# Work, Life, and Value: Economic Anthropology

## Gathering and Hunting

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Define the subsistence strategy of hunting and gathering, also known as gathering-hunting.
2. Identify and distinguish gathering-hunting groups in prehistory and contemporary societies.
3. Articulate how gathering-hunting promotes certain other cultural forms.
4. Overturn assumptions about the supposed “hard life” of gathering-hunting groups.
5. Recognize the challenges facing most gathering-hunting groups today.
Imagine that you were stripped of all possessions and transported to a grassland environment along with 30 or so other people. How would you begin to make a living? How would you find food and shelter? How would you keep your body comfortable and healthy? Throughout the millions of years of hominin evolution, those living in such environments practiced a strategy known as gathering-hunting. Some peoples still practice this flexible and congenial way of life. In gathering and hunting societies, people rely on the natural resources readily available in their environment. They gather fruits, nuts, berries, and roots and collect honey from wild bees. They hunt and trap wild animals, and they fish in rivers and lakes. Many gathering-hunting groups also engage in limited ways in other modes of subsistence, which will be examined later in the chapter, but their main way of making a living is through gathering and hunting.
You might be surprised to see the word gathering appear before hunting in describing this subsistence strategy. The word order reflects a key debate about this subsistence strategy. Some researchers object to hunting and gathering because it privileges hunting as the most important activity of such groups. Early interest in these groups focused on the hunting activities of men as the most prestigious and valuable subsistence practices. In fact, gathering—done by both women and men—provides the vast majority of calories in the diets of such groups. This chapter will refer to this subsistence strategy as gathering-hunting and the people who practice it as gatherer-hunters.

### The Hadza: Gathering-Hunting as a Subsistence Strategy

The Hadza of northern Tanzania are a resilient example of the way of life of gathering-hunting peoples as well as the contemporary challenges facing such groups. Like most gathering-hunting peoples, the Hadza traditionally lived in seminomadic groups of 20 to 30 people, called bands. About one-third of contemporary Hadza still practice this way of life. Hadza bands settle temporarily to gather and hunt the resources of a particular area, then move on to other areas in seasonal migrations. Sometimes, groups agglomerate into camps of several hundred to take advantage of seasonal foods such as berries.
On most days, both men and women venture out into the savanna to gather food. Men seek out meat, honey, and baobab fruit, while women gather tubers, berries, and greens. When work is assigned based on a person’s sex, anthropologists call this a sexual division of labor. In Hadza society, men and women do specialize in obtaining different foods, but the division is not hard and fast; sometimes men pick berries, and sometimes women gather honey.
Women go out gathering in small groups, picking fruits by hand and using digging sticks to bring up edible roots. They carry foods in grass baskets and leather pouches. People feed themselves throughout the day and bring home foods to share with the whole band in the evenings.
Hadza men often hunt in pairs at dawn and dusk, using bows and arrows coupled with expert tracking skills. They use animal ligaments for bowstrings and craft their arrows from wood and guinea fowl feathers. They use the sap of the desert rose plant to poison their arrow tips. Back when the area was teeming with large animals, hunters brought down zebras, giraffes, and buffalo. As the big game have diminished, they more often target antelope, monkeys, and warthogs.
The Hadza have forged a mutually beneficial human-animal relationship to obtain honey, a highly valued food that contributes 10 to 20 percent of the calories they consume. Hadza men whistle or strike trees to summon a honeyguide, a gray-brown bird that eats beeswax. Hearing this summons, the bird calls back to the honey hunter in a chattering response. Using this call-and-response, the honeyguide leads the hunter to a beehive. Hunters use smoke to calm the bees while they cut into the hive to harvest the honeycomb. After eating some of the honey on the spot, hunters then leave wax for the birds. Some honey is also brought back to camp to share with other members of the band.
Like most gathering-hunting peoples, the Hadza are highly egalitarian, meaning that all people are considered equal and all resources are shared equally. Gathered foods brought back to the camp, including meat, are shared among all members of the band. Gathering-hunting groups deplore stinginess as the worst human fault, and people who refuse to share are met with gossip, ridicule, and even ostracism. Decisions are made through public discussions leading to group consensus. No person has any sort of leadership role. Rather, people with experience in certain areas of social knowledge provide their expertise as needed. In-group fighting is not common, but it does occur, sometimes leading to personal violence and even a split in the band if the conflict cannot be resolved. Violent conflict between groups is very rare among gatherer-hunters.

### The Sociocultural Complex of Gathering and Hunting

Anthropologists have identified features of Hadza society as distinctive to gathering-hunting groups found all over the world. Groups such as the Martu and Pintupi in Australia, the Cuiva and Pumé in South America, the Paliyan and Kattunayakan in Asia, and the Inuit and Shoshone in North America have all constructed similar lifeways based on gathering and hunting (Lee 2018). The social features of this way of life include mobility, sexual division of labor, egalitarianism, and vast knowledge of their environments.
The most common feature of gatherer-hunters is mobility. Such groups typically move in seasonal cycles over broad territories, regularly meeting up with other groups at specific spots such as water sources and patches of ripe vegetation. Bands tend to confine their subsistence activities to their own territories, but if faced with a scarcity of resources, they will commonly ask other groups for permission to gather and hunt in neighboring territories. These requests are facilitated by cross-band friendships and marriages that develop when bands camp together at certain times of the year. As a result, such requests are nearly always approved.
The second feature common to gatherer-hunter societies is the sexual division of labor. Often, men do most or all of the hunting, though recent archaeological evidence suggests that some women also hunted in the past. Both women and men gather, but they often gather different things, and women bring home the majority of gathered foods. The relative equality of women in gatherer-hunter societies is linked to their primary role in supplying calories to the gatherer-hunter diet. Hunting is a prestige activity, however, giving prominence to men who are particularly successful hunters.
The third feature of gatherer-hunters is a strong tendency toward egalitarianism. As they are so often on the move, gatherer-hunters do not typically own many material possessions, and those they have are circulated through the band on the basis of need. All gathered and hunted foods are shared among all members of the band. Generosity is praised and admired. People are considered equal and are actively discouraged from valuing themselves above others. Greed and excessive pride are stigmatized and punished with gossip and criticism. People who fight or refuse to share can be ostracized from the band.
These are broad generalities. The gatherer-hunter mode of subsistence commonly coordinates with these sociocultural features, but some groups do provide exceptions. In particularly productive environments, gatherer-hunters can settle down in one place for periods of time. The year-round availability of fish allows gatherer-hunter groups in coastal or riverine areas to form permanent or semipermanent settlements. Diet and labor patterns also vary. Closer to the equator, gatherer-hunter groups rely more on gathering because plants are plentiful year-round. Farther from the equator, in cooler climates, vegetation is scarce in winter, and gatherer-hunters rely more on hunting. Degrees of inequality and conflict also vary somewhat, often in association with the availability of resources. Situations of scarcity often generate social conflict. While one can describe a general mode of subsistence, it is important to acknowledge the diversity of strategies and features within this mode.
All gatherer-hunters, however, absolutely must possess deep knowledge of the plants, animals, and sources of water in their environments. Many gatherer-hunters can identify over a hundred sources of plant and animal foods in their environments, along with detailed information about where and when they can find each type. Often, they rely on a few staple foods that are readily available year-round. When the Dobe Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari Desert cannot find other foods, they count on mongongo nuts, a highly nutritious, drought-resistant food. Eating 300 mongongo nuts (a hefty serving) supplies 1,200 calories and 56 grams of protein. At certain times of the year, mongongo nuts constitute nearly half of the diet of the Dobe Ju/’hoansi.

