Showing papers on "Subsistence agriculture published in 1977"

The Tribe as a Unit of Subsistence: Nomadic Pastoralism in the Middle East

Abstract: Among Middle Eastern pastoral nomads some “tribes” can best be described as “units of subsistence”: they exploit an area providing multiannual subsistence. Tribesmen sometimes control this area; more usually they control part of it and share the rest with other nomads and with settled people. Small corporate groups afford the tribesman security and, through genealogical links, mediate his formal membership of the tribe. The unit of subsistence is articulated mainly by networks of institutionalized relationships. Corporate groups join forces only for defense, and then their alliances cut across tribal lines. Under external pressure the unit of subsistence may develop formal leadership and a small standing militia. This administrative setup is in the literature often associated with the corporate groups and called “tribe.” While coexisting with a unit of subsistence, this “tribe” is not necessarily identical with it in area or population. [ecology, genealogies, Middle East, pastoral nomads, tribe]

The dynamics of rural poverty in Latin America

Abstract: The development and perpetuation of a functional dualism between the subsistence sector and the commodity‐producing sector is an objective outcome of the laws of capital accumulation in the periphery of the world capitalist system. The necessity for this dualism derives from the drive of capitalists to maximise profits and thus maintain low wages. Its possibility arises from social disarticulation whereby labour's income does not participate in expanding the market for the modern sector. Through dualism, surplus value is increased not only by the orthodox means of central economies—principally increasing the productivity of work to reduce necessary labour embodied in wage goods—but, in addition, and dramatically more effectively, by collapsing the price of agricultural labour by an amount equal to the production of use‐values by the worker's family in the subsistence plot. In this way, subsistence agriculture supplies cheap labour to commercial agriculture which, in turn, supplies cheap food to the urban ...

ON THE TEN MAJOR RELATIONSHIPS: April 25, 1956

Abstract: This chapter discusses the basic policy in agricultural, transport, commerce, and finance in China. The emphasis in country's construction is on heavy industry. The production of the means of production must be given the priority, that is, settled. It definitely does not follow that the production of the means of subsistence, especially grain, can be neglected. Without enough food, and other daily necessities, it would be impossible to provide for the workers in the first place. The relationship between heavy industry on the one hand light industry and agriculture on the other must be properly handled. There are two possible approaches to development of heavy industry that includes one is to develop agriculture, and light industry less, and the other is to develop them more. The second approach will lead to a greater and faster development of heavy industry and as it ensures the livelihood of the people, it will lay a more solid foundation for the development of heavy industry.

A Worldwide Evolutionary Classification of Cultures by Subsistence Systems [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: Comparative ethnology now provides the data by which all known cultures can be usefully arrayed in an evolutionary series on the basis of their subsistence systems. The isight is an old one, but the massing of evidence about expressive,as well as societal and ecological, patterns which the computer makes possible lends new weight to an evolutionary treatment of cultural variation. The main data for our experiment consisted of the codings for food production from the entire sample of Murdock's Ethmographic Atlas (1967)-some 1,300 cultures, most if not all the kinds of cultures on record. We present a parsimonious ordering of this sample by means of clustering the data on subsistence into types, thereby making a test of the energy theory of culture. The subsistence classes conform to the theoretical requirements set forth by Sahlins, Services, and others. They show, first, a stepwise set of general levels of increasing organization, productivity, and energy transformation, from Collection through Industry, ...

Disease and rural development: a sociological analysis of morbidity in two Mexican villages

Abstract: It is suggested that the problem of the social causes of disease should be analyzed on the basis of the significant social processes of a given society. In this theoretical framework, a comparative study of two Mexican rural villages at different degrees of development is presented in order to clarify two related questions: what is the impact on morbidity of the rural development process, and what is the influence of socio-economic conditions on the distribution of disease in the population?It was found that morbidity was significantly higher in the more “developed” village than in the one characterized by a predominantly subsistence economy. This finding is ascribed to the character of Mexican rural development, similar to that of other subordinated countries, which implies a change from subsistence agriculture to cash-crops in an unstable market, a massive conversion of peasants into wage laborers with unstable employment, and substantial migration; these phenomena give rise to new, unfavorable living a...

Prehistoric Settlement and Subsistence Patterns in the Great Smoky Mountains

Abstract: Data derived from 2 05 sites located in the 1975 survey (Nat ional Park Service Contract Number CX5 000502 11) and the McPher son/Wilburn survey (1936-1 94 1 ) have defined a cultural prehistory for the Great Smoky Moun­ tains spanning approxirnately 8 , 000 year s . The Great Smoky Mountains were f irst occup ied , albeit ephemerally , dur ing the Ear ly Archaic per iod . This was followed by more intensive occupat ion s of the region during t he successive broadly-defined Middle Archaic t hrough historic Cherokee phases . The data reflect changing settlement and subsistence patterns during the se periods . Study of the temp oral and spat ial distribut ion o f lithic material s illustrates signif icant shift s in the ut ilizat ion o f lithic resources . The se change s have been interpreted a s an adap t ive strategy directly related to the changing sett lement and subsistence pattern s . The problem o f the utilization o f t he summit z one and po ssible aboriginal influence in bald format ion is discu s sed .

The Conversion of the Chumash Indians: An Ecological Interpretation

Abstract: A 17-year period during which interaction occurred between the Chumash and Spanish colonizers is the focus of the study. Significant variation in subsistence and interactive patterns during this period is identified. The baptismal rite that marked the transition from native villager to mission Indian is interpreted in relation to the environmental and subsistence realities faced by both the Chumash and Spanish.

Frontier agriculture: subsistence or commercial?

