Amanda Wilson #594648 Anthropology 1310 MW 2-3:30

Anthropology 1312 Hadder, Spring 2009

Optional Writing Assignment #3 of 3

Due date: Monday, May 4th, at 2:00pm.

THE ASSIGNMENT
The last leg of this course discusses global capitalism, from its Colonialist roots to
the present. We have encountered ethnographic examples of some of its more
troubling consequences: Bolivian cocaine production, the Guarani, Chinese factory
workers, and Malaysian and Texas-Mexico border factory workers, in addition to the
Kayapo situation. Provide in-depth discussions of two such ethnographic examples
from the course in order to explain how the growth of global capitalism has led to
specific aspects of culture change in these societies. Values, subsistence,
education, revitalization movements, and even spirit possession all potentially
relate to this topic, among other factors you can choose for your argument.
The paper will need to provide a good discussion of capitalism in addition to
reporting on your chosen examples. All of the information you need is in the
readings and lectures. Your task is to retell the story concisely.

GRADING RUBRIC
40% Explicit use of course materials and discussion of anthropological concepts
30% Application of relevant anthropological concepts to cultural examples.
15% Paragraph structure and coherent organization of paragraphs
15% Proofreading, grammar, punctuation, stle

INSTRUCTIONS
1) Papers should be double-spaced and should be at least two pages. Three
pages is an ideal target, while any paper longer than 4 pages had better be very
very interesting or else it will be penalized for rambling.
2) Put your name, date, the course number, and a title on your paper.
3) Papers must be handed in at the beginning of class to the teaching
assistant. If you give a piece of paper to me, I will immediately lose it.
4) no submissions allowed after May 4th.

Paper 3 Capitalism
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One of the most important changes resulting from the expansion of Western
societies is the increasingly worldwide dependence on commercial exchange. The
borrowed customs of buying and selling may at first be supplementary to traditional
means of distributing goods in a society. But as the new commercial customs take
hold, the economic base of the receiving society alters. Inevitably, this alteration is
accompanied by other changes, which have broad social, political, and even
biological and psychological ramifications.
Colonialism is a process marked by exploitation of labor, extraction of natural
resources, and subjugation of colonies which are then forced to consume Imperial
goods made from those resources. The recipe for this design requires a big market,
labor, and resources. This is critical to the development of globalization, as it is
what fuels it; the design of capitalism is major underlying proponent to the dynamic.
Capital must be continually reinvested into the means of production and
continuously expand to be sustainable. The former is directly dependent on a
sufficient unemployment rate to force workers to sell their labor for as little as
possible so as the producer would not be out-competed by someone else via
inability to expand. The latter is a method to increase demand as to produce more
capital for re-investment. Creating new need or new customers is the only means to
sustain this aspect, which can take the form of new markets, population growth,
geographic expansion, target groups, product diversification, planned obsolescence
or simply creating a new need in of itself. The Exploitative Theory of Social
Stratification presents itself in this system because hierarchy exists where one
group of individuals seeks to take advantage of another group for economic
purposes. The resulting effects of interdependence are labeled as social production-
how people, nature, and society all reproduce one another.
The Guarani Indians of Paraguay are an example of what can happen to a
horticultural people that find themselves displaced by colonists and a part of
globalization. The Guarani’s home had became the prime target for economic
intense agriculture by white Colonos (ranchers and farmer from Brazil) who then
come in building roads, clearing timber and denuding the land of foliage. This
extraction of natural resources is essential to the continual expansion contingent on
capitalist need for increased resources to supply a big market. The Guarani actually
had a sustainable commercial system before being “developed”. Development is
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understood to be a sense of progress through mass production, industrialization,