### Contemporary Challenges to Gathering and Hunting Societies

Originally, all Hadza lived as foragers. In the early 20th century, the British colonial government attempted to convert them to farming and Christianity, but the Hadza successfully resisted. Since the 1950s, however, farmers and herders have claimed their territory, making the Hadza squatters on land they have occupied for millennia. The plants they rely on for food have been clear-cut to make way for the onion and sweet potato crops planted by farming groups. Hadza watering holes have been appropriated for irrigation. The Tanzanian government has responded with yet another attempt to settle the Hadza, building villages on their lands and attempting to convert them to farming. About two-thirds of all Hadza people now live part-time in these villages, where they receive donations of food from the government. They live in poverty on the land stolen from them by their farming and herding neighbors, who discriminate against them as troublesome primitives. Many Hadza now farm for part of the year and then leave their villages to engage in gathering-hunting for several months.
Over the past few years, however, the Hadza have won several victories in their struggle to regain control over their lands. In 2007, the local government leased 6,500 square kilometers of Hadza land to the royal family of the United Arab Emirates for use as a “personal safari playground.” Removed from the land and confined to a government reservation, the Hadza protested, and some resisters were imprisoned. Their campaign against the deal was supported by a coalition of local and international groups. The controversy garnered attention in the global news media, and the government eventually rescinded the deal. In 2011, the Hadza asserted a claim to 57,000 hectares of land, and the Tanzanian government consented, granting them title to this land. It was the first time the Tanzanian government had ever recognized the land rights of gathering-hunting peoples.
Like the Hadza, all contemporary gathering and hunting groups face economic and political pressures that threaten their way of life. Herders and farmers encroach on their territories, leasing or purchasing their lands and then forcibly evicting the original inhabitants. Local and national governments attempt to settle such groups in permanent villages in order to establish their own rule of law, collect taxes, provide education and medical care, and assimilate them as citizens. Often, gathering-hunting groups agree to settle and then, after a while, abandon the villages established for them and escape to their lands to resume a gathering-hunting lifestyle. Many Hadza say they love living close to nature, making their own material culture, and working and resting at will, always on the move.

### The Original Affluent Society: Comparing Ancient and Contemporary Foragers

In agricultural and industrial societies, people often assume that gathering-hunting peoples must live a hard life, oppressed by the struggle to find enough food and plagued by malnutrition and poor health. Archaeologists and cultural anthropologists who have studied gathering and hunting groups have found otherwise. Researchers have discovered that gatherer-hunters have stronger bones, lower blood pressure, and less heart disease than neighboring farmers, likely due to the amount of walking they do and the abundance of fruits, nuts, and vegetables in their diets (American Heart Association 2012; University of Cambridge 2014). In his ethnographic work among the Dobe Ju/’hoansi, anthropologist Richard Lee found that they worked on average three to four days a week obtaining food and spent the rest of their time socializing and enjoying life. He described the Dobe Ju/’hoansi as fit, healthy, and free of nutritional deficits (1993). Indeed, some Hadza have remarked that the notion of famine is unknown to their culture. While Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith has referred to the wealthy industrial economy of the United States as “the affluent society,” anthropologist Marshall Sahlins describes the gathering and hunting lifestyle as “the original affluent society.”
For some 95 percent of evolutionary history, humans and human ancestors relied on gathering and hunting to make a living. In evolutionary terms, it is only very recently that humans have established other modes of subsistence. Farming was invented around 12,000 years ago, far too recently to have shaped humans’ biological evolution very much. By contrast, hominins were practicing gathering and hunting for more than two million years. If humans have evolved to practice any lifestyle, it would be gathering-hunting. This suggests that humans’ brains and bodies might be best suited to the lifestyle described by ethnographers who study gathering-hunting groups: long walks in nature; a diet of mostly fruits, nuts, and vegetables; and plenty of leisure time to relax and talk. Maybe humanity’s ancestors were as robust and happy in their way of life as many contemporary foragers. Maybe.
The problem with this sort of thinking is that people today really don’t know what life was like for humanity’s gathering-hunting ancestors. The archaeological record of fossils and artifacts can reveal much about the diet and diseases of early hominins, but they tell very little about early social structures and cultural values. Some anthropologists have looked to contemporary gathering and hunting groups to understand the way of life of humanity’s ancestors. Maybe they, like contemporary gatherer-hunter peoples, lived in egalitarian bands with group decision-making and a flexible division of labor based on gender, valuing sharing and deploring stinginess. Certainly, they must have had impressive knowledge of the resources and dangers in their environments.
And yet it is a mistake to view the way of life of contemporary gathering-hunting societies as examples of the way of life of humans’ evolutionary ancestors. Groups such as the Hadza are not frozen in time, practicing a static lifeway of the deep past, but rather constantly changing and innovating, blending new ideas and practices with older ones just as farmers, herders, and industrialists do. Most contemporary gathering-hunting groups have lived side by side with farming and herding groups for centuries, often trading with those groups and even experimenting with their subsistence methods from time to time. Most gatherer-hunters have been forced to relocate to less advantageous lands due to the encroachment of these herders and farmers. The culture of many gatherer-hunter groups has been shaped by their incorporation as marginalized minorities in larger nation-states such as Tanzania. As the way of life of contemporary gatherer-hunters has changed so dramatically just in the past century, it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions about human evolutionary history based on their example.


# Work, Life, and Value: Economic Anthropology

## Pastoralism

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Describe the process of animal domestication.
2. List the array of practices associated with the subsistence strategy of pastoralism.
3. Identify the cultural features associated with the herding way of life.
4. Provide a detailed example of a pastoralist society.
5. Discuss the challenges facing contemporary pastoralist societies.
In many gathering and hunting societies, bands follow herds of wild game as they move in seasonal migrations. Researchers speculate that such hunting practices may have led to the development of a new subsistence pattern around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Relying on their expert knowledge of the behavior and biology of game animals, hunters might have begun to control the movement of wild herds, steering the animals to territories that might be especially rich in grazing resources or conducive to certain hunting strategies. These new practices may have been a response to the diminishing of key game species due to overhunting, prompting hunters to devise strategies to enhance the animals’ diet and reproduction.
This human-animal relationship may have deepened over time as people discovered the nutritional resources available from live animals, such as milk and blood. Rather than killing an animal for meat, early herders figured out how to benefit from live animals and guide their reproduction to enlarge the herds. They began to selectively breed the healthiest and heartiest animals in their herds. They learned how to process animal products such as milk, hides, and hooves for use as food, textiles, and tools, and some used dung to fuel their fires. This process is called animal domestication. Humans in different environments domesticated a wide range of prey animals, including sheep, goats, cattle, water buffalo, yaks, pigs, reindeer, llamas, and alpacas.
Pastoralism is the mode of subsistence associated with the care and use of domesticated herd animals. Pastoralism shares many features with gathering-hunting, in particular the practice of ranging over a broad territory in seasonal cycles. Indeed, as they move with their herds to optimal grazing lands, many pastoral peoples gather fruits and nuts or occasionally hunt small game. Unlike gathering and hunting, however, herding promotes a sense of ownership over resources, as families develop close relationships with specific herds. Rather than sharing resources as foragers do, pastoralists consider their herds to be family property. Herds associated with a family are passed down to subsequent generations, most frequently from fathers to sons.
Archaeologists believe that pastoralism was developed around the same time as farming. In many regions, the two subsistence strategies are practiced by neighboring groups in symbiotic relations of trade. Often, a group will combine pastoralism with farming. Where rain is plentiful and soils are rich for cultivation, farming is used to take advantage of these resources. Pastoralism is utilized in areas with more marginal soils or unpredictable rainfall, conditions not optimal for farming but able to support herd animals if they are moved regularly to newly grown pastures and freshwater sources. Pastoralists who don’t farm usually trade meat, milk, and other animal products for the grains and vegetables grown by neighboring farmers. Most contemporary pastoralists find it necessary to supplement their diet of animal products with the vitamins and carbohydrates in cultivated plant foods and are able to do so through small farming and trade.

