Culture and the Environment: How Culture Affects How People Materially Sustain Themselves

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Culture and the EnvironmentHow Culture Affects
How People Materially Sustain Themselves
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Some Basic Tenets

• Both culture and the environment are complex
  systems made up of multiple interacting and
  interlocked forces and processes.
• Part of a societys culture is its use of
  material resources provided by the environment.
  The ways that societies have done so is quite
  diverse.

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Hunter-Gatherer Societies

• People live off the land and do not produce food
  themselves
• Low population densities
• Detailed knowledge of the environment required
• Moving with the seasons and moving to areas with
  resources

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Hunter-Gatherer Societies

• They are often very egalitarian societies
• There was no way to store food
• Those who participated in food gathering and
  hunting expeditions were given a share of the
  food
• The social ties were temporary people left and
  joined bands as they felt like it

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Hunter-Gatherer Societies

• The original affluent society needs are met
  for minimal labor in 2-3 days of work per week
• Sustainable ecologically because needs are modest
• The system breaks down when outsiders place
  restrictions on land use
• When resources become limited, more emphasis on
  hunting

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Hunter-Gatherer Societies

• Hunter-gatherer societies only gave up this form
  of livelihood and turned to horticulture or
  pastoralism when they ran out of wild game.
• Only small proportion of worlds population today
  lives by hunting-gathering because they have been
  pushed into marginal areas by agricultural
  peoples.

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Pastoralists

• Pastoralists depend on the products of
  domesticated herd animals
• Primarily cattle, sheep, goats, yaks, or camels,
  because they produce both meat and milk (as well
  as skins for clothing and other products)
• They may trade these products with their
  neighbors for other kinds of items or food

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Pastoralists

• Specialized adaptation to environments that
  cannot support a human population through
  agriculture (hilly terrain, dry climate, or
  unsuitable soil) but produces grass (which humans
  cannot eat).
• Major areas of pastoralism East Africa (cattle),
  North Africa (camels), southwestern Asia (sheep
  and goats), central Asia (yak) and the subarctic
  (caribou and reindeer).

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Cattle Herd in the Sudan
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Transhumant Pastoralists

• Men and boys move the animals regularly
  throughout the year to different areas as
  pastures become available in different altitudes
  or climate zones
• Women and children and some men remain at
  permanent village site
• Found mostly in East Africa

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Nomadic Pastoralism

• The whole population---men, women, and
  children---moves with the herds throughout the
  year
• There are no permanent villages

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Pastoralism

• Key to pastoralist economy is herd growth
• Animals are the form of wealth increase in
  wealth through reproduction
• Risky because of drought, disease, theft
• Pastoralists need to know the carrying capacity
  of the land as well as how many animals needed to
  support a family

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Pastoralists

• Nomadic pastoralist societies tend to be based on
  patrilineal kinship.
• The animals are inherited through the male line.
• Animals often significant in human rituals
  marriage exchanges, deaths, and in resolving
  conflicts.

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Pastoralists Today

• Pastoralists also being edged out by
  agriculturalists
• They are increasingly turning to other forms of
  livelihood (e.g. selling animal products for
  cash) and becoming sedentary
• Governments like sedentary populations that they
  can control and bring services to

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Pastoralists Today

• Nomads in Afghanistan and Iran are highly
  integrated into national and international trade
  markets sell meat animals to local markets,
  lambskins to international buyers, and sheep
  intestines to meet the huge German demand for
  natural sausage casings.

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Horticulturalists

• How is horticulture different from agriculture?
• Are the Maisin horticulturalists or
  agriculturalists?

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Horticulturalists

• Production of plants using simple, non-mechanized
  technology (no draft animals, irrigation
  techniques, or plows)
• Cultivated fields not used permanently, year
  after year, but become fallow after several years
  of use
• Lower yield per acre than intensive agriculture
  but less human labor also

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Horticulturalists

• Grow enough to support their families and local
  group but not enough to produce surpluses to sell
  to non-agricultural peoples
• Population densities are low, but villages may be
  large (100-1,000 people)
• Mainly used in tropical rainforests SE Asia,
  sub-Saharan Africa, some Pacific Islands, and the
  Amazon rainforest

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Slash-and-Burn or Swidden

• A field is cleared by felling the trees and
  burning the bush
• The burned vegetation is left on the land,
  preventing drying out of the soil
• Ash serves as fertilizer
• Fields used for a few years and then allowed to
  lie fallow (up to 20 years) so that the forest
  cover can be rebuilt and soil fertility restored

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Swidden Agriculture in Belize
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Horticulture and the Environment

• So long as the land is allowed to remain fallow
  until it rejuvenates, the system is sustainable.
• However, access to land by ranchers, miners,
  tourists, and farmers horticulturalists desire
  to increase production for cash and population
  growth can mean that the land becomes degraded.

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Agriculturists

• Same piece of land is permanently cultivated
  using the plow, draft animals, and more complex
  techniques of water and soil control than
  horticulturalists use.
• Domestication of wild plants wheat, barley, etc.

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Rice Paddy in Thailand
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Agriculturalists

• Plowing requires more thorough clearing of the
  land (e.g., removal of stumps), but it allows
  land to be used year after year.
• Irrigation techniques like terracing and ditches
• Agriculture can support population increases by
  more intensive use of the same piece of land

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Agriculturalists

• Java comprises only 9 of the total land in
  Indonesia, but supports two-thirds of the
  Indonesian population through intensive wet rice
  cultivation (1250 people per square mile)
• The outer islands, which have 90 of the land,
  but practice horticulture, have about 145 people
  per square mile.

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Agricultural Societies

• Increased productivity comes not only from more
  sophisticated technology but also more intensive
  use of labor ditches must be dug and kept clean,
  sluices constructed and repaired, land must be
  fertilized (with animal manures), and terraces
  leveled and diked.
• Growing rice under swidden system 241
  worker-days per yearly crop
• Under wet rice cultivation 292 worker-days

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Rice Terracing in Java
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Agriculturalists

• Associated with the rise of
• sedentary villages
• cities and the state
• occupational diversity
• social stratification

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Why does the Effect of Culture on the Environment
Matter?

• Social Peoples ways of making a living from the
  environment (land, tools, labor) are deeply
  connected to social systems (the state, kinship
  structures) and forms of social inequality.
• Environmental Peoples ways of making a living
  affects the sustainability of the environment

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Why does the Effect of Culture on the Environment
Matter?

• Lack of resources are as much the result of
  social inequalities and the way that resources
  are distributed among different groups as about
  overall scarcity of resources.

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The Case of the Maisin

• What mode of production do they use to sustain
  themselves?
• Theodora Muluhs question Why were the gardens
  so important to the Maisin people?
• When do children start having a garden?
• In what other ways are gardens significant to the
  Maisin?
• What do their gardens produce?
• How do they get access to the resources to get
  food (in this case to land)?
• Is there a division of labor by gender?
• Is there a division of labor more generally?Are
  there occupational specialties? Do some people
  not grow food?
• Are there political elites? How powerful are
  they?

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