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ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Faces of Culture Video:
Patterns of Subsistence
Food Foragers and Pastoralists
Groups in Video:
1. !Kung Bushmen in Kalahari desert
2. Mbuti pygmy in Zaire in Africa
3. Netsilik Eskimo in Alaska
4. Nuer in Africa's Sudan
5. Nepali sherpas (with their zomo)
6. Basseri in Iran
ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Thursday, October 2, 2003
Faces of Culture Video:
Patterns of Subsistence
Food Producers
Groups in Video:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Yucatec Maya ("slash-and-burn”)
Melanesian farmers (land-diving )ritual
Khmer in Angkor
North Americans & the Dust Bowl
Taiwanese and wet rice cultivation
Balinese
Some points from video:
1. Technology of foragers is not “simple” very sophisticated and demanding
2. little division of labor - people control
technology rather than vice versa
2. economic processes embedded in rest of
social life
3. interconnectedness of technology and other
cultural features
Foraging
1. A subsistence technology
2. An adaptation
3. A mode of production
4. The ancestral condition
of our species
Marx on the Mode of Production, part 1
“Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
In the social production of their life, men
enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will,
relations of production which correspond to a
definite stage in the development of their
material productive forces. The sum total of
these relations of production constitutes the
economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which rises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond
definite forms of social consciousness.
Marx on the Mode of Production, 2
“Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
The mode of production of material life
conditions the social, political and intellectual
life process in general. It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their
being, but, on the contrary, their social being
that determines their consciousness.
Labor and social production
1. Universal in human societies
2. Unique to human societies
Energy Flow among Animals
Animal Populations
Environment
Natural
Use
Values
Direct and individual appropriation of natural use values
Animal
Population
Energy Flow among Humans
Human Populations
Human
Population
Environment
Social
Product
Means of
Production
Social Labor
System of Production
Social production of use values through labor, access to the social
product according to socially established rules
Marx on Labor, part 1
from Das Kapital
We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as
exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that
resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame
many an architect in the construction of her cells. But
what distinguishes the worst architect from the best
of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure
in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end
of every labour-process, we get a result that already
existed in the imagination of the labourer at its
commencement....
Marx on Labor, part 2
from Das Kapital
The elementary factors of the labour-process
are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work
itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its
instruments....
Marx on Labor, part 3
from Das Kapital
No sooner does labour undergo the least
development, than it requires specially
prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest
caves we find stone implements and weapons.
In the earliest period of human history
domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have
been bred for the purpose, and have
undergone modifications by means of labour,
play the chief part as instruments of labour
along with specially prepared stones, wood,
bones, and shells.
Marx on Labor, part 4
from Das Kapital
The use and fabrication of instruments of
labour, although existing in the germ among
certain species of animals, is specifically
characteristic of the human labour-process,
and Franklin therefore defines man as a toolmaking animal.
Marx on Labor, part 5
from Das Kapital
Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess
the same importance for the investigation of
extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil
bones for the determination of extinct
species of animals. It is not the articles made,
but how they are made, and by what
instruments, that enables us to distinguish
different economic epochs. (Marx 1867:179180)
Marx on Labor, part 6
from Das Kapital
Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess
the same importance for the investigation of
extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil
bones for the determination of extinct
species of animals. It is not the articles made,
but how they are made, and by what
instruments, that enables us to distinguish
different economic epochs. (Marx 1867:179180)
nature of the labor process
1.
2.
3.
4.
expenditure of energy
transformation of nature into use values
use and manufacture of tools
Social relations of production: cooperation,
sharing, competition, property.
5. spatial and temporal separation of
production and consumption
6. culture: technology and the concept of
what is to be produced
relationships within culture
Relations among three
elements of
sociocultural systems.
Lenski, Human Societies
(1970) p.102
Societal Typology of Morgan & Engels
Civilization
Barbarism
Savagery
Goldschmidt’s Societal Typology
Lenski’s
Evolutionary
Typology
Lenski: Societal Types & History
That’s all for today
ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Tuesday, October 7, 2003
Faces of Culture Video:
Economic Anthropology
Groups in Video:
1.
!Kung - generalized reciprocity
2. Yanomamo of Venezuela - balanced reciprocity
3. Trobriand Islanders of the Western Pacific
(kula)
4. Mendi of the highlands of New Guinea - both
balanced reciprocity (bartering bride price in
pearl shells), and redistribution (cassowary
contest)
5. Assante women in Ghana - the market
6. nomads in Afghanistan - the market
definition of economy:
formalist - allocation of scare resources to
unlimited ends
substantivist - process of production, distribution,
and consumption
While academic economists usually use a formalist
definition of “economic,” anthropologists favor
the substantivist definition.
Patterns of economic flow:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Reciprocity (gift giving)
Redistribution (taxes)
Market Exchange (money, shopping)
Householding (one’s own use)
Social thermodynamics:
1. Social thermodynamics is a way of studying the
social relations of production, distribution, and
consumption, how the total labor time of society is
used to provide the goods and services essential to
the members of society.
2. It provides a set of conceptual tools for
penetrating the essential thermodynamic
substratum that underlies all human life.
Social thermodynamics:
1. Bioenergy system
2. Behavioral energy system
3. Auxiliary energy system
Energy flow:
When goods are produced, a definite amount
of labor time becomes embodied in them;
this labor time is consumed when the goods
are consumed. Labor energy thus flows from
producer to consumer.
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