Population, environment and sustainability

Lecture three

Anthropology and environmental issues

• The world is confronted with a number of environmental problems: global warming, pollution, loss of habitat and diversity, depletion of resources

• Ideas of sustainability and self-sufficiency have become popular.

• Band, tribal and peasant societies as models• These societies most under stress from

environment change and threats to ‘wilderness’

How many people can spaceship earth carry?

• Here is a big issue – is the world’s population sustainable? What can anthropology tell us about this issue?

• History of world population. (Graph)

• Why have populations increased?

• What have been the consequences?

• What is a sustainable increase?

What are the causal links?

• Three kinds of explanation of population increase– Natural increase, – Human inventiveness,– Social change.

• Why do hunters and gather populations historically remain roughly stable?

Definitions of Hunters and Gatherers

• Can be defined by relationship to environment or defined by a particular set of social relationships

• Hunters and gathers, also known as foragers, sustain themselves by taking from what their environment provides but do not seek to transform that environment for example by the use of domesticated plants or animals.

• Borderline cases, – Plains Indians and the horse, – NW Coast Indians and marine migrations – nature

comes to them, – Sami – manage wild herds.

Hunters and Gatherers

• Where did/do these people still live? Worldwide but in remote/refuge areas of forest and desert.

• There are groups of hunters in Canada (e.g. Cree, Dene, Inuit, Naskapi, Montagnais, Chipeweyan), USA (e.g. Ute, Paiute), South America (Guayaki-Ache), Africa (Mbuti, Dorobo, !kung, G/Wi, Baswara et al), India (Mal-Pantaram), South East Asia (Montagnards, Negritos), and Australia (Yirrkala, Pitjantjatara).

http://anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/

Acquatic foragers

Iniut

                              

    

Social definition – Band society

Band society – • size and composition of groups,

– small,– fluid, – nomadic, low population density,– kinship. ‘Eskimo’ is our system

• Minimum social roles, – gender, age, – no set leaders or leadership roles,– minimum economic specialisation.

Hadza woman searching for tubers – Tanzania, East Africa

• Foragers are frequently opportunists taking what is readily available and what they fancy

• Typically, but not exclusively, men hunt women gather. Women contribute more reliable nutrition, hunting output is riskier.

• Hadza 2hr work a day, no seasonal shortages, and healthier children than neighbours. Sleep and gamble.

• Hunters and gatherers as the -

• “original affluent society”

• Marshal Sahlins

• Sahlins, M. (1974) Stone Age Economics London : Tavistock Publications.

!kung San

• San people of the Kalahari

• Studies by many including Richard Lee

• "Why should we plant when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?" ," /Xashe, "

• In terms of our standard eight-hour workday, a San adult works between 2.2 and 2.4 hours a day

• Elsie Vaalbooi•  • Born approximately August

1895 on the farm Grondneus outside Upington, Gordonia District. Died 7 October, 2002

Her parents were !Uxe "Vaal" and ||Qoisi "Marie", both of them N||n=e San. They were hunters and gatherers who later became itinerant farm workers.

• http://www.san.org.za/index.htm

Vincent, John On the Sexual Division of Labour, Population, and the Origins of Agriculture Current Anthropology > Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 422-425

Pre – neolithic population equilibrium

• Nomadic women limit birthsHow – prolonged breast feeding, infanticide, and

abstinenceOn settlement – fertility rates increase rapidly

• low population density means resources remain abundant

• social inequality limited by the inability of any to monopolise the necessities (or even the good things) in life.

• Risks spread, through social relationships, no concept of property, generosity prime virtue, !kung and the fat ox

• A model for contemporary sustainability in the face of environmental problems?

Cautionary tales

• Culturalist re-appraisal• Bird-David, Nurit (1992) Beyond the “Original Affluent Society”: a culturalist

reformulation. Current Anthropology 33(1), pp. 25-35.• http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743706

• Problems of extrapolation, can we use current hunters and gathers as models of past

• W.G. Runciman. “Stone Age Sociology”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 11, Number 1 (March 2005), pp. 129-142, http://ejscontent.ebsco.com/ContentServer/FullTextServer.asp?format=fulltext&ciid=81191B007A9E93DDBA41AA93F7F74D8EC21F9796B2EEE0F74B1A7E2974D70052F505F5C2DE5FB3B0&ftindex=1&ext=.pdf

• Gypsy's, bandits, refuge areas. Need for history of “timeless” people.

• Gordon, Robert (1983) “The !Kung San: A Labor History” Cultural Survival Quarterly Issue 7.4 December 31, 1983

• http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/the-kung-san-a-labor-history