Subsistence Subsistence Subsistence Types of Subsistence Strategies Food
Subsistence
Subsistence • Subsistence: • Types of Subsistence Strategies – Food Collectors – Food Producers • Horticulturalists • Pastoralists • Intensive (and mechanized) agricultualists
Variation of Food-Getting & Associated Features
Food Collection • Food-getting strategy of obtaining wild plant and animal resources through hunting, gathering, scavenging, and/or fishing • Foragers or hunter-gathers: human groups that primarily obtain food this way • Strategy utilized by people for most of human (pre)history, but rare today • Examples: !Kung (southern Africa), Inuit (Arctic circle)
Food Collectors – General Features • • • Small communities Sparsely populated territories Marginal environments Nomadic Egalitarian Gender- and age-based division of labor
Food Collectors: !Kung • Inhabit Kalahari desert in Namibia and Botswana • Maintained foraging way of life into 1960 s • Film: N!ai, The Story of a Kung Woman
Diamphidia - poison on arrow tips
Food Collectors: The Inuit
Food Producers • Food production: Cultivation and domestication of plants and animals • Originated around 10, 000 years ago • Most cultures today rely on food production rather than food collection • Three types of food production systems: Horticulture, Pastoralism, and Intensive Agriculture
Horticulture • Horticulture: Small scale, low-intensity farming • Use of simple tools and absence of permanently cultivated fields – Extensive or shifting cultivation, slash-and-burn • Usually supplemented with hunting and gathering • Today practiced in tropical areas, more common in other regions in past • Examples: Yanomamo (the Amazon), Samoans (South Pacific)
Major horticulturalist regions during the 20 th century
Horticulturists: General Features • Larger, denser communities than food collectors • More sedentary than food collectors; may move every few years • Minimal social differentiation – some differences in wealth, power • Part-time craft specialization and political officers
Horticulturists: The Yanomamö
Horticulturists: The Yanomamö
Pastoralism • Pastoralism: Reliance on domesticated herds of animals feeding on natural pastures • Two main types of pastoralists: Nomadic, Transhumance • In recent history – usually grassland other semi-arid habitats not suitable for cultivation • Examples: Basseri (Iran), Saami or Lapps (Scandinavia), Massai (Eastern Africa)
Pastoralism – Two Main Types • Nomadic: – Seasonal migratory pattern that varies year to year – No permanent settlements – Usually self-sufficient • Transhumance: – Follow a cyclical pattern of migrations between same two locations – Regular encampments or stable villages often with permanent houses – Usually depend somewhat less on their animals for food than do nomadic ones: » small scale vegetable farming , more likely to trade animal products with agriculturalists for food and other necessities
Pastoralists: General Features • Small community size with low population density • Nomadic or semi-nomadic • Some degree of craft specialization • Formal political officials
Pastoralists: The Lapps
Pastoralists: The Lapps
Intensive Agriculture • Intensive agriculture: use of techniques enabling permanent cultivation of fields, e. g. fertilization, irrigation systems, etc. • Generally rely on more complex tools than horticulturalists, but extreme variety in degree of dependence on mechanization • Examples: Rural Greece, Mekong Delta (Vietnam)
Intensive Agriculture: General Features • Larger, more dense populations- towns, cities • Permanent settlements • Craft specialization • Complex political organization • Social differentiation – unequal distribution of wealth and power
Intensive Agriculturalists: Mekong Delta
Intensive Agriculturalists: Mekong Delta
Intensive Agriculture & Mechanization • Commercialization: increasing dependence on buying and selling, usually with money as medium of exchange • Increasing commercialization of agriculture associated with mechanization, rather than relying on hand labor • Leading to spread of agribusiness (large corporation-owned farms), less of general population directly engaged in food production
Environment & Subsistence • Environment has a restraining, not determining, effect on subsistence
Summary • Two main categories of subsistence strategies: – Food Collection (also called foragers or huntergatherers) – Food Production (three sub-categories) • Horticulture • Pastoralism • Intensive agriculture • A culture’s primary subsistence strategy is strongly linked to political organization, economic system and other aspects of social life
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