outline

• Adaptation
• Modes of Subsistence
• Subsistence and Economic
• Distribution and Exchange
• Economics, Culture, and the World of Business

2
Culture Adaptation

• A peoples cultural adaptation consists of a
  complex of ideas, activities, and technologies
  that enable them to survive and thrive.
• The process of adaptation establishes an ever
  shifting balance between the needs of a
  population and its environment.

3
Ecosystem

• Defined as a system composed of the natural
  environment and organisms living within it.
• The system is bound by the activities of the
  organisms, as well as by such physical processes
  as erosion and evaporation.

4
Cultural Ecology

• A term that refers to the dynamic interaction of
  specific cultures with their natural environments.

5
Cultural Evolution

• Human groups adapt to their environments by means
  of their cultures.
• Culture evolution is the change of cultures over
  the course of time.
• Progress is the notion that humans are moving
  forward to a better, more advanced stage in their
  development toward perfection.

6
Parallel Evolution

• In parallel evolution, the development of similar
  cultural adaptations to similar environmental
  conditions by peoples whose ancestral cultures
  were already somewhat alike.

7
Convergent Evolution
Agriculture in Tibet
Urumbamba valley agriculture in Peru

• In convergent evolution, the development of
  similar cultural adaptations to similar
  environmental conditions by different peoples
  with different ancestral cultures.

8
Food-Foraging

• The oldest type of human adaptation.
• Requires that people move their residence
  according to changing food sources.
• Local group size is kept small.
• The carrying capacity of the land is the number
  of people that the available resources can
  support at a given level of food-getting
  techniques.

9
Neolithic Revolution

• Domestication of plants and animals by peoples
  with stone-based technologies, beginning about
  10,000 years ago and leading to radical
  transformations in cultural systems.
• Led to radical transformations in cultural
  systems with foragers developing new social and
  economic patterns based either on plant
  cultivation or pastoralism.

10
Pastoralism

• A means of subsistence that relies on raising and
  managing herds of domesticated migratory grazing
  animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats.
• Pastoralists are usually nomadic, moving as
  needed to provide animals with pasture and water.
• Transhumance is a strategy in which people move
  grazing animals from winter pastures in low
  steppe lands to summer pastures on high plateaus.

11
Crop Cultivation Horticulture

• When small communities of gardeners work with
  simple hand tools, using neither irrigation nor
  the plow.
• One widespread forms of horticulture is swidden
  farming (slash-and-burn).
• An form of horticulture in which the natural
  vegetation is cut, the slash is burned, and crops
  are planted among the ashes.

12
Crop Cultivation Agriculture

• Crop cultivation that involves using technologies
  other than hand tools, such as irrigation,
  fertilizers, and the wooden or metal plow pulled
  by harnessed draft animals.
• Agriculturalists are able to grow surplus
  foodproviding not only for their own needs but
  for those of various full-time specialists and
  nonproducing consumers as well.

13
Industrialization

• The industrial revolution began 200 years ago
  with the invention of the steam engine.
• It replaced human labor and hand tools with
  machines and resulted in massive culture change
  in many societies.

14
Subsistence and Economics

• An economic system is an organizational
  arrangement for producing, distributing, and
  consuming goods.
• In every society, customs and rules govern the
  kinds of work done, who does the work, attitudes
  toward the work, how it is accomplished, and who
  controls the resources.
• The primary resources in a culture are raw
  materials, technology, and labor.

15
Technology Resources

• The number and kinds of tools a society uses,
  together with knowledge about how to make and use
  them constitute its technology.
• Food foragers and pastoral nomads who are
  frequently on the move are apt to have fewer and
  simpler tools than more settled peoples such as
  sedentary farmers.

16
Land Resources

• All societies regulate the allocation of land and
  other valuable resources.
• In nonindustrial societies, individual ownership
  of land is rare generally land is controlled by
  kinship groups, such as the lineage or band.

17
Technology

• The tools people use is related to their mode of
  subsistence.
• Food foragers and pastoral nomads who are
  frequently on the move are apt to have fewer and
  simpler tools than more settled peoples such as
  sedentary farmers.

18
Labor Resources and Patterns

• In addition to raw materials and technology,
  labor is a key resource in any economic system.
• Two features are almost always present in human
  cultures a basic division of labor by gender and
  by age.

