Anthropologists take a human-centered approach to studying economic issues, examining how social and cultural features relate to economic production, markets, and consumption. Humans use four main modes of subsistence to meet their needs: gathering-hunting, pastoralism, plant cultivation, and industrialism. Gathering-hunting…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: All of the modes of subsistence previously discussed rely on human labor applied directly to environmental resources to produce relatively small batches of food, tools, and other…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: 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…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: 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…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: 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…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: 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…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Anthropologists have a term for the way that people interact with their environments in order to make a living: mode of subsistence. There are four main modes of…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Maybe you’ve had a course on economics or read a book by an economist. There are many good ones. A favorite of the author of this chapter,…
Figure 7.1 Four entertainment professionals indicate their job satisfaction (credit: “De los Carnavales de Valdemoro” by manuel m. v./flickr, CC BY 2.0) Chapter Outline 7.1 Economies: Two Ways to Study Them 7.2 Modes of Subsistence 7.3 Gathering and Hunting 7.4 Pastoralism 7.5 Plant Cultivation: Horticulture and Agriculture…
Language and culture are closely entwined in the evolutionary development and contemporary diversity of human societies. Human language differs from animal communication in its complexity and flexibility, aspects of human communication made possible by unique human biological and genetic features.…