Sections:

Economic Systems y
Chapter 18

I. The Allocation of Resources II. II The Conversion of Resources III. The Distribution of Goods and Services

Natural Resources: Land

Every society has access to natural resources: land, water, plants, animals, minerals.

Section 1

Every society has cultural rules for determining who has access to particular resources and what can be done with them.

The Allocation of Resources

Relatively small plots of land and the resources on them are usually owned by individuals. Large plots are generally owned collectively.

Natural Resources: Land

Private property system is the right to sell, give away, bequeath, or destroy resources owned. Society specifies what is considered property and the rights and duties associated with that property. These specifications are social in nature, for they may be changed over time.

Food Collectors:
Members of food-collecting societies generally do not have private ownership of land. Land itself has no intrinsic value for food collectors, what is of value is the presence of game and wild plant life on the land.

How societies differ in their rules for access to land and other natural resources seems to be related in part to how they differ in food-getting. food-

Food Collectors:
If food resources become less plentiful the land is less valuable. When plants and animals are predictably abundant groups are more likely to be sedentary.

Horticulturalists
Horticulturalists do not have individual or family ownership of land. There is no reason for individuals or families to claim permanent access to land that is not usable permanently. In contrast to food collectors, horticulturalists are more likely to allocate particular plots of land to individuals or families for their use.

Pastoralists
Since their wealth ultimately depends on mobile herds, uncultivated pasture for grazing and water for drinking, pastoralists often combine the adaptive potential of both food collectors and horticulturalists. There would be considerable risk to individuals or families to own l d th t did not predictably h t di t bl have grass and water, so community d t it land that members generally have free access to pasture land. Pastoralists commonly own animals. Pastoralists vary in how much a group actually has ownership rights to the territories through which they move their animals.

Intensive Agriculturalists:
Individual ownership of land resources including the right to use the resources and the right to sell or otherwise dispose of them is common among intensive agriculturalists. Private ownership is usually associated with intensive agriculture.

Colonialism, The State, and Land Rights:

Colonial conquerors and settlers have taken land away from the natives or aborigines. Governments tried to change how land was g owned by the natives.

Technology
Societies make use of technology to convert resources to food and other goods. The tools most needed by food collectors are weapons for the hunt, digging sticks and receptacles for gathering and carrying.

People who benefited from these forced changes were always people from expanding state societies. Indigenous revolutionary movements have also collectivized land.

Among food collectors, tools are considered to belong to the person who made them.

Technology
Pastoralists are somewhat limited in their possessions because they are nomadic. Societies with intensive agriculture and industrialized societies are likely to have tools made by specialists, which means tools must be acquired by trade or purchase. Expensive equipment is not always individually owned in societies.

Section 2

The Conversion of Resources

Types of Economic Production

At the times they were first described, most of the societies known to anthropology had a domestic mode of production. Many people have suggested that our own and other developed economies are now moving from industrialism to post-industrialism. p Computers have transformed the workplace, they drive machines and robots; much manual work is disappearing.

Incentives for Labor

Work is necessary for survival. No society would survive if most able-bodied adults relied on others labor. Particular and often-cited motive: the profit motive, or the desire to exchange something for more than it costs.

Cotton Harvesting

Incentives for Labor

Forced and Required Labor

More complex societies have ways of forcing people to work for the authorities (for example, taxation).

People work harder if they have more consumers in the household. In some societies, some people work harder than societies ork they need to for their own families subsistence. In commercial societies, people seem to be motivated to keep any extra income for themselves and their families.

Money is customary form of tax payment in a commercial society. The draft is also a form of corvee, in that a certain period of service is required and failure to serve can be punished by a prison term or involuntary exile.

Division of Labor by Gender and Age

All societies make use of gender differences to some extent in their customary assignment of labor. Age is also a universal basis for labor. division of labor

Beyond Gender and Age

In societies with simple technologies, there is little specialization of labor beyond that of gender and age. As societys technology becomes more complex and it is able to produce large quantities of food, more of its people are freed from subsistence work to become specialists. Horticultural societies have some part-time specialists. With development of intensive agriculture, full-time specialists begin to appear.

If adults have heavy workloads, and children are physically and mentally able to do work, a good part of the work is likely to be assigned to children. In some societies, work groups are formally organized on the basis of age.

The Organization of Labor

Making Decisions About Work

Food collectors ignore many of the plant and animal species in their environment, choosing to go after only some. A frequent source of ideas about choices is optimal foraging theory. theory Farmers make decisions in steps, with each choice point involving a yes or no answer. Individuals may not always be able to state clearly their rules for making decisions nor do they always have complete knowledge about the various possibilities.

The degree to which labor has to be organized reaches its peak in industrial societies. In food-collecting societies there is little organization of work. Work groups tend to be organized only when productive work requires it and to dissolve when they are no longer needed. Kinship ties are an important basses for work organization, particularly nonindustrial societies.

Reciprocity
Section 3

The Distribution of Goods and Services

Reciprocity consists of giving and taking without the use of money.

Generalized Reciprocity

Balanced Reciprocity
Balanced reciprocity is explicit and short term in its expectations of return; it involves an immediate exchange of goods or services or an agree-upon exchange over a limited period of time. Balanced reciprocity may involve labor. Gift exchanges are personal and involve the creation or perpetuation of some kind of enduring relationship between people and groups. Commodity exchanges focus on the objects or services received.

When goods or services are given to another, without any apparent expectation of a return gift, we call it generalized reciprocity. Although generalized reciprocity may seem altruistic or unselfish, researchers have suggested that giving may in fact benefit the giver in various ways (like when parents care for their children and later in life children care for them).

Kinship Distance and Type of Reciprocity

Reciprocity as a Leveling Device

Most food-collecting and horticultural societies depend on some form of reciprocity for the distribution of goods and p y g labor. Reciprocity depends largely on the kinship distance between persons.

Reciprocal gift giving may do more than equalize the distribution of goods within a community. It may also g y y equalize the distribution of goods between communities.

Redistribution

Market or Commercial Exchange

Redistribution is the accumulation of goods or labor by a particular person, or in a particular place, for the purpose of subsequent distribution. Redistribution becomes an important mechanism only in societies that have political hierarchies. They develop in agricultural societies that contain sub regions suited to different kinds of crops or natural resources.

In referring to market and commercial exchange, economists and economic anthropologists are referring to exchanges or transactions in which the prices are subject to supply and demand. Market exchange needs not money involved directly.

Kinds of Money
General-purpose money says that money performs the basic functions of serving as an accepted medium of exchange, a standard of value, and a store of wealth. The first money systems used rare metals such as gold and silver. General-purpose money is used both for commercial transactions and for noncommercial transactions. Many people whose food production per capita is not sufficient to support a large population of non-producers of food have special- purpose money, which consists of objects of value for which only some goods and services can be exchanged on the spot or through balanced reciprocity.

Degrees of Commercialization

Most societies were not commercialized at all when first described in the ethnographic record. Many societies still allocate land without purchase and distribute food and other goods primarily by reciprocity and redistribution.

Why Do Money and Market Exchange Develop?

Possible Leveling Devices in Commercial Economies

Money is invented in society when trade increases and barter becomes increasing inefficient. Most theories assume that producers have regular surpluses they want to exchange.

Societies that depend substantially on market or commercial exchange tend to have marked differences in wealth among the people. Although richer Indians who sponsor fiestas are clearly distributing a good deal of wealth to the poorer members of their own and other communities, fiestas do not really level wealth at all.

Economic Systems y
Chapter 18