Abstract: (1977). FRONTIER AGRICULTURE: SUBSISTENCE OR COMMERCIAL? Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Vol. 67, No. 3, pp. 463-464.

The Influence of Economic and Social Variables on Marriage and Fertility in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Japanese Villages

Abstract: Among the Japanese there were fundamental similarities in the cultural conditioning of, and the individual motivations in, the limitation of family size in the Tokugawa and the modern worlds. The pressure of numbers on subsistence and the misery of poverty do not explain the control of fertility in the industrial society; they did not explain the abortion and the infanticide of the agrarian society [Taeuber, 1958, p. 33].

production and division of labor in a West Indian peasant community

Abstract: Subsistence and cash production on the West Indian island of Barbuda fall into two organizational categories: that for which household personnel is sufficient and that for which personnel from different households must organize into a cooperative team. This difference in productive organization is associated with exclusive areas of social and economic responsibility divided between men and women, although physical labor sometimes overlaps. Underlying the organization of production and hence the sexual distinction of roles, are the productive capabilities of the landscape and the customary system of land tenure that permits its most efficient use.

The african cultivator: a geographic overview

Abstract: Focusing attention on subsistence cultivators is one of the logical starting points for examining rural Africa from a geographical perspective. Such farmers, functioning within a physical setting that provides both opportunities and constraints, must depend for survival on a familiarity with environmental qualities and contend with extreme conditions. Within this situation an agricultural system must be designed to provide for current food consumption plus a surplus that will vary with local circumstances. Both agricultural practices and environmental characteristics impinge, in turn, on systems of settlement and mobility. Neither the individual nor the farm family is static, but circulates within a defined area and may eventually relocate when circumstances require. When land is actually allocated, not only subsistence needs are taken into account, but also social regulations such as those concerning the distribution of homesteads relative to the distribution of fields. Thus, this overview of the rural African will be concerned with a sequence of four interrelated factors: (1) the dominant mode of food production, (2) the environmental setting, (3) a scheme for organizing terrestrial space at a local scale, and (4) a systematic approach to migration. Within the context of these spatial and environmental factors, the process of change can be superimposed; operating gradually at first and then accelerating, especially during the last hundred years. As population density has increased, as land has become more scarce, and as the commercialization of agriculture has spread, the basic relationship of environment, production, settlement structure, and mobility have been modified. Simultaneously, the cultivator has been evolving into a peasant.

The Economics of Native Subsistence Activities in a Village of Southwestern Alaska

Abstract: It is demonstrated that while it is difficult to arrive directly at values for the products of traditional subsistence activities, such values are necessary for the making of an assessment of actual and potential savings realizable through the use of traditional foods These savings can account for one-quarter of the total real income of a family, although it is possible that inflation will decrease this amount in the future The cost of basic equipment required for traditional subsistence activities and the total amount of flesh obtained are the primary determinants of final expense to the hunter

Employment and Unemployment in Lagos

Abstract: textWage-earning employment was non-existent in Nigeria before the advent of the white man and the British administration The average Nigerian engaged in subsistence agriculture or some cottage industry like weaving, pottery or carving The first wage earners in Nigeria were probably the porters and servants of the explorers who came to West Africa

Rural road planning in developing countries

Abstract: In an age of uncertainty one thing is certain: the poor of the world are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer. It is now seen that in the last 25 years of national and international effort the pattern of development has often resulted in growing disparities between the living standards of countries and also in many developing countries between classes in the same country. In an age that has seen massive economic growth for the world as a whole there are still about 40 developing countries where the annual income per head is less than $200. Thirty per cent of the world’s population, 1200 million people, live in these countries. Even in those countries of the Third World which are above this poverty line it is often the case that the benefit of over half the national income goes to less than one quarter of the population. The poor countries are those that rely almost entirely on agricultural production and where 80–90 percent of the population live in rural areas by subsistence or near subsistence farming. It is these facts that have led to new thinking nationally and internationally about directions for development and new policies of aid to developing countries. Indeed “a widespread current view among analysts of the development process is that, unless specific action is taken to assist the poorest groups directly, relative poverty will increase and any reduction in the numbers of people living in a state of absolute poverty will be painfully slow”.

Social Restraints on Food Production in Indonesian Subsistence Culture

Abstract: In 1968 David E. Bell, vice-president of the Ford Foundation, said: “Fifteen years ago, many thought it was a relatively simple matter to raise farm output in less-developed countries. All that was needed was to make U.S. technology available to the farmers in those countries by establishing extension services or their equivalent. This notion rapidly proved to be a monumental misconception.” The monumental misconception was that peasants in less-developed countries would be eager to maximize food production in order to overcome perennial food shortages, if they had the opportunity to learn the techniques of Western agriculture. This did not happen. Indonesian peasants, after learning of the techniques of the Green Revolution, rejected full participation in it. Why? Many observers in Indonesia and elsewhere have partially explained this rejection but in my opinion they missed the main reason because they failed to recognize that peasant cultures have social values and institutions that act as strong restraints on food production.

Urbanization and development problems in Rhodesia.

Abstract: The central theme of this paper is the interrelationship between urbanization and development problems in Rhodesia. In this context the word development is used in a general sense to include the provision of physical facilities and infrastructure so essential to modern life as well as the provision of employment and the raising of the general standard of living and well-being of the population. Like many other Third World countries Rhodesia is characterized by a dual economy with a modern cash sector that is essentially urban-orientated and a primitive subsistence sector which occurs in the greater part of the African rural areas. While there are numerous ways in which problems of development and modernization may be tackled these in reality fall into one of two groups: rural development programmes and urban development programmes. Much useful work is being done in Rhodesias rural areas but efforts aimed at changing the traditional rural life are very slow to take effect. (excerpt)