anth 120 introduction to cultural anthropology tuesday, september 30, 2003
DESCRIPTION
ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology Tuesday, September 30, 2003. Faces of Culture Video: Patterns of Subsistence Food Foragers and Pastoralists. Groups in Video:. !Kung Bushmen in Kalahari desert Mbuti pygmy in Zaire in Africa Netsilik Eskimo in Alaska Nuer in Africa's Sudan - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Faces of Culture Video:
Patterns of SubsistenceFood Foragers and
Pastoralists
Groups in Video:
1. !Kung Bushmen in Kalahari desert
2. Mbuti pygmy in Zaire in Africa3. Netsilik Eskimo in Alaska4. Nuer in Africa's Sudan5. 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 SubsistenceFood Producers
Groups in Video:
1. Yucatec Maya ("slash-and-burn”)2. Melanesian farmers (land-
diving )ritual 3. Khmer in Angkor4. North Americans & the Dust Bowl5. Taiwanese and wet rice cultivation6. 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 technology2.An adaptation3.A mode of production4.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
Animal Populations
Environment
Animal
Population
Direct and individual appropriation of natural use values
Natural
Use
Values
Energy Flow among Animals
Human Populations
Environment
Human
Population
Means of
Production
System of Production
Social Labor
Social
Product
Social production of use values through labor, access to the social
product according to socially established rules
Energy Flow among Humans
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 tool-making 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 1867:179-180)
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 1867:179-180)
1. expenditure of energy2. transformation of nature into use
values3. use and manufacture of tools4. 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
nature of the labor process
relationships within culture
Relations among three elements of
sociocultural systems.
Lenski, Human Societies (1970) p.102
Civilization
Barbarism
Savagery
Societal Typology of Morgan & Engels
Goldschmidt’s Societal Typology
Lenski’sEvolutionary
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 reciprocity2. Yanomamo of Venezuela - balanced
reciprocity3. 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 market6. 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. Reciprocity (gift giving)2. Redistribution (taxes)3. Market Exchange (money, shopping)4. 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.
Don’t forget to vote!