and urbanization. This system gave them access to the world marketplace due to
their mixed subsistence methods characterized by slash-and-burn agriculture and
foraging; a method that reduced dependence by allowing them to utilize many
resources. Their small group size meant more personal organization, emphasis on
cooperation or reciprocity and households tied together through kinship and a
religious leader (the tamoi) to connect the group. The Colonos have stripped the
land for the purposes of extracting natural resources and thusly the economy of the
Guarani has crumbled. Without their traditional mode of subsistence it has become
impossible to maintain their kin-organized society, the influence of the tamoi, and
the willingness to share. Colonos set in motion a process that destroyed the native
culture and society; the loss of the forest and river forced them to become
dependent on farming alone, which took more land already scarce from fencing and
titles by the new settlers. The Guarani were forced to replant fields without
sufficient fallow time which made the crops needier, calling for additional effort.
Food thus became scarce, their diet restricted to non-nutritious staples made them
susceptible to illness and exacerbated health problems. This was compacted by the
introduction of new diseases from the Colonos. The environmental destruction took
a psychological toll as the Guarani fell into depression, getting drunk off of the
cheap liquor in the market and committing suicide. They began to see little future
for themselves as they moved from a kinship society to a corporate one. The
deforestation left them without their subsistence as well as a need for additional
cash to provide for their families; men were forced to work while women and
children stayed home. Searching for this wage labor forced evacuation on to patron
(farmers) land to become farm hands. Under the patrones rule they were prohibited
from planting their own gardens, forcing them to buy all their food, food which was
also commonly inflated- a prime example of subjugation and exploitation of labor.
Dependence displaced the natural interdependent social organization of the
Guarani; their expansion for work caused the tamoi to loose influence. The loss of
the forest also meant loss of identity since it is based on natural cosmology of the
rainforest; hegemony developed as they began consenting to ideological
domination by calling themselves ‘indios’, A pejorative slur used by Colonos.
Though the area has been abandoned by the Colonos because it is no longer
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profitable and barren, the Guarani continue to be dependent on first world

organizations, typical of neocolonialism.
The Guarani are not the only group victimized by globalization, Fed by the
insatiable demand in Europe and the United States, the Bolivian cocaine trade has
drawn males from the countryside, disrupted communications, destroyed families,
unbalanced the local diet, and upset traditional social organizations; the traditional
Andean system of production and distribution is now crumbling. Like the Guarani,
the Ponoca have been deprived of their access to land in consistency to demands
for more resources to supply a big market. Hunger is now a part of life here, the
majority of food is sent to the Charpare for the coca workers that the Pocona can’t
compete against. In kind, they can not sell the food which they do have as the truck
drivers find it more profitable to take goods to the Charpare; householders must
work as day laborers or migrate to find jobs to supplement the loss of income. This
facet encompasses two aspects necessary for colonialism; whereby exploitation of
labor is achieved through means of subjugating communities to consume Imperial
goods, made from those indigenous resources they once subsisted. As previously
stated, colonialism is a process marked by exploitation of labor, extraction of
natural resources, and subjugation of colonies which are then forced to consume
Imperial goods made from those resources. The recipe for this design requires a big
market, labor, and resources. This is also a manner of creating new markets by
targeting these communities and developing new needs. As a result of subjugating
the community, villages are made devoid of men who have gone else where for
work, leaving women to farm and manage the family, dramatically altering the
rhythm and structure of daily village life; the productivity has significantly
declines[?] due to a large sum of missing workforce. The cocaine trade has cutoff
many communities from their traditional role in the national economy, being driven
back from participation in the legal economy. The same economic principles that
govern the open, legal market also govern the clandestine illegal markets and the
effects of both are brutal. Market externalities such as this are not accounted for in
considering modernization, the effects are seen in the instability of the peso. The
national Bolivian economy has so declined that they are reverting to bartering as
the only means of exchange, Bolivia is too underdeveloped to print its own money.
Another market externality is the health effect on the population; due to the
instability of the peso the Pocona find they are unable to purchase the coca leaves
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which serve a beneficial role in health, nutrition, and medication. Without the leaves
they are left immunologically compromised; to supplement they make chichi, a type
of corn-beer, but it isn’t as beneficial and produces intoxication that leads to further
social problems. Because their immune systems are compromised and prostitution
is largely popular; they are ridden with venereal diseases that slowly kill off the
community and decrease the workforce. The increased unemployment rate forces
workers to sell their labor for as little as possible which once again lowers the
standard of living. Those who leave to find work making the cocaine are maimed by
the corrosive production techniques. To continue working, they smoke cigarettes
lined with the raw form of cocaine to alleviate their pain. This tends to
psychologically warp their minds; they become irrational, angry, violent and
foremost dependent- more subjugation. The money does not go to the Bolivians but
rather the criminal organizations that smuggle the drugs out of the country called
informal economies. This system causes the division in wealth through a process
known as “order in means of production”; the further along the production line, the
more money made and the Pocona are at the bottom. This is all part of the boom-
and-bust cycle characteristic of capitalism whereby rural villages are depleted of
their workforce, family and traditional culture patterns disintegrate, and the people
are no longer able to sustain themselves with local products.
Globalization consists of powerful forces that reshape local conditions on an
ever-intensifying scale. Local people can easily find themselves both motivated by
and at the mercy of world markets. The Guarani and the Pocona are two
ethnographic examples of how the market can devastate a community’s natural
culture through the cycle of social production.