anthropology

Making a Living: Cultural Ecology

As we have emphasized in the first part of the course, culture has always been a means of

adaptation for the genus Homo. Culture has enabled humans to survive, reproduce, and expand

their populations. Part of the cultural knowledge possessed by all societies is the knowledge of

how to feed themselves and how to ensure the survival of their group.

Beyond those survival aspects, the way in which people in a society extract a living from

the environment is broadly correlated with other social features, such as broader economic

systems, forms of social organization, political systems, religion, and philosophy. Correlation

doesn’t necessarily indicate causality, but there are many theoretical positions which maintain

that material conditions are, as Maurice Godelier said, determinative in the last instance.

We have already considered one example of such relationships. Changes in subsistence

associated with the neolithic revolution lead to very dramatic changes in the way people lived.

Sedentism, social inequality, centralized government, monumental art and public religious rituals

all came about very rapidly after the beginning of the Holocene, as people intensified their

productive strategies, most significantly by shifting from foraging to food production. As

mentioned when we covered the Neolithic revolution several weeks ago, it’s difficult to identify

cause and effect, but the correlation between changing subsistence strategies, social organization

and other cultural variables is very strong.

Cultural Ecology

Cultural ecology is the study of human cultural systems interact with the environment.

The concept of cultural ecology was first proposed by Julian Steward, who defined this

knowledge and those techniques as the cultural core:

Cultural core – the constellation of features which are most closely related to

subsistence activites and economic arrangements. The core includes such social, political, and

religious patterns as are empirically determined to be closely connected with these

arrangements. Innumerable other features may have greater potential variability because they

are strongly tied to the core. These latter, or secondary features, are determined to a greater

extent by purely cultural-historical factors – by random innovations or by diffusion – and they

give the appearance of outward distinctiveness to cultures with similar cores. (Steward

1955:37).

So, cultural ecology is not concerned solely with how a society feeds itself, but also

concerned with the types of social organization, economic systems, ideologies and other social

factors associated with the cultural core.

Cultural ecology is one of a number of approaches that we can call materialist.

Materialist approaches share the theoretical perspective that material factors, such as economic,

demographic, technological conditions, determine or outweigh other factors, especially

ideological factors such as religion, ideology, and politics.

The most prominent of these materialist approaches is Marxism. Marxism divides

cultural and social systems into base and superstructure. The base includes things like the

means of production, which includes technology, it also includes the relations of production, i.e,

the division of society into lords/peasants in feudal systems or capitalists/laborers in capitalism.

The superstructure includes things like religion, politcal systems, art, philosophy. Marxism holds

that the infrastructure is literally the foundation upon which other social and cultural elements are

constructed: the nature of the base determines the form of the superstructure. That is, religion is

a product of the economic system and serves to legitimate social inequality, and political systems

are created in order to perpetuate property systems that divide society into classes.

Steward did not view the non-core elements of culture as being “caused’ by the core

elements. Rather, he considered them to be essentially random.

Modes of Production

Marx defined several modes of production, each with a different technological base and

set of social relationships. Examples are the feudal mode of production, based primarily upon

agriculture and an economy organized around the manor and the capitalist mode of production,

based around industrial production, with capitalist factory owners and a working class that sells

its labor for wages.

Adaptive Strategies

In a manner derived from Marx, some people speak of modes of subsistence. Others use

similar concepts, but with a different nomenclature. One such useful concept is that of Adaptive

Strategy, which was proposed by Yehudi Cohen to describe a group’s system of economic

production. Cohen’s discussion closely parallels that of modes of subsistence. Cohen argued that

the most important reasons for similarities between two or more unrelated cultures is their

possession of a similar adaptive strategy for example, there are similarities among cultures that

have a foraging (hunting and gathering) strategy. Cohen developed a typology of cultures based

on correlations between their economies and their social features. It is important to remember

that there are correlations. Again, always remember that culture is integrated. Cohen’s typology

includes five adaptive strategies:

Foraging – hunting, fishing, collecting

Horticulture– early agriculture, without plows or irrigation

Agriculture - a continuum of extensive to intensive

Pastoralism – primarily based on animal husbandry

Industrialism – large scale commercial agriculture and animal husbandry

It’s important to realize that these types are idealized. Societies may combine some

elements of two or more strategies. For instance, in the Neolithic period many people who had

agriculture continued to hunt and to collect wild plant resources. Cohen’s typology refers to the

predominant mode of subsistence.

Let’s go through them:

Foraging: Foraging is another word for what I have called hunting and gathering.

Foraging is a more general word that recognizes that some people fish for protein instead of

hunting. Still, the main point is that this type of adaptation relies on wild resources, as opposed to

domesticated ones As we have discussed, hunting and gathering or foraging was the primary

adaptation of humans from the time of homo Erectus until the beginning of the holocene period.

It worked for 1.8 million years, or 99% of human history.

It is important to recognize that foraging economies were not static and they weren’t

uniform. In the discussion of hominine evolution we saw that strategies of foraging changed

through time, in response to environmental change and the type of resources available. For

instance, when man species of megafauna became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, people

adapted by broadening their subsistence base to include more species of smaller game. The

broad spectrum revolution. As and human expanded into new environments they adapted to

them by developing new strategies and techniques to match the resources that they found in their

new zones. So foraging was a very stable and long-lasting adaptation, but it was never static.

