Economic Systems

1
Chapter 8

• Economic Systems

2
Economic System

• A means of producing, distributing, and consuming
  goods.
• Classic economic theory assumes that our wants
  are infinite and that our means are limited.
  Thus people must make choices about how to use
  their resources time, labor, money capital.
• Maximize profit is the basic assumption.
• New Data suggests People response to other
  motivations than profit wealth, prestige,
  pleasure, comfort, or social harmony.
• Thus more complex than basic theory.

3
How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Systems?

• Anthropologists study how goods are produced,
  distributed, and consumed in the context of the
  total culture of particular societies.
• Two main questions
• How are production, distribution, and consumption
  organized in different societies? (Modes of
  production systems - organizational behavior
  productive forces labor, power, tools, ect.).
• What motivates people in different cultures to
  produce, distribute or exchange, and consume
  (individual behavior social relations of
  production property, power, associations,
  relationships, etc.).

Rice farming remains socially and economically
important to the Karen people in Northern
Thailand, despite the increase of young peoples
migration to cities since the 1980s.
4
Nonindustrial Production

• In small-scale nonindustrial societies
• Resources controlled by families or groups of
  relatives (water holes of the bushmen).
• Division of labor is by age and gender with some
  craft specialization.
• Production takes place at the time required, and
  most goods are consumed by the group that
  produces them.

Traditional Nomadic Pastoralismon Tibets
Northern Plateau (Goldstein, Beall, Cincotta).
Group of Bushman women collect water from a
waterhole into ostrich egg shells , Nambia
(Bannister Gallo).
5
Non-economic variables - Culture

• Economics cannot be interpreted without an
  understanding of culture.
• Economics is NOT separate from social, religious,
  and political spheres it is a social science.

Yams in Trobriand Culture Mens Wealth -Not
produced for provisions. -Men are expected to
present yams to the relatives of his daughters
husband when she marries again when death
befalls a member of his family. -A yam house is
like a bank account when full, a man is wealthy
and powerful.
6
How Do Societies Organize Economic Resources and
Labor?

• In large-scale industrial and postindustrial
  societies
• There is much a much more complex division of
  labor.
• Individuals or business corporations own
  property.
• Producers and consumers rarely know each other.
• Transaction takes place with money.

7
Means of Production - Resources

• Means of production include land, labor,
  technology, and capital.
• Land the importance of land varies according to
  method of production land is less important to
  a foraging economy than it is to a cultivating
  economy.
• Labor, tools, and specialization Technological
  innovations can change the way land is used
  rapidly.

8
Control of Land and Water Resources

• All societies regulate allocation of valuable
  natural resourcesespecially land and water.
• Food foragers determine who will hunt game and
  gather plants in their home range and where these
  activities take place.
• Farmers must have some means of determining title
  to land and access to water for irrigation.

A Ju/hoansi (bushman) water hole.
The Chakram (Wheel) made of wood is used to move
water between paddy fields and water channels
9
Control of Land and Water Resources

• Pastoralists require a system that determines
  rights to watering places and grazing land.
• In Western capitalist societies, private
  ownership of land and rights to natural resources
  generally prevails.

Pastoralists cattle drinking.
Hydro-electric Dam
10
Technology Resources

• Tools and other material equipment, together with
  the knowledge of how to make and use them,
  constitute a societys technology.
• Food foragers and nomads (pastoralists) who are
  frequently on the move are apt to have fewer and
  simpler tools than sedentary farmers.
• The primary tools for horticulturists include the
  axe, digging stick, and hoe.

11
How And Why Are Goods Exchanged and Redistributed?

• People exchange goods through
• Reciprocity
• Redistribution
• Market exchange

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Reciprocity

• Reciprocity is the exchange between social equals
  and occurs in three degrees generalized,
  balanced, and negative.
• Generalized reciprocity is most common to closely
  related exchange partners and involves giving
  with no specific expectation of exchange, but
  with a reliance upon similar opportunities being
  available to the giver (common among foragers).

• These Ju/hoansi are cutting up meat that will be
  shared by others in the camp.
• Food distribution practices of such food foragers
  are an example of generalized reciprocity.

13
Reciprocity

• Balanced -A direct obligation to reciprocate in
  equal value for the relationship to continue.
  Giving with the expectation of equivalent
  exchange (common in tribal societies with distant
  related partners) Birthday parties, etc
• Negative - The giver tries to get the better of
  the deal. Each partner tries to maximize profit
  with an expectation of immediate exchange.
  Usually very distant trading partners.
• Most economies are not exclusively characterized
  by a single mode of reciprocity.
• The United States economy has all three types of
  reciprocity.

14
Redistribution

• Food Bank

• Form of exchange in which goods flow into a
  central place where they are sorted, counted, and
  reallocated. Found in chiefdoms industrial
  non-industrialized states.
• In societies with a sufficient surplus to support
  some sort of government, goods in the form of
  gifts, tribute, taxes, and the spoils of war are
  gathered into storehouses controlled by a chief
  or some other type of leader.
• From there, they are handed out again.

• Taxes

15
Motives in Redistributing Income

• Leadership typically have three motives in
  redistribution
• Gain or maintain a position of superiority
  through a display of wealth and generosity.
• Assure those who support the leadership an
  adequate standard of living by providing them
  with desired goods.
• Establish alliances with leaders of other groups
  by hosting them at lavish parties and giving them
  valuable goods.

