Handout 10 and 11 The Power of Comparison on Hunters and Gatherers and Beyond

Handout 10 and 11: The Power of Comparison: on Hunters and Gatherers and Beyond 1. Hunting and gathering: for more than 99% of the time humans have spent on earth, people lived by hunting and gathering. And of that 1% of the time, after the advent of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago, only a small fraction has been characterized by the advanced industrial society which produces things like Amherst College, professors of anthropology, supermarkets where we buy meat already wrapped up and well removed from the circumstances of death. 2. When first encountered by anthropologists, contemporary hunters and gatherers, like the Bushmen of the Kalahari, were, for the most part, remnant populations. They were surviving in quite marginal circumstances. In the case of the Bushmen, they had long been pushed from lusher, better watered lands by Bantu agriculturalists and by white settlers. That they were managing at all under these circumstances testifies to the viability of hunting and gathering under what had been -- historically -- more normal, less marginal circumstances. 3. Also, although groups like the Bushmen (when still hunting and gathering) were the last remnants of what had been a wide-spread -- universal -- mode of human adaptation in the past, they must not to be viewed as "living fossils." They have been caught up in history -- HISTORIES -- like everyone else -- and their history has not been one of being untouched, being left behind -- but of having fought to maintain a particular way of life, and a particular set of social values in the face of considerable pressure to change. 4. This said, by learning about e.g. the Bushmen, we can get some PROVISIONAL sense of what life might have been like among hunters and gatherers of the past - what sorts of kinship systems, what sorts of patterns of leadership, what sorts of gender relationships. So, what about them: a. Hunters and gatherers live in small bands (of between 20-60 people) on large territories. b. They support themselves through foraging (generally by women) and hunting (generally by men) – with foraging providing more that 80% of the calories consumed. c. They have no permanent settlements, but practice and value mobility. d. They (often) practice exogamy (out-marriage) with women leaving their home bands and joining those of their husbands. e. They share food readily among all band members (including the animals they kill) – indeed, among visiting members from other bands -- with no accounting of who gets what from whom (a practice known as generalized reciprocity). f. They value flexibility with group action determined by consensus (which is to say, no one bosses anyone else). g. They are non-hierarchical – with leadership earned (achieved), not predetermined (ascribed). 5. But, what about change? This hunting and gathering adaptation arrangement would seem very stable. If this is such a great life (as Sahlins has it), what happened to it? 6. Keep in mind that, as the film Nai shows, people in the Kalahari have developed other lives and forms of technology: Now there are ranchers, game-keepers, mission stations with deep wells, now living in the Kalahari. Presumably, it would be technically possible for a Western financed corporation to irrigate the Kalahari and install wet- rice terraces 7. But why didn't the Bushmen develop the sophisticated technology that would have supported different forms of social organization etc. in this environment -or would have allowed them to change the environment? Or, to turn the question entirely around: what has happened so that hunters and gathers have become remnant populations -- why only a miniscule fraction of living people now follow the way of life that all humans followed for 99% of human history. 8. First and foremost: It is an erroneous assumption of contemporary Western peoples who have as one of their central ideas, the idea of progress (of progressive change/ development over time) -- that the new, the changed, is likely to be desired for its own sake. 9. On Romer’s Rule: The adaptive advantages of an innovation are conservative in that they allow an organism (or, I would add here, a society) to maintain a traditional way of life in the face of changed circumstances. 10. In the course of human cultural life, very few innovations are adopted because of their potential for change. What happened to hunters and gatherers? What, to sharpen the question, led to a more settled, less nomadic way of life. What led to the advent of settled agricultural communities? It is not likely that hunters and gatherers gavde up their way of life intentionally – especially since this would be the transition from the original affluent society. 11. Agriculture in the Middle East. 12. On affluence and poverty (Sahlins and Lee). 13. To paraphrase anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano: ‘One of the missions of anthropological descriptions is to produce “defamiliarization” or an “alienation effect.” Anthropology (and sociology) possesses a critically creative potential insofar as, through defamiliarization, alienation, or self-distancing, it leads us (and no doubt in different fashions, the people with whom we work) to overcome, or at least recognize, social construction and cultural blindness: ultimately, to re-evaluate our respective cultural perspectives.’