### The Bedouin: Flexible Pastoralism

Across the dry grasslands of Arabia and northern Africa live about three million Arab peoples collectively known as the Bedouin. Before the 20th century, Bedouin peoples made their living primarily by herding camels, sheep, goats, and cattle. Many still do, although they often cultivate crops or work as wage laborers as well. Among those Bedouin still devoted to herding, most specialize in one or two herd animals particularly suited to the climate and available pastures in their environment. In areas around Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, sheep and goats are preferred, while cattle are kept by Bedouin groups in southern Arabia and Sudan. In very dry regions such as the Sahara and the Arabian Deserts, Bedouin groups herd camels, hardy animals with scant need for water. Camels are valued as transport but also for their high-quality milk and tasty meat. Camel herding, though a prized tradition, is becoming increasingly rare among Bedouin. Bedouin supplement their camels’ diet with feed, and many have been forced to sell off their camels as the price of feed rises. Since the 1960s, trucks and cars have replaced camels as a means of transportation for the Bedouin, sometimes used to bring food and water to herds in arid regions.
Bedouin pastoralists have traditionally lived in small camps that are moved as frequently as needed to find fresh pastures for their herds, sometimes as often as every few days. This form of herding is called nomadism. Each camp consists of several tents, each one housing an extended family. Typically, a tent might house a married couple with their children and one or two siblings of the husband. Within the camp, several tents might house people who are related to each other, as sons marry and establish their own tents. For instance, a camp could comprise 70 to 100 people, including the families of several brothers, each tent housing the family of a brother, a son, or an elder. Often, the families of the camp move together during the summer months, then converge with other groups in larger camps during the winter months. Camps usually consist of 3 to 15 tents.
Instead of ranging freely, other Bedouin have traditionally moved their herds between two permanent settlements, one for the summer months and the other for winter. This pattern of pastoralism is known as transhumance. In societies that practice this form of subsistence today, young children and the elderly often remain in permanent camps year-round, benefiting from government health care and schools. Some Bedouin use transhumance to combine herding with small farming. For instance, some Egyptian Bedouin plant barley in the fall and then move with their herds into the desert, leaving behind a few people to tend to the crops. In the summer, the mobile group returns to harvest the crops, and the entire group spends the summer together.
Stone houses have replaced tents in many permanent camps. Both tents and houses are rectangular, divided into two or three rooms. One area is for women, with a kitchen and storeroom. One area is primarily for men, where guests and relatives are entertained. Sometimes, a third area is devoted to the care of sick or young animals.
Like gatherer-hunters, pastoralists divide work according to a sexual division of labor. For the Bedouin, that division is determined by the types of animals herded by the group. When both large and small animals are kept, men take responsibility for larger animals, such as camels and cattle. Women herd, feed, and milk smaller animals, such as goats and sheep. But when only small animals are herded by a group, men usually do the herding, while women do the feeding and milking. Where sheep are kept, women spin the wool into yarn, then weave it into strips used to make tents.
Unlike foragers, pastoralists strongly value private property, primarily in the form of their herds. The wealth of a family is judged by the size of their herds. Bedouin sons and daughters both inherit herd animals from their fathers, though sons receive more than daughters. Because women are barred from caring for large animals, if a woman inherits camels, she usually entrusts them to a brother or cousin. All property is shared among members of the family.
Bedouin who live in desert regions have extensive knowledge of their challenging environment. They have a large vocabulary for describing different kinds of sand and analyzing dune shapes and other changes in their surroundings (Eastep). Men often go on long drives through the desert, scouting out good grazing spots or looking for rabbits to hunt. Arabian Bedouin are expert trackers, able to judge the age and physical condition of a camel from its tracks as well as when the track was laid and the weight of the animal’s burden.

### The Sociocultural Complex of Pastoralism

As with gathering-hunting, the subsistence mode of pastoralism is coordinated with particular sociocultural features. First and foremost, these are cultures that revolve around herd animals. All aspects of culture are shaped by a preoccupation with herds. The size of a family’s herds is a measure of wealth and social status. Animals are used for meat, milk, blood, cloth, and leather. Animals are gifted to cement social relationships such as marriage and slaughtered to commemorate special occasions or the visit of an honored guest. Animals are passed down from fathers to children, establishing the social position and durability of families. Many pastoralist societies have vibrant traditions of music and oral poetry celebrating their animals and their herding lifestyle.
A second feature of pastoral societies is mobility. When herding is the primary livelihood, the group must constantly be on the move. Many agricultural societies also keep domestic animals, but in these cases, the people and their animals stay put on the farm, as crops are the fundamental means of survival. Therefore, farmers tend to have many fewer animals than herders. With larger herds feeding from what are often marginal lands, pastoralists must drive their animals to fresh pastures on a regular basis, often in seasonal cycles over large rangelands. The mobile life of herding groups is structured by various strategies of nomadism and transhumance, as with Bedouin groups. Mobility discourages the accumulation of private property other than herd animals, further enhancing the value of animals to herding groups.
Third, pastoralists rely on a division of labor based on gender and age. And the workload is heavy. Those living in pastoralist societies must herd animals to good pasture, provide them with water, search for new pastures, protect animals from predators, care for sick and weak animals, process animal products such as meat and milk, and produce or obtain all the other elements of material culture necessary for daily life (Bollig 2018). Day-to-day herding is often carried out by boys, while older men take on more complex tasks such as providing water from hard-to-access wells and hunting down predators (Homewood 2018). Older men also manage herds, buying and selling animals to optimize ratios of male to female, old to young. And men settle arguments and make family decisions about resources and security. Women are frequently responsible for milking animals, processing milk products such as cheese and yogurt, and selling those products in local markets. Women and girls make tents and mats, set up and break down camps, gather firewood and wild foods, and do the cooking. Women also care for sick animals and people, maintaining the store of knowledge about available plant medicines.
The fourth feature of herding societies is a vast store of knowledge about animals and the environment. Pastoralists have developed an intimate understanding of the vegetation and water sources necessary for their herds as well as medicinal and edible plants available in different zones of their rangelands. They have deep insight into the anatomy and behavior of their herd animals. They know the qualities associated with different species and how to mix species by gender and age to maintain the availability of animal products such as milk, meat, and wool. Previously, scholars thought that pastoralism was destructive to the environment because of overgrazing. In recent decades, however, studies have demonstrated that herding groups strategically rotate their herds across their rangelands to control the impact on the environment, creating a sustainable way of life.

