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")

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.

Chapter 6: Making A Living (2:30 Group B) A Bit Late

Some say that "survival of the fittest" was the only method that overpopulation influenced the determination to survive. In this situation, social anthropolists can say that there are other adaptive strategies. These methods include foraging (hunting and gathering), horticulture (uncultivated plots), agriculture (intensive land and labor use), and pastoralism (care for herds of domesticated animals). Industrialization is included amongst the strategies but more related to another topic in the study of Anthropology.

Before food manufacturing was initiated, foraging seemed to be the only method that was common amongst cultures. According to the "Worldwide Distribution of Recent Hunters-Gatherers" map (110), foraging was heavily employed in the Northwestern parts of America and the Southern parts of Asia. Food production was not utilized very much because of the natural resources and animal life provided in the economy.

Horticulture and Agriculture are two opposites that attract...get it? They attract people who live on farms and raise herds of domesticated animals. Horticulturalists usually leave a plot fallow for several years, for they believe this will increase the production of vegetables. Burning down forests is a destructive method; however, will eliminate insects and fertilized land will remain.

Agriculture, on the other hand, requires intensive harvesting and continuous labor. Agriculturalists also use irrigating (water) and terracing (hillside) methods.Pastoralism is a cultivation method that requires a passive mode of production. Pastoralists exchange goods with plant cultivators in which both parties benefit off of two adaptive starategies.

Being that the societies are all non-industrial, some would wonder why do so many methods for survival exist. In later societies, which were still non-industrial, a friendship mode of production arose; meaning that people gained foods and resoures through friends as opposed to clerks that sell good and resources around the way. Its not "what you know", but rather "who you know!"

Scarcity, lack of goods, was an unfortunate route to people who didnt know the ones selling the goods and resources. This forced people to search for the resources on their own. I guess Darwin was leading to a more common idea about "survival of the fittest"...it's everywhere!

The question of the week for all you Blogthropolists is...If you lived 10,000 years ago, who would you rather be...a Horticulturist or an Agriculturalist?

Chapter 6 - Making a Living

Since the beginning of human life on earth there has always been a need for making a living. Until 10,000 years ago man survived by utilizing the adaptive strategy of foraging, where people wandered around the earth searching for provisions of any kind. Because of this dependency upon nature to provide for their needs, it led naturally to the next step of human procurement: cultivation.

Two types of cultivation developed; horticulture and agriculture, both of which still exists today in industrial and non-industrial societies. Horticulture or "shifting cultivation" is the simpler of the two methods and utilizes a "slash and burn" technique for land clearing. The land is used to the point of soil exhaustion at which the family simply moves on to another plot of land. Agriculture, the more complex of the two, involves the use of modern machinery, irrigation, and mass manpower to cultivate a single plot of land continuously. Because of this, families can now have a permanent home and a more stable lifestyle.

As societies began to modernize, a new means of procurement was introduced and today's economic system was born. The purpose of this economic system was to optimize the means of production. In other words, to take into account the land, territory, labor and technology needed in order to produce a product and optimize that process.

Time has changed the way people go about making a living in terms of food production. With the information from chapter six and your own personal knowledge or experience, compare and contrast the means of producing food through cultivation (either horticulture or agriculture) or within our current economic system. Make a choice on which you would personally like to see our society gravitate towards and tell us why you would like to see this change made.

For example would you prefer to be part of an industrialized economic system that utilizes of machinery and technology? This allows for effective mass production but on the other hand this also forces the worker as an individual to live in a more rigid work routine. Due to the concept of specialization a person would have the responsibility of just one simple task which he/she must perform all day.