Ch11 | Test Bank – Why Do Anthropologists Study Economic

Chapter 11: Why Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?

Test Bank

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 01]

1) The patterning of human interdependence in a given society through the actions and decisions of its members is called

Feedback: Social organization can be defined as the patterning of human interdependence in a given society through the actions and decisions of its members.
Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?

a. social hierarchy.

b. social equality.

c. social organization.

d. social stratification.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 02]

2) What discipline of anthropology that debates issues of human nature that relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living?

Feedback: Economic anthropology is the part of the discipline of anthropology that debates issues of human nature that relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living.
Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?

a. Cultural anthropology

b. Institutional analysis

c. Economic anthropology

d. Political anthropology

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 03]

3) Complex, variable, and enduring forms of cultural practices that organize social life are called

Feedback: Institutions are complex, variable, and enduring forms of cultural practices that organize social life.

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?

a. habitus.

b. institutions.

c. social organization.

d. economics.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 04]

4) What term describes the using up of material goods necessary for human physical survival?

Feedback: Consumption involves using up the products—for example, by eating food or wearing clothing.
Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Production, Distribution, and Consumption?

a. Production

b. Distribution

c. Exchange

d. Consumption

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 05]

5) The economic theory which represented a formal attempt to explain the workings of capitalist enterprise and paid particular attention to distribution is

Feedback: Formal neoclassical economic theory developed in Europe to explain how capitalism works, and it emphasizes the importance of market exchange. Economic anthropologists showed that noncapitalist societies regularly relied on nonmarket modes of exchange, such as reciprocity and redistribution, which still play restricted roles in societies dominated by the capitalist market.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. distribution theory.

b. neoclassical economic theory.

c. Marxist economic theory.

d. commodity exchange.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 06]

6) Impersonal economic exchanges typical of the capitalist market in which goods are exchanged for cash are called

Feedback: Commodity exchanges are impersonal economic exchanges typical of the capitalist market in which goods are exchanged for cash and exchange partners need have nothing further to do with one another.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. commodity exchanges.

b. gift exchanges.

c. redistributive exchanges.

d. modes of exchange.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 07]

7) The exchange of goods and services of equal value is called

Feedback: Reciprocity refers to the exchange of goods and services of equal value. Anthropologists distinguish three forms of reciprocity: generalized, in which neither the time nor the value of the return is specified; balanced, in which a return of equal value is expected within a specified time limit; and negative, in which parties to the exchange hope to get something for nothing.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. reciprocity.

b. redistribution.

c. market exchange.

d. mode of production.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 08]

8) A reciprocal situation in which neither the time nor the value of return is specified is identified by anthropologists as a form of

Feedback: Generalized reciprocity is found when those who exchange do so without expecting an immediate return and without specifying the value of the return. Everyone assumes that the exchanges will eventually balance out.
Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. generalized reciprocity.

b. balanced reciprocity.

c. negative reciprocity.

d. redistribution.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 09]

9) The mode of exchange that requires some form of centralized social organization to receive economic contributions from all members of the group and to allocate them in such a way as to provide for every member of the group is called

Feedback: Redistribution refers to a mode of exchange that requires some form of centralized social organization to receive economic contributions from all members of the group and to redistribute them in such a way as to provide for every group member.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. reciprocity.

b. redistribution.

c. market exchange.

d. mode of production.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 10]

10) The activity linking human social groups to the material world around them is referred to as

Feedback: Labor refers to the activity linking human social groups to the material world around them; from the point of view of Karl Marx, labor is therefore always social labor.

Page reference: Does Production Drive Economic Activities?

a. labor.

b. production.

c. distribution.

d. exchange.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 11]

11) A __________ is a historically occurring set of social relations through which labor is organized to extract energy from the environment by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.

