ANTHROP 2F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Economic Anthropology, Educational Entertainment, Liminality
26 Aug 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Cultural Anthropology 2F03
Lecture January 26/16
Context situates ethnographies
-no one culture is in complete isolation because it is always in context with
-environment
-relationships
-politics
-history
-events
Evolution/Structure/Function
-humans from hunter-gatherers to current
-baby to members of the group
-the way that people are organized
-the interplay of the structures of society that give rise to the function served
-ritual
-cultural norms
Work - Making a Living
-culture and livelihood
-subsistance strategies
-phases of economic activity
-distribution and exchange
-production
-consumption
-a dialect between the meaningful and the material
Culture and Livelihood
-economic anthropology is “the part of the discipline that debates issues of human nature that
relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living”
-three economic models based on different assumptions of human nature
-1. self-interested model
-2. social model
-3. moral model
-economy: from an institutional perspective, the material-means provisioning process in a
cultural system
-institutions: stable and enduring cultural practices that organize social life
Subsistence Strategies
-the patterns of production, distribution, and consumption that members of a society use to
meet their basic material and survival needs
-distinction between food collectors and food producers
-collectors: those who gather, fish, or hunt for food
-producers: those who depend on domesticated plants and/or animals for food
-three types of agriculture
-1. extensive agriculture: depends on slash-and-burn techniques, rainwater, human muscle
power, and a few simple tools such as digging sticks, hoes, and/or machetes; it exhausts
the land, requiring farmers to move plots every few years
-2. intensive agriculture: employs plows, draft animals, irrigation, fertilizer, and such to bring
much more land under cultivation at one time
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Document Summary
No one culture is in complete isolation because it is always in context with. The interplay of the structures of society that give rise to the function served. A dialect between the meaningful and the material. Economic anthropology is the part of the discipline that debates issues of human nature that relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living . Three economic models based on different assumptions of human nature. Economy: from an institutional perspective, the material-means provisioning process in a cultural system. Institutions: stable and enduring cultural practices that organize social life. The patterns of production, distribution, and consumption that members of a society use to meet their basic material and survival needs. Distinction between food collectors and food producers. Collectors: those who gather, sh, or hunt for food. Producers: those who depend on domesticated plants and/or animals for food.