### Contemporary Challenges to Pastoralism

Like many pastoralists, the Bedouin require large tracts of land to continually provide fresh grazing for their herds. Families are associated with defined territories and rarely go beyond them. The nation-states that encompass Bedouin territories do not recognize their right to ownership, however, and consider those lands state-owned. Eager to control this land, governments have asserted various policies to settle the Bedouin, providing schools and health clinics in order to lure them away from their nomadic pastoral lifestyle.
In Egypt, for instance, the government has seized desirable coastal areas from Bedouin groups and sold the land to investors who want to build hotels for the tourism industry. In 1999, the Egyptian army bulldozed a tourist campground run by local Bedouin in order to clear the way for a hotel. The Tourism Development Authority claimed that the Bedouin had only recently lived on the coastal lands and so did not have any right to remain there. In Israel, the government often destroys Bedouin camps and villages in order to make way for settlements and military zones. In November 2020, Israeli soldiers demolished Bedouin structures in the occupied West Bank. Tens of thousands of Bedouin have been displaced by such demolitions and banished from their grazing territories.
Pressured by government regulations and military interventions, many Bedouin now live settled lives in villages and cities across North Africa and the Middle East. Many combine sedentary herding with small farming. Some work as taxi drivers or managers of cafés or campgrounds. Some have become wealthy by investing in the tourist economy and other ventures. Many speak nostalgically of their nomadic way of life and sometimes venture out into the desert again to pasture their herds.
The predicament of the Bedouin is shared by many contemporary pastoralists. Climate change has made rainfall increasingly unpredictable, threatening the sustainability of grazing herds on marginal lands. Governments and global investors are eager to gain control over land in order to cultivate crops or create tourist attractions and conservation zones (Homewood 2018). Some governments have sought to formalize land ownership among pastoralist groups, creating a competition among groups and individuals to gain title to collective rangelands (Galaty 2015). In some places, such as Botswana, elite groups of herders have seized control over land, making life difficult for small herders.
Some nomadic pastoral groups, such as the Wodaabe of West Africa, have cultivated their distinctive cultural practices as forms of heritage to be protected by human rights organizations or otherwise marketed to tourists. Welcoming researchers and filmmakers to study their unique dances, the Wodaabe have been the subject of over 17 documentary films. Spectacular images of the elaborate dress, costume, and face paint of Wodaabe dancers have been featured on the cover of National Geographic, Elle magazine, a World Bank brochure, and several CD and album covers (Kratz 2018). Some Wodaabe groups perform their ceremonies for audiences of European tourists. In their geerewol and yaake dances, groups of young men compete to be selected as the most beautiful dancers by the young women judges. While such involvement in tourism can provide income to impoverished pastoral groups, many anthropologists worry about the commodification of culture and the exploitation of marginal groups for privileged Western audiences.
Some question the future viability of pastoralism as a way of life, suggesting that it might give way to more sedentary forms of ranching. But the transition to ranching would require huge investments of labor and money in necessities such as fencing, feed supplements, veterinary care, permanent wells, trucks, mobile phones, and even airplanes. If herding is practiced in harmony with the environment without these costly inputs, pastoralism may continue to provide a sustainable way of life.


# Work, Life, and Value: Economic Anthropology

## Plant Cultivation: Horticulture and Agriculture

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Identify and distinguish horticulture and agriculture as distinct subsistence strategies of plant cultivation.
2. Describe the cultural forms associated with horticulture and agriculture.
3. Trace the connection between the development of agriculture and the development of villages, towns, and cities.
Many thousands of years ago, one of humanity’s ancestors might have spied a sprout emerging from a refuse pile of pits, nuts, and seeds. Perhaps it was a lightbulb moment: “Hmm, I wonder if I could do that on purpose....” Or maybe it was somebody who dug up a plant and moved it closer to camp: “Genius! Now I don’t have to walk so far!” Somehow, people discovered that they need not rely on the whims of nature to provide them with plants; rather, they could grow the plants they wanted in places more convenient to them. This basic manipulation of nature is called cultivation, and gather-hunters were experimenting with it for thousands of years before the development of farming.
The real revolution happened when people began to design their whole way of life around the sowing, tending, and harvesting of plant crops, depending primarily on those crops as sources of food. By planting the seeds of the most desirable plants, humans began to alter the features of those plants over generations of sowing and harvesting. This process of plant domestication first took hold around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, possibly spurred by the warming climate after the last ice age. As plants became bigger, tastier, more nutritious, and easier to grow, larger groups of people could be supported by permanent gardens with no need to migrate. Eventually, some people didn’t have to farm at all and could specialize in crafts such as pottery, metalwork, basketry, and textiles. Markets emerged as farmers, herders, and craftspeople became entwined in symbiotic relations of trade. Villages grew into towns and cities and, eventually, regional empires. This might all seems like a great leap forward in human development, and indeed it was a big transformation, but farming came with its share of drawbacks as well.
Archaeologists used to believe that agriculture was separately invented in three primary regions of the world: the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East (11,000 years ago), northern China (9,000 years ago), and Mesoamerica (8,000 years ago). Each of these regions featured the domestication of grains as carbohydrate sources. These grains were combined with lentils and beans as sources of protein, along with meat obtained through trade with neighboring pastoral groups. In the Middle East, wheat, barley, peas, and lentils were cultivated. In China, millet, rice, and beans were grown. It is now known that farming was independently invented in many other regions as well (Bellwood 2019). In addition to the three already mentioned, plants were domesticated in sub-Saharan Africa, India, New Guinea, South America, and the eastern woodlands of North America.

