Livelihood

Modes of Livelihood

In chapter three there are five major modes of livelihood. Livelihood is the dominant pattern, in a culture, of making a living. Foraging is a mode of livelihood that is based on natural resources in nature. When you fish, hunt or go scavenging you are acting in foraging. This mode is in danger of be coming extinct. The heavy demand for natural resources leads to a threat called the "resource curse". There is a division of labor among foraging people as well as property relations. Division of labor has to do with dividing up the work within that village so that everyone residing there is pulling there own weight. Property relations in a foraging society means that a person or group has recognized there priorities in access to particular resources.







Horticulture is based on cultivating domesticated plants in a garden with the use of hand tools and it is another mode of livelihood. There are also five phases in the horticultural and those are; clearing, planting, weeding, harvesting, and fallowing.








In places like the Middle East, Africa and were there is limited rainfall the livelihood mode number three is Pastoralism. Pastoralism is where the region herds animals that they eat meat and drink for 50 percent of more of their diet. The six major herds of animal species are sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, cattle, and camels. Pastoralists offer milk, animals, hides, and other animal products.

Agriculture and industrialism are the final two modes of livelihood. Agriculture is a very intensive strategy, because it uses techniques that need to same plot of land to be used repeatedly without losing its fertility. Agriculture relies on the use of domesticated animals to plow and transport fertilizer. Today there are over one billion people who make there living from family farming. The major activities that consist in farming are plowing, planting seeds and cuttings, weeding, and caring.




The mode of livelihood that has to do with goods and services is industrialism. Services are produced through mass employment in commercial operations and business as well as creation, manipulation and management. There is a distinction the exist between the formal sector of the economy and it has to do with wage-based work. Informal sector activities are illegal and are known as being part of the underground economy.





The Story of Stuff 



The Story of Stuff goes along with Chapters 3 and 8 because it is about all of the waste and population our country is creating. Thirty percent of our country is waste. We waste so much that 80 percent of our planet's natural forest is gone and about 2,000 trees a minute are being killed. We are allowing our government to use harmful toxins in mostly everything that we consume. We externalized cost and therefore toxins go in and toxic go out. We are so focused on buying more and more unneeded stuff. Stuff that people in other countries and even ours are losing there lives to make, so that Americans can use to a few times and then toss it in the trash.





Chapter eight's main focus is on how our political and legal systems are changing. Political anthropology covers the power, authority and influence that make up a person's leadership power.
Bands are the form of a political organization that is associated with foraging groups. These units come together at certain times of the year, depending on their ritual schedule and foraging patterns.
Symbols of state power is also covered in chapter 8, and touches on how religious beliefs and symbols are often closely tied to the power of state leadership. This means the highest priest may be consider the ruler of that society. 


There is also democratic where leaders are elected by popular vote and there are gender and leadership in states. Some states are less male dominated than others, but none is female dominated. This view suggest that women are not equal to men, because men have control over warfare technology.






Social control in states is densely populated societies that have more wealth and social stress due to the distribution of surplus, inheritance and rights to land. There are three important factors in state systems of social control. The first is specialization of roles involved in social control, second is formal trials and courts and lastly is power-enforced forms of punishment, such as prisons and the death penalty.







Legal systems are changing and anthropology is an approach within the cross-cultural study of legal systems that examines the role of law and judicial processes. Globalization and increased international migration has prompted anthropologist to rethink the concept of the state. Depending on resources and power, nations and other groups may constitute a political threat to state stability an control.