SOC 808 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Oligopoly, Sustainability, Hectare
12 May 2016
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Document Summary
Two of the most significant developments in the way humans organized their food systems were the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution. Before the advent of agriculture most human societies survived as foragers (gatherers and hunters) In early agricultural societies dominant form of food production was subsistence based. Most people gathered and produced their own needs. food and sold part of their surplus in the market to buy other things they needed. Capitalism emerged as the dominant form of productive system in the last 500 years. It transformed the way we produce and distribute food. In this process, peasantry, the subsistence based rural family farming eventually disappeared in many part of the world, especially in the western world. In north america, simple commodity producers (family farmers) emerged as settler farmers and gradually being replaced by capitalist farmers. Early human societies had quite different social structures often identified by later anthropologists with their food gathering techniques (foraging, or hunting and gathering).