### Two Methods of Cultivation: Extensive Horticulture and Intensive Agriculture

The first form of farming that humans developed is known as extensive horticulture. Before a plot of land can be cultivated for the first time, the trees and vegetation must be cleared away, an arduous task usually done by men. Sometimes, a strategy called slash and burn is used, which involves cutting down the trees and shrubs and burning the rest to the ground, then tilling the ash into the soil as fertilizer. Using digging sticks and hoes, horticultural farmers cultivate the top layer of soil before they sow. As seedlings sprout, they water them and feed them with natural fertilizers such as animal dung, and they weed the gardens regularly.
Horticultural societies plant not just one crop but many. They have learned that certain plants are “friends”—that is, they enhance one another’s growth—and so they plant these crops side by side. This is practice is known as intercropping. For instance, in Mesoamerica, squash, corn, and beans were planted closely together in flat-topped mounds, a combination known as the “three sisters.” Several corn plants were planted first, in the center of the mound. Once the corn seedlings were well established, squash and beans were planted at their base. As they grew, the corn plants provided stalks for the vining bean plants to climb. The bean plants contributed nitrogen to the soil, fertilizing the other two plants. The squash plants spread across the ground, blocking weeds and protecting the root systems of all three. Typically, societies practicing extensive horticulture have vast knowledge of such sustainable farming methods. These techniques are natural ways to optimize the health and yield of each plant while providing a variable and balanced diet throughout the year.
Incorporating organic methods of fertilization and pest control, horticulture is a sustainable form of farming. Over time, however, this method does deplete the nutrients in the top layer of soil. After a certain number of seasons growing crops on a particular plot, it becomes necessary to let that plot lie fallow. When horticultural farmers let a plot lie fallow, they stop cultivating it and let the grasses and brush grow in naturally, which promotes the accumulation of fresh nutrients in the soil. Plots can be left to lie fallow for as little as one season or as many as 20. While one plot regenerates, the farmer moves on to clear, till, and sow another plot for cultivation. Horticulturalists often have several plots of land in various stages of fallow and cultivation. This method of rotating crops over various plots of land is called extensive or shifting cultivation, as it involves multiple plots over large areas. Horticulture farmers usually have a variety of plots with distinctive soils and climate features, and they tailor specific farming strategies, including crop species, fertilizers, watering methods, and farming-fallow cycles, for each one.
Often in horticultural societies, land is not owned as private property but held in trust by family heads or village leaders who allocate plots of land to individuals. People have the right to use the land assigned to them but not to own or sell it, a practice known as usufruct rights. These rights to use certain plots are passed down through families, via either the father or the mother. When newcomers move into an area, they may approach the leader to ask for plots of land to farm. In many African societies, it is also common for people to loan out their plots to one another in gestures of friendship and mutual aid.
Extensive horticulture typically provides enough resources to support extended-family households, perhaps with a bit left over to sell in local markets. This amount left over after the needs of the family are met is called surplus. The modest surplus of horticulturalists is sometimes accumulated by families or village leaders in silos or other structures, held in safekeeping for community use in the lean months before the next crops can be harvested. Horticulture does not usually generate enough surplus to support groups of people who do not farm. Craftspeople, religious specialists, and group leaders must all carry on farming alongside these other important activities.
Extensive horticulture provides a good way to cultivate crops on land that is not particularly rich with nutrients. Tropical climates tend to have such soils due to the lack of winter dormancy. In temperate zones (23 to 66 degrees latitude), vegetation dies off in the autumn, depositing dead matter into the soil, which then decomposes into a rich substance called humus (hyoo-mus). Humus is essentially built-in fertilizer, feeding new plants as they grow in spring and summer. Because vegetation does not ever die off in tropical areas, tropical soils do not accumulate humus to the extent that temperate soils do. With less humus, it is more advantageous to use a plot of land a few times, then let the natural vegetation grow back. Slashing and burning regrowth is a way for tropical farmers to mimic the natural die-off of vegetation in temperate climates.
In climates with warm and cold seasons, the layer of humus-rich soil is much denser and thicker than in tropical regions. In these areas, it is advantageous to dig deeper to prepare soils for sowing, distributing the layer of humus into a thicker layer of soil to serve as a reservoir of nutrients for the new plants.
The seasonal deposit of nutrients in the soil also happens in areas surrounding large rivers that flood and recede in a yearly cycle. Along the Nile in North Africa and between the Tigris and Euphrates in the Middle East, ancient farmers were able to use the same soils over and over again as the rivers helpfully dumped organic matter onto their farmlands every year. Riverine farmers learned to control flows of water, creating systems of irrigation to continually water their crops. Sumerian farmers in the Mesopotamian crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates were the first to use the plow, using oxen to pull large blades through their garden plots. Plowing makes the soil even richer for planting.
The use of a plow, the development of irrigation systems, and the continuous cultivation of the same plots are part of a way of farming called intensive agriculture. A good way to remember the difference between extensive and intensive cultivation is to think about how extensive farming involves farming multiple plots over extensive territory, while intensive farming involves applying intensive methods to the same plots over and over again. Intensive agriculture generates much greater yields than horticulture, supporting far larger populations. Greater yields mean greater surplus, which means that societies practicing intensive agriculture generate groups of people who don’t need to farm, such as specialists in craft production, trade, religion, and government.
Farmers who practice intensive agriculture focus on a small number of crops, frequently grains or legumes. They use the surplus generated from intensive methods to trade for other foods, tools, and material goods to meet the needs of their households.
Most people use the word agriculture to mean plant cultivation of any kind. For anthropologists, however, agriculture is just one form of plant cultivation—the kind involving intensive methods such as plows, draft animals, irrigation systems, and repeated use of plots. This chapter uses the term plant cultivation to refer to both extensive horticulture and intensive agriculture. References to specific types of cultivation use the terms extensive horticulture and intensive agriculture.

### The Kayapó: Flexible Horticulture

In the eastern Amazonian rainforest, beside the Xingu River, live a group of people known by their neighbors as the Kayapó. Mixing slash-and-burn horticulture with gathering and hunting and some animal domestication, the Kayapó have created an ingenious and flexible way of life that carefully cultivates the resources of the rainforest, savanna, and intermediate zones (Posey 2002).
Like most farming societies, the Kayapó rely on a small set of staple carbohydrate crops, including sweet potato, manioc, maize, and taro. Every three to five years, they clear new plots for their gardens, leaving the old plots fallow. Rather than passively letting the old plots regenerate, however, the Kayapó plant fruit trees, medicinal plants, and other desirable vegetation that keep the plots productive throughout the fallow period. They also transplant edible and medicinal plants alongside the paths that serve as transit routes throughout their territory. The Kayapó venture out on these paths in gathering-and-hunting expeditions that supplement their farming endeavors during part of the year. Women gather fruits, nuts, and berries, and men hunt armadillos, deer, anteaters, and wild pigs. Like the Hadza, the Kayapó regularly harvest honey, the sweet treat of the forest. Another delicacy is the tortoise, slaughtered in large numbers for special festivals. The Kayapó also fish with bows and arrows as well as nets and plant-based poison. Sometimes, women stay in the village while men go hunting or fishing.
Because they farm, the Kayapó live in villages for most of the year. Extended-family houses are situated in a circle surrounding a central public space with a men’s house in the center. Social activities are coordinated by groups based on gender, age, and extended family. Most villages have two men’s societies, each one associated with a women’s society. When a boy becomes a man, he chooses which society he wants to join, usually that of his intended father-in-law. After he marries, his wife joins the women’s society associated with her husband’s group. Each society has its own leader and meeting place.
Kayapó life is organized according to seasons. Planting is done in the “low water” season, and farming continues until harvest. After this, wild fruits ripen, attracting game for the hunting season, the “high water” time. This is followed by a period of leisure, family activities, and increased fishing. Then, a new year begins. Kayapó culture marks these seasons with a calendar of ceremonies. Festivals celebrate the farming and hunting seasons, and specific rituals are performed to promote the success of these subsistence methods.
The Kayapó are deeply knowledgeable about their environment and work diligently to cultivate the diversity of flora and fauna in the various ecological zones of their territory. In addition to an impressive store of general knowledge, each village has individuals with expertise in soils, plants, animals, and medicines. The Kayapó identify many different micro-zones within the continuum between forest and savanna, associating each zone with a distinct set of interrelated plants, animals, and soil types. They attract certain species of game for hunting by sowing specific plants in specific areas. For farming, they use ground cover such as plants, logs, leaves, straw, and bark to adjust the moisture, shade, and temperature of soils. They fertilize certain crops with the ash of specific plants, making use of the vegetation cleared and weeded in farming. They meticulously design their gardens in concentric circles to provide optimal light and water to each species of plant, and they practice complex forms of intercropping of plants that benefit one another. For instance, several plants are considered “banana neighbors,” good to plant next to bananas. Among these is a plant called “child-want-not,” a plant used by Kayapó women to regulate fertility.
In open areas, the Kayapó create small areas of special diversity called apêtê, or “forest islands.” To create an apêtê, they first spread a layer of organic matter, such as termite nests, then sow seeds and transplants of useful trees and plants in the mound of nutrient-rich soil. As the plants grow, the Kayapó cut down the highest trees in the center to provide more light throughout the apêtê. The result is a store of medicinal and edible plants as well as a nice, shady place to rest in the middle of an open field. Sometimes, apêtê include vines that produce potable water, providing a sort of drinking fountain for people as they travel about the territory.
The nurturing of plant biodiversity is important to the practice of medicine among the Kayapó. They identify and cultivate hundreds of plants used to treat specific ailments such as diarrhea, scorpion stings, and snakebites. They organize their knowledge of both illnesses and plants in complex classificatory schemes. The Kayapó identify 50 separate types of diarrhea and treat each one with a specific plant medicine.
The Kayapó are also masters of zoology. They study the anatomy and behavior of the animals in their environment and use that knowledge for hunting and farming. For instance, when a garden is infested with leaf-cutting ants, Kayapó farmers deliberately plant nests of smelly ants around the plot. The pheromones of the smelly ants scare away the destructive leaf-cutting ants. Smelly ants can also be crushed and inhaled as a medicine to clear the sinuses.
The Kayapó keep many pets, including birds, snakes, spiders, and various mammals. One survey found more than 60 species of animal kept as pets in one village alone! Children are encouraged to observe the behavior of their pets to learn as much as possible.
The Kayapó have developed a vast store of knowledge about their surroundings, and they use that knowledge to promote plant and animal biodiversity and nurture their environment. Some anthropologists suggest that industrialized societies could learn much about environmental management and ecological sustainability from horticultural groups such as the Kayapó.