Feedback: Anthropologist Eric Wolf (1982) defined a mode of production as “a specific, historically occurring set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge” (75).
Page reference: Does Production Drive Economic Activities?

a. means of production

b. mode of production

c. relation of production

d. subsistence strategy

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 12]

12) The social connections linking human beings who engage in different production tasks and who must work together are called

Feedback: The social relations linking human beings who use a given means of production within a particular mode of production are called the relations of production.
Page reference: Does Production Drive Economic Activities?

a. means of production

b. mode of production

c. relation of production

d. subsistence strategy

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 13]

13) The tools, skills, organization, and knowledge used to extract energy from nature are the

Feedback: Tools, skills, organization, and knowledge constitute what Marx called the means of production.
Page reference: Does Production Drive Economic Activities?

a. means of production

b. mode of production

c. relation of production

d. subsistence strategy

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 14]

14) Ranked groups within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, or other economic criteria are called

Feedback: Classes are ranked groups within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, or other economic criteria.

Page reference: Does Production Drive Economic Activities?

a. classes.

b. modes of production.

c. kin.

d. statuses.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 15]

15) The using up of material goods necessary for human physical survival is called

Feedback: Consumption refers to the using up of material goods necessary for human survival.

Page reference: Does Production Drive Economic Activities?

a. production.

b. distribution.

c. exchange.

d. consumption.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 16]

16) Anthropologist I. M. Lewis compared the social organization of the northern Somalis and the Boran Galla, who live next to each other in semiarid scrubland and herd the same animals. His comparison showed that

Feedback: Fifty years ago, I. M. Lewis (1967, 166ff.) observed that the northern Somalis and the Boran Galla lived next to each other in semiarid scrubland and even herded the same animals (goats, sheep, cattle, camels). Despite these similarities, the Somali and the Boran were quite different in social structure: The Boran engaged in much less fighting and feuding than the Somali; Boran families split up to take care of the animals, whereas the Somali did not; and lineage organization was less significant among the Boran. Economic and political anthropologists have attempted to explain why this should be.

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?

a. environment determines social structure.

b. the Somali and Boran are quite different in social structure.

c. the Somali and the Boran speak the same language and are intermarried.

d. the Somali and the Boran work for each other in turn.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 17]

17) According to Wilk and Cliggett, which model of human nature originated during the Enlightenment and is based on the assumption that individuals are first and foremost interested in their own well-being?

Feedback: Some economic anthropologists are committed to the social model of human nature. This means that they pay attention to “the way people form groups and exercise power” (Wilk and Cliggett 2007, 42). This view of human nature assumes that people ordinarily identify with the groups to which they belong and, in many cases, cannot even conceive of having a self with interests that diverge from the interest of the group.
Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?

a. The self-interested model

b. The social model

c. The moral model

d. The religious model

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 18]

18) An economic system dominated by the supply-demand-price mechanism called the “market” is

Feedback: Capitalist market exchange of goods for other goods, for labor, or (increasingly) for cash was an important development in Western economic history. It is not surprising, therefore, that Western economic theory was preoccupied with explaining how the capitalist market worked. Markets clearly had a new, decisive importance in capitalist society, which they had not possessed in feudal times.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. capitalism.

b. communism.

c. market exchange.

d. redistribution.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 19]

19) Noncapitalist forms of economic exchange that are deeply embedded in social relations and always require reciprocity are called

Feedback: Gift exchanges are noncapitalist forms of economic exchange that are deeply embedded in social relations and always require a return gift.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. commodity exchanges.

b. gift exchanges.

c. redistributive exchanges.

d. modes of exchange.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 20]

20) In the 1960s, Richard Lee discovered that, in order to find enough food to survive, Ju/’hoansi foragers had to work

Feedback: At the time of Lee’s fieldwork, the Ju/’hoansi classified more than 100 species of plants as edible, but only 14 were primary components of their diet (Lee 1992, 45ff.). Some 70% of this diet consisted of vegetable foods; 30% was meat. Mongongo nuts, a protein-rich food widely available throughout the Kalahari, alone made up more than one-quarter of the diet. Women provided about 55% of the diet, and men provided 45%, including the meat. The Ju/’hoansi spent an average of 2.4 working days—or about 20 hours—per person per week in food-collecting activities. Ju/’hoansi bands periodically suffered from shortages of their preferred foods and were forced to consume less desired items. Most of the time, however, their diet was balanced and adequate and consisted of foods of preference (Lee 1992, 56ff.).