16
Market Exchange

• Buying and selling of goods and services, with
  prices set by rules of supply and demand.
• Money may be defined as something used to make
  payments for other goods and services.
• Its critical attributes are durability,
  portability, divisibility, recognizability, and
  fungibility.
• The wide range of things that have been used as
  money in one or another society includes salt,
  shells, stones, beads, feathers, fur, bones, and
  teeth.

Russian Market
Open air porcelain market in Taizhou, China.
17
Patterns of Labor

• Every society has a division of labor by gender
  and age.
• Division by gender makes learning more efficient.
• Division by age provides sufficient time to
  developing skills.

18
Division of Labor by Gender

• Often, work that is considered inappropriate for
  women (or men) in one society is performed by
  them in another. Here we see female stone
  construction laborers in Bangalore, India, who
  carry concrete atop their heads.

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Three Patterns of Division of Labor by Gender

• Flexible/integrated pattern
• Segregated pattern
• Dual sex Configuration

• 35 of tasks are performed equally by men and
  women.
• Tasks deemed appropriate for one gender may be
  performed by the other.
• Boys and girls grow up in much the same way and
  learn to value cooperation over competition.

20
Segregated Pattern

• Almost all work is defined as masculine or
  feminine.
• Men and women rarely engage in joint efforts.
• Common in pastoral nomadic, intensive
  agricultural, and industrial societies.
• Both boys and girls are raised primarily by women.

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Dual Sex Configuration

• Men and women carry out their work separately.
• The relationship is one of balanced complementary
  rather than inequality.
• Each gender manages its own affairs, and the
  interests of both men and women are represented
  at all levels.
• Egalitarian

22
Division of Labor by Age

• This Thai girl exemplifies the use of child labor
  in many parts of the world, often by large
  corporations.
• Even in Western countries, child labor plays a
  major economic role.

23
Question

• From an economist's point of view, "market
  exchange" is defined by
• the purchase of goods in a marketplace.
• the buying and selling of goods and services
  whose value is determined by supply and demand.
• the role of middlemen who bring buyers and
  sellers together.
• face-to-face bargaining for goods and services.
• the role of multinational corporations.

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Answer B

• From an economist's point of view, "market
  exchange" is defined by the buying and selling of
  goods and services whose value is determined by
  supply and demand.

25
Potlach

• A ceremonial event practiced by Northwest Coast
  native American groups in which a village chief
  publicly gives away stockpiled food and other
  goods while generating prestige for themselves.
• Potlatch tribes were foragers but lived in
  sedentary villages and had chiefs (lived in a
  rich environment).

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Potlatch

• Usually held in connection with events such as
  marriages, house building, funerals, etc.
• Extravagant and lavish preparations including
  large food preparation the creation of masks
  art work are made by the host as gifts for the
  guests.

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Potlatch

• Potlatchs are a significant representation of the
  hosts status and the display of rank title.
• In return for giving away food and wealth they
  get recognition of their status and that of their
  lineage.
• Potlatches become very competitive.
• Aspiring leaders use competitive potlatching to
  move up the system.

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Results of the Potlach

• Potlatches were once interpreted as wasteful
  displays generated by culturally induced mania
  for prestige, but these customs are adaptive,
  allowing adjustment for alternating periods of
  local abundance and shortage.
• The Potlatch also works as a Leveling Mechanism
  A societal obligation compelling a family to
  distribute goods so that no one accumulates more
  wealth than anyone else.

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Question

• ____________ are/is important in societies where
  the accumulation of wealth or property could
  upset the more-or-less egalitarian social order.
• Cooperative work groups
• Conspicuous consumption
• Leveling mechanisms
• Balanced reciprocity
• Barter

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Answer C

• Leveling mechanisms are/is important in societies
  where the accumulation of wealth or property
  could upset the more-or-less egalitarian social
  order.

31
Money

• Anything used to make payments for other things
  (goods or labor) as well as to measure their
  value may be special purpose or multipurpose.

32
World Trade Organization

• A crowd of protesters demonstrating against World
  Trade Organization (WTO) policies that favor
  rich countries over poor ones during the
  organizations December 2005 meeting in Hong
  Kong.
• Established in 1995 and headquartered in Geneva,
  the WTO is the only global international
  organization with rules of trade among its 150
  member countries.

33
Malthusian catastrophe

• Is a return to subsistence-level conditions as a
  result of population growth outpacing
  agricultural production. - the growth of the
  population will eventually reach the limit of the
  resource base.
• In 2007 The New York Times claimed that the
  industrial revolution had enabled the modern
  world to break out of the Malthusian Trap.
• In 2008 the Wall Street Journal pointed out
  various limited resources may soon limit human
  population growth because of a widespread belief
  in the importance of prosperity for every
  individual and the rising consumption trends of
  large developing nations such as China India.

34
World Population Estimates Food Production
In 1943 the U.S. imported half its wheat. In
1945 it established research station to increase
wheat production to feed the rapidly expanding
population. By 1956 the Green Revolution had
made the US self-sufficient. By 1964 the US
exported half a million tons of wheat.
35
Malthusian Catastrophie

• By 2000, children in developing countries were
  dying at a high rate from strictly preventable
  diseases.
• Data demonstrates the worlds food production has
  peaked in some of the very regions where food is
  needed the most result famine.
• China loses arable land at a rate of 2,500 sq km
  per year.
• 30 of land in Madagascar previously regarded as
  arable is irreversibly barren.