### The Sociocultural Complex of Plant Cultivation

As with the Kayapó, horticulture is often combined with gathering and hunting and even pastoralism to form a flexible, sustainable, and highly successful subsistence strategy. Many societies practicing intensive agriculture also forage and keep animals on the side, although they spend much less time gathering and hunting. As they come to rely more and more on their crops, farming peoples settle down to form permanent villages. Frequently, as with the Kayapó, those villages consist of extended-family houses with a central area for public meetings. Most villages consist of several extended families, each with its own family leader or set of elders. As agricultural methods intensify, it becomes necessary for families to cooperate in the development of irrigation schemes, trade networks, and the allocation and protection of land. Forms of community leadership and group decision-making emerge to organize these activities. Those political forms will be discussed in the next chapter.
Plant cultivation requires a lot of work, substantially more than gathering-hunting. Clearing small trees and brush for new garden plots is backbreaking work, followed by the physical challenges of tilling, sowing, watering, weeding, controlling pests, and (hopefully) harvesting. Throughout the year, crops must be either processed for market or household meals or made into something useful. Tools such as hoes, scythes, and plows must be bought or made and constantly maintained. Where used, plows and draft animals require daily care. In order to get all of this work done, agricultural societies rely on the labor of extended families, with chores divvied up by gender and age.
Often, men are responsible for clearing land, while women do the sowing as well as the daily work of weeding and watering. Children help with garden chores, often charged with carrying water or scaring away the birds and small mammals that scavenge crops. Men make and maintain tools and also tend to draft animals, while women process materials for home consumption, such as food and craft items. Women make pottery, baskets, clothing, and shoes (until this work is taken over by craftspeople). Girls are put to work as babysitters, taking care of younger children while their parents work at other tasks. Typically, men assume positions of power in the public realm as leaders of extended families and villages, but women often represent their interests in their own groups with their own leadership, as in Kayapó society.
The gendered arrangement of work and power is highly variable. In some societies, men take charge of marketing crops, while in others, women take on this role. Frequently, as cultivation intensifies with the growing of large cash crops such as wheat and rice, men market the cash crops while women sell the vegetables from their gardens.
The work of plant cultivation is structured by the yearly cycle of the changing seasons. Frequently, the social life of plant-cultivating societies is organized into a similar annual calendar, with festivals, ceremonies, and rituals marking various stages in the process of cultivation. For instance, “garden magic,” such as the recitation of spells, is often an integral part of preparing garden plots for the growing season. Magical spells and blessings provide a means of encouraging good weather and healthy plants and help manage the anxieties of communities that are heavily dependent on the success of their crops. Harvest time is frequently marked by a large festival, with feasting, the performance of special songs and dances, and the commemoration of gods and ancestors.
Successful plant cultivation requires a great deal of knowledge about plant and animal biology, soil composition, geology, and weather patterns (see Edington 2017 for a wonderful overview). Many cultivators have a deep understanding of the relationship between soil and seed. Sukuma farmers in Tanzania identify six types of soil, five good for planting a specific crop—rice, corn, sorghum, two kinds of groundnut—and a sixth soil type only good for grazing cattle. Peruvian potato farmers have knowledge of 35 different potato varieties and are able to match each one to the soil type and environmental conditions most conducive to a healthy harvest. Cultivators rely on environmental indicators to let them know optimal times for planting and harvesting. They watch for the flowering and fruiting of wild plants, migratory movements of birds, and changing patterns of stars in the night sky. Many farmers in India look for the blossoming of yellow flowers on the laburnum trees to indicate the imminent arrival of the monsoons. Others rely on the pied crested cuckoo, which arrives just ahead of the monsoon rains.
Farming societies have various techniques for managing weeds and garden pests. Some weeds are welcome as sources of food and materials for crafts such as baskets. Animals attracted to growing crops are frequently hunted as supplementary sources of protein. Grasshoppers and locusts can be fried into crispy treats, and larger animals such as rodents can be trapped and eaten as meat. Many cultivators use specific plants to repel weeds and pests. Traditional Chinese farmers used the root bark of the thunder god vine to keep caterpillars and aphids away from their crops. Other plants, such as neem and mint, are used to protect harvested produce from being eaten by insects.
This vast knowledge of the natural world is undergirded by a value system that emphasizes environmental conservation and protection. Often, environmental knowledge is entwined with supernatural beliefs and cultural values and preserved in songs, stories, legends, and ritual practices. Ancient religious texts often function as records of environmental knowledge and values as well as supernatural beliefs and practices. In ancient India, for example, Hindu texts such as the Vedas commanded that humans should live in harmony with nature rather than exploiting it (Jain 2019). Certain trees and plants with particular value to humans were revered and associated with supernatural beings. The Vedas called for the protection of those trees and plants and assigned penalties for cutting them down. Typically, the cultures of plant cultivators promote reverence for nature and compel people to practice sustainable forms of farming that protect the soil and preserve biodiversity.
As mentioned earlier, intensive agriculture produces a much larger surplus than horticultural methods. As agricultural surpluses and human populations both grew, villages expanded into towns, which evolved into cities. Emerging about 7,000 ago, the city of Uruk, located in what is now Iraq, was the first large urban center in Mesopotamia and possibly the world (Nardo 2007; Wallenfels and Sasson 2000). At its peak population, it housed 50,000 to 80,000 people, with more living in the surrounding metropolitan area. Surrounding peoples practiced agriculture and herding and traded their surplus in the city markets. Within the city, a class of craftspeople supported themselves without doing any farming, prominent among them cloth makers and metalworkers. Uruk peoples traded widely with groups throughout Mesopotamia and what is now western Iran. The accumulation of wealth in the city supported the building of great temples and city walls by a class of construction workers (Pittman 2019). Such public buildings are called monumental architecture. Cuneiform writing was invented as a method of accounting, used to keep track of trade and inventory. Coordinating this complex economy was a centralized government headed by a king.
Like Uruk in Mesopotamia, the early cities of Abydos in Egypt, Harappa in the Indus Valley, and Anyang in China all emerged close to waterways, locations where intensive agriculture stimulated increases in population (Rizvi 2007). Cities provided sites for craft specialization, the organization of regional trade, the building of monumental architecture, the development of writing, and the centralization of power. With its large stone plaza, pyramids, and ball courts, the Zapotec city of Monte Albán emerged as an administrative capital in Mesoamerica around 4,000 years ago. With its own plaza and pyramids, the site of Caral in present-day Peru developed into a city around the same time as Monte Albán. Built on a base of agricultural surplus, all of these cities demonstrate urban planning, heterogeneous populations, regional trade, and monumental architecture.