When we discussed the origins of food production, I mentioned how important it is to

recognize that not all adopted agriculture when it was invented. They had no need. So foraging

continued to be important. Until the beginning of this century foragers were still widespread in

Africa, South America, and to some extent in Alaska and Canada. In the last century they

occupied most of what is now the United States and were numerous in northern Mexico. Slowly,

however, the number of foraging groups has reduced over time, so that few remain today. Those

who do remain have at least some dependence on food producers.

All modern foragers live in nation-states, and depend to some extent on government

assistance and have contacts with food producing neighbors, as well as with other outsiders.

Modern foragers are not survivors of the Stone Age. They cling somewhat tenuous to their way

of life because they prefer it, but they are being pressed by political and economic forces to

abandon their mode of life.

In the Western Hemisphere, Foragers today live in South America, principally in the

Amazon rain forest. But they are also found in Patagonia, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

To the north of us, The Inuit, or Eskimoes of Alaska and Canada live principally by hunting

caribou, seals, and whales, as well as by fishing. They use modern technology such as rfles and

snowmobiles, however, and generally are tied to a capitalist system of exchange.

Foragers are also found in southern Africa. The San (bushmen) are one of the largest

groups. Another is the Mbuti (pygmies) of the African equatorial rainforest. People still do

subsistence foraging in some parts of Madagascar, Southeast Asia, including Malayasia and the

Phillipines. Some of the best-known recent foragers are the aborigines of Australia.

Foragers live today in areas that are marginal for food production or in areas so remote

that they are not yet accessible. Native groups of Amazonia, for instance, maintain their

existence only because roads and development have not yet reached them. As development

continues to destroy the Amazon rain forest where they live, they find it more and more difficult

to survive.

Because modern foragers are principally in marginal habitats, they don’t represent the full

diversity of h/g adapations that have existed. In the distant past, and even in the recent past, we

know that foraging societies have reached large size and have possessed many attributes of social

complexity, including large populations, surplus production, and social inequality. Complex

hunter-gatherers include the Natufians, Native Americans of the US NW Coast and British

Columbia, and foragers of Mesolithic Northern Europe.

Horticulture– In Cohen’s typology the three adaptive strategies based on food

production in nonindustrial societies are horticulture, agriculture, and pastoralism.

Horticulture and agriculture are two types of cultivation found in nonindustrial societies.

Both differ from the farming systems of industrial nations like the US, Canada and Europe,

which use large land masses, machinery, and petrochemicals.

According to Cohen, horticulture is cultivation that makes intensive use of none of the

factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery. Horticulturalists us simple tools such

as hoes and digging sticks to grow their crops. Their fields are not permanently cultivated and lie

fallow for varying lengths of time.

Horticulture often involves slash and burn techniques, or swidden agriculture. That

technique involves cutting all of the vegetation within a field and burning it. In areas with thin

soils or soils low in nutrients burning serves to fertilize the ground, in addition to removing the

vegetation. Commonly a field will be planted for a few years, until the secondary growth is too

difficult to clear or yields decline due to nutrient depletion. Subsequentlythe planters will move

on to a fresh patch of forest.

Slash and burn systems such as that described are often called “extensive” horticulture,

because they require large expanses in order to work. A great deal of the territory used over a

long period of time is in fallow at any given point in time. It may be 20-30 years before a given

field is planted again after it is abandoned following the first cycle.

These extensive systems are a good adaptation in many environments. They were

criticized by European colonizers as being “inefficient”, but they are quite effective and

sustainable. They are the technique of choice in areas with poor soils, where nutrients in the soil

can be exhausted after 2-3 years of planting.

Agriculture

Agriculture is cultivation that requires more labor than horticulture, because it uses land

intensively and continuously. It uses more sophisticated technology as a means of production,

such as plows, animal labor, irrigation, and terracing.

Agriculture requires human labor to build and maintain irrigation systems, terraces, and

other works. People must feed, water, and care for their animals when plowing is used. Given

sufficient labor input and management, agricultural land can yield one or two crops annually for

years or even generations. An agricultural field does not necessarily produce a higher single-year

yield than does a horticultural plot. The first crop grown by horticulturalists in fallowed land may

be larger than that from an agricultural plot of the same size. Furthermore, because

agriculturalists work harder than horticulturalists do, agriculture’s yield relative to labor is also

lower. Agriculture’s main advantage is that the long-term yield per area is far greater and more

dependable. Because a single field sustains its owners year after year, there is no need to

maintain a reserve of uncultivated land as horticulturalists do. This is why agricultural societies

tend to be more densely populated than are horticultural ones.

The Cultivation Continuum and the Intensification of Production

The Danish economist Ester Boserup studied the concept of intensification, which means

simply increasing productivity. Intensification can be obtained by many means: shortened fallow

periods, infrastructure improvements (terracing, irrigation), manuring, or by genetic selection for

more productive plants and animals. In the subsistence schemes just discussed, agriculture is

more intensive than horticulture, for example.

