ANT 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Kula Ring, Conspicuous Consumption, Melanesians

• School: University of Florida
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANT 2000
• Professor: Elyse Anderson

Document Summary

Food foraging societies = mode of subsistence involving combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering of wild plants; less than 0. 005% of the world"s population currently. Horticulturalists = the cultivation of crops in food gardens carried out with simple hand tools; production for the household and surplus used for feasts and exchange. Horticulturalists tend to supplement with hunting, fishing, and gathering; most widespread cultivation approach is slash-and-burn agriculture. Agriculturalists = intensive crop cultivation; employing plows, fertilizers, and/or irrigation; instead of letting the land regenerate on its own, they are actually affecting the land to increase its yield. Agriculturalists provide community surplus, able to support full-time craft specialists and non- producing consumers; surplus traded or sold for cash or other goods, may be coerced from farmers through tax, rent, etc. ; specialists live in towns and cities, which is under control of central governing elite. Pastoralism = the breeding and managing of migratory herds of .