### Contemporary Challenges of Farming Societies

Communities relying primarily on extensive horticulture or intensive agriculture are generally able to meet their own subsistence needs. However, with the development of cities into regional empires, many cultivators became incorporated into larger structures of trade and government. Under pressure from these structures, farmers past and present were and are obliged to sell their surplus for cash in order to pay taxes and purchase agricultural inputs such as seed and fertilizer. As cities and states grow, they exert pressure on cultivators to produce ever higher yields to support greater populations and more elaborate state projects. As cultivators become incorporated into demanding states, they become a class of peasants. A peasant is a farmer with a small plot of land incorporated into a larger regional economy. Nearly all contemporary cultivators are part of a peasant class in their nation-states (Sillitoe 2018). Peasants are often marginalized and disadvantaged, reliant on economic and political structures they cannot control, and exploited by urban elites. Many farmers now make up a rural underclass.
Extensive horticulturalists such as the Kayapó require large areas of land in order to allow their fallow plots to regenerate before reusing them. Over the past 30 years, cattle ranchers, loggers, and miners have moved into Kayapó territory. Unlike the Kayapó, ranchers and loggers practice ecologically damaging methods, leaving large areas of barren wasteland in their wake. Early on, some Kayapó communities accommodated iron and gold mining operations, signing contracts that granted mining companies permission to operate in exchange for a small percentage of profits. However, mining practices polluted the rivers that the Kayapó rely on for drinking, bathing, and fishing. With the emergence of gold rush towns and the flood of foreigners into the area, the Kayapó began to see unwelcome changes in their communities, such as increases in disease and problematic alcohol use. Many Kayapó turned against outsiders, attacking loggers and miners to force them off of Kayapó land. As a further problem, the Brazilian government has proposed a series of large hydroelectric dams on Kayapó rivers to generate power in the Amazonian hinterlands. These dams would flood Kayapó territory, displacing more than 20,000 people. Recognizing these projects as threats to their culture and way of life, the Kayapó have joined with other Amazonian Indigenous groups in dramatic protests attracting global attention and support (Turner and Fajans-Turner 2006). The rock star Sting attended one such protest and later founded the Rainforest Foundation Fund to support the efforts of the Kayapó to protect their land.
You may have heard this story before—the story of Indigenous peoples who come to be surrounded and dominated by extractive capitalists and state officials. In their relations with Indigenous peoples practicing gathering-hunting, pastoralism, and horticulture, states often argue that such people are resisting inevitable progress. Indeed, American world history textbooks often represent the emergence of cities, the expansion of trade, and the creation of bureaucratic states as steps in the triumphal march of progress, key achievements in the development of civilization.
But progress for whom? The more that is learned about life in nonindustrial, noncapitalist societies, the more questions are raised about these notions of progress.


# Work, Life, and Value: Economic Anthropology

## Exchange, Value, and Consumption

### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Outline four types of exchange.
2. Define the concept of reciprocity.
3. Define the concepts of money and market exchange.
4. Describe how money expresses conflicted notions of morality.
Before moving ahead to discuss the last of the four major subsistence methods, it’s worth reviewing the ways in which goods circulate in societies in accordance with each mode of subsistence. The four subsistence strategies are defined primarily by their techniques of production—that is, the way people use materials from their environments to make the things they need, such as food, clothing, shelter, and medicines. Previous sections have described how each production strategy entails its own distinctive methods of allocating those needful things to individuals and groups within the community. This section details the various methods of circulating things through social groups.
Most societies rely on one primary strategy for making a living, though they very often combine it with one or more others in flexible ways over time. If key foods become impossible to find, gatherer-hunters may take up farming for a few seasons. Many herding groups regularly hunt and sometimes plant crops along their nomadic routes, returning the next season to harvest the crops. Many farmers also keep domesticated animals. So it is with modes of exchange. Most societies practice not just one strategy but a combination of many, dominated by the form of exchange that dovetails with the main subsistence strategy.