What Boserup demonstrated is that as intensification takes place, the absolute yields

increase, but the marginal yields (the difference between labor invested and the caloric yield

obtained) decreases. In essence, intensification is achieved by working harder, but the harder you

work, the less increase you see in the return. That concept of decreasing marginal yield is

important when we consider why people work harder.

But perhaps most importantly, it needs to be recognized that subsistence strategies

involving cultivation (both horticulture and agriculture) can be intensified in ways that foraging

cannot. In that sense, food production is much more open-ended than is foraging.

Pastoralists: Pastoralists live in North Africa, South America, the Middle East, Europe, asia,

sub-saharan Africa. These herders are people whose activities focus primarily on such

domesticated animals as sheep, goasts, cattle, camels, yaks, and llamas.

Two patterns of movement occur with pastoralism: nomadism and transhumance. Both

are based on the fact that herds must move to use pasture available in different places in different

seasons. In pastoral nomadism, the entire group women, men, and children, moves with the

animals throughout the year. The Middle East and North Africa provide numerous examples of

pastoral nomads. In Iran, for example, the Basseri and the Qashqai ethnic groups traditionally

followed a nomadic route more than 300 miles long. Starting each year near the coast they took

their animals to grazing land 17000 feet above sea level.

In transhumance, part of the living group moves with the herds, but most people stay in

the home village. There are examples from Europe and Africa. In Europe’s Alps it is just the

sheperds and the goatherds – not the whole village – who accompany the flocks to the highland

meadows in summer. Among the Turkana of Uganda, men and boys accompany the herds to

distant pastures, while much of the village stays put and does some horticultural farming.

Villages tend to be located in the best-watered areas, which have the longest pasture season.

This permits the village population to stay together during a large chunk of the year.

During their annual trek, pastoral nomads trade for crops and other goods with more

sedentary people. Transhumants don’t have to trade for crops. Because only part of the

population accompnies the herds, transhumants can maintain year-round villages and grown their

own crops.

Subsistence Strategies and Carrying Capacity

The subsistence strategies just discussed vary in several aspects. First, obviously, is the

technology involved. But most important for our purposes may be the carrying capacity of each

system. Carrying capacity refers to the number of people that can be supported by a given

technology in a given area; it is most commonly expressed as the number of people that can be

supported per square kilometer (person/km .2)

According to historical and ethnographic studies, the density of hunter-gatherer

populations has ranged from an estimated 1.15 inhabitants per square kilometer for the Native

Americans of pre-conquest western North America, to 0.15 inhabitants per square kilometer

registered in the 1960s among the Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert of Botswana in

southern Africa.

Horticulturalist population densities are higher than those of most foragers and

pastoralists. Usually, there are at least 1-10 people per square mile with community sizes

ranging from around 30 to several hundred. Prehistorically intenstive agriculture could support

populations of 5,000 per sq km (Teotihuacan) to perhaps 10,000 (Ancient Rome, although it

imported much of its grain.)

Obviously, there is a huge difference in the scale of a society with intensive agriculture

compared to one based on foraging. Group size is fundamental to shaping the types of social

relationships and the political systems of any society.

Surplus Production

The many different subsistence strategies also vary in their capacity to produce more food

than is needed to support members of the group or the society. Anything produced in excess of

the basic requirements for life is termed a “surplus.” All economies have latent surpluses, and

even foraging economies can produce food beyond the basic requirements. The more relevant

question is one of plasticity: if everyone in the group worked up to a theoretical maximum, how

much would be produced?

The question of surplus is closely related to that of intensification, which has already been

discussed. Intensification is the usual means by which surpluses are produced, although

intensification can be undertaken for many reasons other than the goal of producing a surplus.

One common goal of intensification, for example, is to produce a larger food supply for a

growing population. Beyond supporting larger populations, however, intensification can be used

to produce surpluses that can be stored as a hedge against future food shortages, or surpluses that

can be exchanged with others for labor or goods.

The way that surpluses are amassed and the ends to which they are put depends very

much upon culturally constructed concepts of ownership and private property. That topic will be

addressed in the next lecture. For the moment, however, let’s just stipulate that for the most part,

whenever surpluses are produced, they are not shared equally among all members of a society.

Some one, or some group controls surpluses and makes decisions about how they are distributed.

As a gross generalization, however, we can say that as surpluses grow so too social inequality is

increased. Social inequality is based on the control of surplus and the control of the means of

production.

Working for a Living

Typically foragers (hunter-gathers) spend between 12-19 hours per week "working"

(searching for food). 12-19 hours work has been reported for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours for

the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. Compare that to the work-load of the average industrial worker

(40-50 hours) or a farmer on a small holding (60+ hours). You can see why Marshall Sahlins

has called hunters-gatherers “the original affluent society.”

So, foragers work less, and also seem to enjoy better nutrition than food producers.

Foraging would seemd to be a more stable adaptation as well. It worked very well for almost 2

million years. Why would anyone not want to be a hunter/gatherer if given the choice? That

question has plagued anthropologists for years, and remains one of the central issues in

understanding the Neolithic Revolution.