Kottak Ch. 5 - Making A Living (Subsistence)

HERE ARE SOME OF THE CHAPTER OBJECTIVES Know what an adaptive strategy is. In addition, you should be familiar with Cohen's typology of societies based on their adaptive strategies. Understand examples of how today's globalizing world and state policies are altering the ways of life of many communities that traditionally practiced different adaptive strategies. Distinguish between modes and means of production Understand how industrialism leads to the alienation of producers from their products. Distinguish between the various forms of distribution and exchange, including the market principle, redistribution, and generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity. Click here to read the previous posts on the potlatch and watch two brief videos of the ritual. Specifically, you should know what it is, where it has been practiced, and how it relates to local and regional patterns of resource abundance and shortage. What role do religious and social ceremonies play in an economy? Answer: The potlatch of the native groups of the North Pacific coast of North America is a good example of the integral role a festival can play in a group's economy. The sponsors of a potlatch traditionally gave away food, blankets, pieces of copper, and other material goods. In return, they gained social prestige, and the more they gave away, the more their prestige increased. Like most regions of the world, the North Pacific coast of North America is subject to local fluctuations in resource abundance. One village might have a good year while another experienced a bad one. A village enjoying a good year would take advantage of its surplus to increase its prestige by hosting a potlatch and inviting the members of the surrounding villages to attend. In this way, the potlatch created and maintained a regional economy in which a series of villages pooled their resources. The needy villages would receive the surplus from the wealthy villages, which in turn gained prestige.

Chapter 5: Making A Living (Subsistence and A Brief History of Mankind)

One of the professors who inspires my teaching is Prof. Mike Wesch at KSU (National Teacher of the Year). I love his cultural anthro syllabus and the intention of his course:

Cultural Anthropology explores different cultures in all of their manifestations - from how people make a living to what people live for. In an increasingly interconnected world, cultural differences lie at the root of many of our most pressing challenges, throughout the world and in our own personal lives. There has never been a time when Cultural Anthropology has been more important than it is right now.

Subsistence.

• minimal (or marginal) resources for subsisting; "social security provided only a bare subsistence"
• a means of surviving; "farming is a hard means of subsistence"
• the state of existing in reality; having substance http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• The means of living; obtaining food and shelter necessary to support life; everything that is done to "make a living" resweb.llu.edu/rford/docs/VGD/GSLVT/gslglossary.html

Last week you read about culture. This week about making a living.

Chapter 5 - Making a Living seems rather dry and uninteresting to most students. However, this chapter begins to explain the history of mankind through five adaptive strategies used to subsist, to survive, to ... make a living. It is useful to know these strategies, which are still part of modern culture in some places. These strategies help us distinguish between the ways humans in the past and the present organized into groups that shape our the shared, learned, symbolic and integrated culture we live by as well as reflect adaptive and maladaptive approaches to our survival.

This chapter will also help you understand the documentary The Corporation (which we will watch) that explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time that rose out of industrialization. "Taking its [the corporation's] status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask 'What kind of person is it?' " As we look at the forms of reciprocity that are common in each adaptive strategy, the example of corporations reflect the tensions of balanced and negative reciprocity.


YOUR COMMENTS THIS WEEK: Rather than quoting the chapter this week, write a 1-3 sentences responding to the (1) video above IF THE WORLD WE A VILLAGE as well as the (2) videos below on the Kwakiutl potlatch which was once outlawed by the government in British Columbia.

Ch. 5 MAKING A LIVING: A Brief History of the Ban on the Potlatch

POTLATCH Pt. 1 1:27"
INFO FROM YOUTUBE: This video shows scenes of Kwakiutl potlatch.One of the first acts in the first 72 hours of the Bush Administration was to strip the Duwamish Tribe of Federal Recognition.It was from them that I learned about potlatch.Without them the City of Seattle would not exist;
On 13 September 2007, the UN passed its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

While the term "indigenous" is not defined, its 46 articles affirm the right to self-determination including the pursuits of economic, social and cultural development (Article 3). Other rights include: * Maintaining distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions while participating in those of the state (Article 5), * Not being forcibly assimilated (Article 8, * Revitalizing and developing their language and educate in their language (Articles 13-14), * Redress for past injustices (Article 28), * Access across international borders (Article 36), and * Financial and technical assistance from the state to achieve these rights (Article 39)

With Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States voting against, and 11 countries abstaining, the Declaration passed with 144 countries in favor. Licence: CreativeCommons NonCommercial

Potlatch Pt. 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpXNS-ZnKoQ (2:38")