Ch.5 MAKING A LIVING: Adaptive Strategies, Permaculture & Economic Racism

This chapter Making A Living may seem boring if you don't get the context. How humans evolved in their food production is the basis of our economic strategies and systems. Human societies, how they are organized, and what they need and work towards, they are defined by how they create and maintain their food production, generally speaking. Jason GOdesky writes that

A given a society’s mode of subsistence, accurate predictions could often be made about their level of political complexity, their kinship patterns, their population size and density, their modes of warfare, and even their religious beliefs.

This blog by Jason Godesky explains why this chapter on Making a Living is so vital and relevant to the study of anthropology. Take a moment to read the first seven paragraphs through the following sentence:

"Cohen’s typology may be slightly ethnocentrically flawed. in breaking out more types within our own adaptive strategy, the traditional typology tends to give pride of place to our own culture that may not be entirely deserved".

SOME VIDEOS TO FURTHER THIS CHAPTER
I found a few videos that brought new strategies, i.e., permaculture, and a new insight into how anthropology students might find Cohen's strategies useful and how other aspects of the chapter namely various forms of distribution and exchange, including the market principle, redistribution, and generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity, can be applied to contexts right in NYC.

VIDEO #1: Permaculture 101
Permaculture expert Penny Livingston-Stark shows how natural systems can teach us better design practices. Learning to work with the earth not only creates a healthier environment, it also nourishes the people who live in it.




VIDEO #2: Joel Salatin - Virginia 1:37"
Joel Salatin writes in his website that he is "in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture." And if you visited his farm, you'd know he means it & lives it!
He produces beef, chicken, eggs, turkey, rabbits, and forestry product. Yet, Joel calls himself a grass-farmer, for it is the grass that transform the sun into energy that his animals can then feed on. By closely observing nature, Joel created a rotational grazing system that not only allows the land to heal but also allows the animals to behave the way the were meant to -- as in expressing their "chicken-ness" or "pig-ness", as Joel would say. www.polyfacefarms.com



VIDEO #3: Witness - Forty Acres and a Dream - Part 1 10:36"
Oddly this video was produced for AlJazeeraEnglishTV rather than regular broadcast TV or cable.Photographer John Ficara captures the plight of black farmers in the United States. THe title refers to Forty Acres and a Mule - a term for compensation that was promised to be awarded to freed African American slaves after the Civil War— 40 acres (16 ha) of land to farm, and a mule with which to drag a plow so the land could be cultivated. This was their entrance into the industrial economy from which they were once the tools and machinery of the production as chattel slaves.