19
Division of Labor

• The division of labor is commonly governed by
  rules according to gender and age.
• Whether men or women do a particular job varies
  from group to group, but typically work is
  divided into the tasks of either one or the other.

20
Flexible/Integrated Division of Labor

• Most common often among food foragers and
  subsistence farmers.
• Men and women perform up to 35 of activities
  with equal participation.
• Boys and girls learn to value cooperation over
  competition.
• Adult men and women interact with each other on a
  relatively equal basis.

21
Segregated Pattern Division of Labor

• Societies in this pattern define almost all work
  as either masculine or feminine, so men and women
  rarely engage in joint efforts.
• This pattern is frequently seen in pastoral
  nomadic, intensive agricultural, and industrial
  societies, where mens work keeps them outside
  the home for much of the time.

22
Dual Sex Configuration Division of Labor

• In this pattern, men and women carry out their
  work separately, as in societies segregated by
  gender, but the relationship between them is one
  of balanced complementarity rather than
  inequality.
• Although competition is a prevailing ethic, each
  gender manages its own affairs, and the interests
  of both men and women are represented at all
  levels.

23
Division of Labor by Age

• Division of labor according to age is typical of
  human societies.
• In traditional farming societies, children and
  older people make a greater contribution to the
  economy in terms of work than in industrial or
  postindustrial societies.
• In industrial societies, where poor families
  depend on every possible contribution to the
  household, children often work.

24
Cooperative Labor

• Cooperative work groups can be found in every
  type of society.
• If the effort involves the whole community, a
  festive spirit permeates the work.

25
Reciprocity

• A transaction between two parties whereby goods
  and services of roughly equivalent value are
  exchanged.

26
Types of Reciprocity

• Generalized - The value of the gift is not
  calculated, nor is time of repayment specified.
• Balanced reciprocity - Giving and receiving are
  specific as to the value of goods and the time of
  their delivery.
• Negative reciprocity - The aim is to get
  something for as little as possible and may
  involve hard bargaining, manipulation, cheating,
  and theft.

27
Barter and Trade

• Barter is a form of reciprocity by which scarce
  items from one group are exchanged for desirable
  goods from another group.
• Although each party seeks to get the best deal,
  both may negotiate until a balance has been found
  and each feels satisfied.

28
The Kula Ring

• Balanced reciprocity that reinforces trade
  relations among a group of seafaring Melanesians
  inhabiting a ring of islands off the eastern
  coast of Papua New Guinea.
• Participants are influential men who travel
  within the Trobriand ring to exchange prestige
  items (red shell necklaces) which are circulated
  clockwise around the islands and white shell
  armbands (mwali), which are carried in the
  opposite direction.

29
The Kula Ring
30
Redistribution

• A form of exchange in which goods flow into a
  central place where they are sorted and
  reallocated.
• Three motives in redistribution
• Gain a position of power through a display of
  wealth and generosity.
• Assure those who support the leadership an
  adequate standard of living.
• Establish alliances with leaders of other groups.

31
Conspicuous Consumption

• Display of wealth for social prestige.
• Potlatch
• On the northwest coast of North America, a
  ceremonial event in which a village chief
  publicly gives away stock-piled food and other
  goods that signify wealth.

32
Prestige Economy

• Creation of a surplus for the express purpose of
  gaining prestige through a public display of
  wealth that is given away as gifts.

33
Leveling Mechanism

• A cultural obligation compelling prosperous
  members of a community to give away goods, host
  public feasts, provide free service, or otherwise
  demonstrate generosity so that no one permanently
  accumulates more wealth than anyone else.

34
Market Exchange

• To an economist, market exchange has to do with
  the buying and selling of goods and services,
  with prices set by rules of supply and demand.
• Personal loyalties and moral values are not
  supposed to play a role, but they often do.

35
Money

• Something used to make payments for goods and
  services and to measure their value.
• Its attributes are durability, portability,
  divisibility, recognizability, and fungibility
  (exchangeable for any other monetary item of the
  same value).
• Items used as money include salt, shells, stones,
  beads, feathers, fur, bones, teeth, and metals,
  from iron to gold and silver.

36
Informal Economy

• A network of producing and circulating marketable
  commodities, labor, and services that for various
  reasons escape government control (enumeration,
  regulation, or other type of public monitoring or
  auditing).
• May encompass a range of activities, including
  gardening, house cleaning, child care, doing
  repair or construction, lending money, picking
  pockets, and gambling.