Culture and the Environment:How Culture Affects How People

Materially Sustain Themselves

Some Basic Tenets

• Both culture and the environment are complex systems made up of multiple interacting and interlocked forces and processes.

• Part of a society’s culture is its use of material resources provided by the environment. The ways that societies have done so is quite diverse.

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

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

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

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 world’s population today lives by hunting-gathering because they have been pushed into marginal areas by agricultural peoples.

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

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).

Cattle Herd in the Sudan

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

Nomadic Pastoralism

• The whole population---men, women, and children---moves with the herds throughout the year

• There are no permanent villages

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

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.

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

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.

Horticulturalists

How is horticulture different from agriculture?

Are the Maisin horticulturalists or agriculturalists?

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

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

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

Swidden Agriculture in Belize

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.

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.

Rice Paddy in Thailand

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

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.

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

Rice Terracing in Java

Agriculturalists

Associated with the rise of:

• sedentary villages

• cities and the state

• occupational diversity

• social stratification

Why does the Effect of Culture on the Environment Matter?

• Social: People’s 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: People’s ways of making a living affects the sustainability of the environment

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.

The Case of the Maisin• What mode of production do they use to sustain themselves?• Theodora Muluh’s 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?