### Forms of Exchange

Recall the importance of egalitarian sharing in gatherer-hunter societies. When hunters return to camp bearing large game, they divide it equally among members of the band. When gatherers bring back loads of nuts or fruit, they hand them out freely to anyone who is hungry. Everyone is expected and required to share with everyone else. Generalized reciprocity is the anthropological term to describe how people share things with no regard for their value or interest in compensation. This form of exchange doesn’t look like exchange at all; it looks much more like altruism. But when rigorously practiced by a group, with social sanctions used to punish laziness and stinginess, the result of generalized reciprocity over time is more or less the equal exchange of goods among all members of the group.
Outside of gathering-hunting societies, generalized reciprocity is also common in many close relationships, such as family relationships and friendships. When you’re staying in your parents’ house, does it occur to you to pay them when you grab a soft drink from the fridge? If a friend wants to borrow a pair of boots, do you charge them a rental fee? Probably not. However, the logic of exchange changes as the intensity of the relationship decreases and value of the object increases. Your parents might give you a car if you needed one, but you would not expect a friend to do so without some sort of compensation.
In gathering-hunting and horticultural societies, another form of reciprocal exchange is common among individuals. Among the Dobe Ju/’hoansi and other San groups in southern Africa, people develop relationships with one another based on a gift-giving practice called  (Barnard 2018). The relationship begins when one person asks another person, often someone in another band, to give them a particular item, such as a digging stick or a cooking pot. This request may be rejected or accepted. If accepted, the two enter into an ongoing relationship of exchange, which may last forever or be broken off at some future point. After an unspecified period of time, the receiver makes a return gift, often of somewhat of equal or slightly greater value. The value of the items is never discussed; nor is the time between episodes of gift giving. All is made to seem natural and spontaneous. This form of exchange is known as balanced reciprocity. These relationships come with many advantages—for instance, the right to hunt and gather in the band of your hxaro partner. For this reason, many people maintain as many as 10 to 12 ongoing hxaro relationships. The main point of balanced reciprocity is not to gain resources and opportunities. Rather, the whole point of these serial exchanges of things is to establish and affirm relationships among people. Some degree of unspoken calculation is involved in choosing gifts that affirm and intensify the relationship over time, with givers slowly raising the value of gifts to deepen the relationship. These special relationships based on reciprocal gift giving are found in many other horticultural and agricultural societies as well.
While such gift-giving relationships seem to be governed by a sense of mutual goodwill, a more fierce and competitive form of balanced reciprocity developed among the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada and the United States (High 2018). Among groups such as the Haida, Kwakiutl, and Tlingit, chiefs sponsored great feasts called potlatches to commemorate births, weddings, deaths, and other important events. At these potlatch feasts, the chief of the host community would present an abundance of gifts to the chief of an invited community. Such gifts included blankets, animal skins, copper plaques, and preserved food. Sometimes, these items were deliberately burned in spectacles of extravagant waste. By foisting this abundance of gifts upon a guest chief, the host chief demonstrated their wealth and power and levied a challenge to the guest chief to counter with an even more lavish feast and greater trove of gifts. Power among neighboring communities was established and reinforced through this competitive feasting, not by acquiring wealth but by giving it away. More recent interpretations of potlatch suggest that such ceremonies not only operated as forms of reciprocity but also helped distribute specific goods found in one community to surrounding areas where those goods might be impossible to find.
The role of extended-family leaders in the practice of potlatch is an example of the tendency for leaders to gain control of community wealth and use it for distribution as well as prestige. This practice is particularly pronounced in agricultural societies that have chiefs, such as the peoples of the Hawaiian Islands in the precolonial era. Before contact with Europeans, the Hawaiian Islands were ruled by a multilevel system of chiefs who controlled land, natural resources, and trade. Commoners were required to pay tribute to their chiefs in the form of labor, food, and other products. For farmers, this meant that a portion of their agricultural surplus was relayed to local chiefs. These local chiefs then relayed a portion of the tribute they received to regional chiefs, and so on up the pyramid to the great chief. This tribute supported government at each level, including royal courts, political advisers, priests, military strategists, guards, and entertainers. In this way, political leaders became centers of the concentration of wealth, which was then used to provide communities with the benefits of government, such as social order, conflict resolution, military protection, trade coordination, and the construction of public works such as fishponds, water channels, and temples. In this hierarchical system, tribute flowed up to elites, while government goods and services flowed down to commoners. This two-way flow is called redistribution, and it’s a very common feature of chiefdoms, as will be discussed in the next chapter. Tribute was used by leaders to finance monument building, warfare, trade, and ceremonial feasting as well as the chief’s own lavish regalia and large retinue of assistants, bureaucrats, and servants.
Redistribution is practiced in all state societies. Consider the roads in your neighborhood, the postal service, the public schools, the libraries, government-funded scientific research, the courts, the prisons, the police—all are paid for by taxation, the form of redistribution conducted by states. While some see taxation as a predatory fee extracted by unproductive elites, taxation makes possible the social order, the economy, and the well-being of state citizens. It’s important to recognize that redistribution is not a way for individuals to purchase goods and services from the state but rather a system of allocating resources for the well-being of society as a whole.
Read this first-hand experience of the author of this chapter, Jennifer Hasty,
Among strangers, market exchange is the most common form of transaction. In capitalist societies, market exchange is the default setting; if all else fails, pay for it. Market transactions are quick and easy, and the participants walk away relatively unencumbered by future obligation. If this is the advantage of market exchange, it can also be a big disadvantage. Without the relations of mutuality and trust established by forms of reciprocity, the participants in market exchange are motivated by the desire to get more than they give. A society dominated by market exchange is therefore dominated by the logic of self-interest and greed rather than cooperation and social well-being.

### Money

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many shops witnessed a scarcity of hard currency, prompting them to put up signs requesting people to use credit or debit cards or mobile payment apps to make purchases. This episode is part of a larger shift over the past several decades away from coins and bills and toward more abstract forms of payment such as chip cards and “fintech,” the mobile debit apps accessed through smartphones. And even more abstractly, now there are even virtual currencies such as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is a currency generated by a computer dedicated to solving complex mathematical problems. How is that even money?
What is money? In the formulation of classical philosophy, money is defined by three functions: it serves as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Imagine that two friends from neighboring groups, one a pastoralist group and the other a horticultural group, meet in town. The pastoralist has a freshly slaughtered goat slung over their shoulder. The horticulturalist is carrying a small sack of vegetables. They decide they’d like to trade. The farmer wants all of the meat, but the herder wants only a small portion of the vegetables. Each person wants the trade to be equal; that is, they both want to give and receive the same value. How can they conduct this transaction? How do they know the value of the things they want to trade?
It seems natural to imagine these two trader friends attempting to negotiate some sort of barter. The swapping of goods on the spot, however, was never a dominant form of exchange in any culture in the past. Instead, many anthropologists argue that precapitalist peoples relied more on gift exchange, redistribution, and debt to circulate goods through society. So it’s more likely that the pastoralist would make a good-faith gift of the whole goat to their gardening friend, knowing that both would remember the gardener’s obligation to return the favor with more vegetables (or something else of fairly equal value) in the future. If this seems complicated, it probably was. Individuals would have been involved in many such relationships simultaneously – whole communities of people all mutually entwined in relations of credit and debt.
The other possible solution is money. If these two traders live in a society that uses some arbitrary other thing to enumerate value, they would know that all of the meat has the value of 50 units (or shekels, cowrie shells, tally sticks, bones, animal skins, brass rods, gold coins, bank notes, or any one of the myriad other objects used as money in the past). A small portion of vegetables might have the value of only 10 units. If these two have come with their wallets, they can use money to make two separate transactions for items of different value rather than trying to negotiate one swap. They can make the exchanges and walk away without entanglement.
There are two kinds of money, general purpose and special purpose. The transaction described above is an example of general-purpose money—that is, money that can be exchanged for a wide variety of goods and services. Dollars, euros, pesos, yen, and bitcoin are all forms of general-purpose money. General-purpose money is portable, divisible, and easily available. Special-purpose money is currency that is used to purchase one particular kind of thing. In some pastoral societies of West African, cattle have been used as forms of bridewealth, or the payment made by a groom to the family of his prospective bride. The Tinputz people of Papua New Guinea had two forms of special-purpose money, strings of flying fox teeth and strings of shell disks. These were used for marriages and other socially important occasions. Special-purpose money is generally more difficult to obtain, transport, and/or measure precisely. In American society, many grocery stores now offer special-use “points” for loyal shoppers that can be used to buy gas at particular gas stations. Credit card companies, airlines, and other businesses offer similar forms of special-purpose points. Such special-use currency illustrates the arbitrary nature of money.