Making a Living Flashcards
(25 cards)
Economic anthropology
- Related to aspects of human nature that deal with decisions of daily life and what it takes to make a living
- Examines needs, wants, demands of a society and how they are balanced against goods and services that are available
- Difference between formal economics and substantive economics
What are the 3 different thereotical approaches to economic anthropology?
- Humans are self-interested and work to maximize individual benefits
- Humans are social and work together in groups
- Humans are moral and do not make decisions that go against their morality
Each approach justifies a different subject of economic analysis
Subsistence strategies
- Strategies used to meet basic material needs: food, shelter, clothing
- Distinction between food collectors and food producers
- Farmers are included as food-producers and can practice one of three kinds of agriculture
Food collectors
People who gather wild plant materials, fish, and/or hunt for food
Food producers
People who depend on domesticated plants and/or animals for food
Economic activity
- 3 phases = production, distribution and consumption
- Anthropologists argue over which of these constitutes the most important phase
Neoclassical economic theory
A formal attempt to explain the workings of capitalist enterprise, with particular attention to distribution
Gift exchange
- Marcel Mauss (1950) argued for a method of exchange that is embedded in social relationships of kinship, partnerships, and acquaintances
- Rather than be linked by cash, people are linked by social relations
- Thought it was mostly observed in non-Western societies (‘savages’ and ‘barbaric’ people)
- But likely societies participated in both market exchange and gift exchange
Reciprocity
- Generalized (e.g. modern day gift-giving, Ju/’hoansi hxaro): does not require a gift back on any kind of timeline
Balanced (e.g. Kula exchange in Trobriand Islands): direct exchange without delay
Negative (e.g. Kuria East Africa, Mbuti pygmies of Africa): impersonal and seeking to maximize gains; screws over the other party
Redistribution
Goods and services are collected by a central figure for eventual distribution to followers
E.g. Potlatch among the Kwakiutl; Cherokee of Tennessee Valley; Canada Revenue Agency
Market exchange
- Trade is calculated with a medium of exchange such as money
- Goal is maximizing profit
- Value determined by laws of supply and demand
Organ transplantation as gift exchange
Based on Lesley Sharp’s ethnographic research in the U.S. (1995, 2006)
- What is being “transplanted” is more than a spare organ
- The valuation of one life over another life
- Organ is embedded in social relatedness and kinship ties
- Sense of the “tyranny of the gift” - the obligation you have after being given something so precious
Organ transplantation as market exchange
- Fieldwork challenges of studying an illegal market
- Brokers use deceit to get sellers to agree
- Sellers are most often not ‘better off’ after (economically, physically, socially)
- Market works in buyer’s favour, but not the seller’s
Production
- Anthropologists draw on the work of Karl Marx who concentrated on labour – both physical and cognitive
- Marx differentiated between the mode, means, and relations of production
Mode of production
Set of social relations through which labour is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of skills, tools, organization and knowledge Can be: Kin-ordered Tributary Capitalist
Relations of production
Social relations linking the people who use a given means of production within a particular mode of production
Means of production
Tools, skills, organization and knowledge used to extract energy from nature
Kin-ordered mode
Social labour is performed on the basis of kinship relations
Tributary mode
Labourers control the means of production but must provide payment to some authority figure
Capitalist mode
3 main features:
- Means of production is property owned by capitalists
- Workers are denied access to such ownership and must sell labour to capitalists to survive
- This labour produces for capitalists surpluses of wealth that capitalists may retain or plow back into production to increase output and generate further surpluses
Marxist approach to economic anthropology
- Highlights class struggles in production
- Reveals that conflict is part of material life
- Shows the role of ideology in justifying the relations of production and reproducing society generation to generation
- Questions why people have different quantities of resources to begin with
- Sees workers and owners as agents
Consumption
- What is valued in one society may not be in another
- How we explain patterns of consumption:
The internal explanation (e.g. Malinowski)
The external explanation (e.g. cultural ecology and ecozones)
The cultural explanation (e.g. Douglas and prohibited foods; Ju/’hoansi and preferred foods diet) - How anthropologists see affluence
Internal explanation
Basic human needs (biological or psychological)
External explanation
Human consumption patterns are a response to what people can obtain in a given environment