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. almost constantly.

b. about 40-50 hours per week per person.

c. about three hours per week per person.

d. about 20 hours per week per person.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 21]

21) Marshall Sahlins coined the expression “the original affluent society” to describe

Feedback: Marshall Sahlins coined the expression “the original affluent society” to refer to the Ju/’hoansi and other foragers like them. In an essay published in 1972, Sahlins challenged the traditional Western assumption that the life of foragers is characterized by scarcity and near-starvation (see Sahlins 1972). Affluence, he argued, is having more than enough of whatever is required to satisfy consumption needs.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. the Ju/’hoansi and others like them.

b. the English in the nineteenth century and others like them.

c. the Azande and others like them.

d. the Tiv and others like them.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 22]

22) Among the Trobriand Islanders, women’s wealth

Feedback: Trobrianders are matrilineal, and men traditionally prepare yam gardens for their sisters. After the harvest, yams from these gardens are distributed by a woman’s brother to her husband. Weiner’s research suggested that what Malinowski took to be the redistribution of yams, from a wife’s kin to her husband, could be better understood as a reciprocal exchange of yams for women’s wealth. The parties central to this exchange are a woman, her brother, and her husband. The woman is the person through whom yams are passed from her own kin to her husband and through whom women’s wealth is passed from her husband to her own kin.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. is insignificant.

b. is exchanged for yams.

c. was first described by Bronislaw Malinowski.

d. is nonexistent.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 23]

23) According to Annette Weiner, the exchange of banana leaf bundles during mortuary rituals in the Trobriands

Feedback: Anthropologist Annette Weiner traveled to the Trobriand Islands in the 1970s, more than half a century after Malinowski carried out his classic research there. To her surprise, she discovered a venerable local tradition involving the accumulation and exchange of banana leaves, which were known locally as “women’s wealth”.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. is a classic example of irrational consumption.

b. has become more important as a result of Western influence on traditional Trobriand culture.

c. allows Trobrianders to represent and affirm the most fundamental relationships in their social system.

d. has been dominated by men in recent years.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 24]

24) According to Daniel Miller, Coca-Cola in Trinidad is

Feedback: Coca-Cola has long been incorporated into a set of local, Trinidadian understandings about beverages that divides them into two basic categories: “red sweet drinks” and “black sweet drinks”; in this framework, Coke is simply an up-market black, sweet drink, and it has traditionally been consumed, like other black sweet drinks, as a mixer with rum, the locally produced alcoholic beverage. Finally, the Trinidadian categories of “sweet drinks” do not correspond to the Coca-Cola company’s idea of “soft drinks,” a distinction that has baffled company executives.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. a commodity that has driven out other local drinks.

b. one of several beverages that fits into local categories about sweet drinks.

c. a way for Trinidadians to identify with the United States.

d. hopelessly unsophisticated.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 25]

25) In the early twentieth century, food production in Tuscany corresponded to which of the following?

Feedback: Counihan began collecting food-centered life histories from women but eventually collected them from men as well. Because these life histories came from individuals from different generations, they reflected historical changes in the political economy of food that had shaped the lives of her interview subjects over time. For example, situating the food memories of the oldest members of her sample required reconstructing the traditional mezzadria sharecropping system in Tuscany. This system was based on large landholdings worked by peasant laborers whose households were characterized by a strict division of labor by gender: the patriarch (male head of the family) managed food production in the fields, and his wife supervised food preparation for the large extended family. The mezzadria system would disappear in the early twentieth century, but it constituted the foundation of Tuscan food practices that would follow.

Page reference: The Anthropology of Food and Nutrition

a. An egalitarian model

b. No division of labor between men and women

c. A model based on large landholdings worked by peasant laborers

d. Coca-Cola

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 26]

26) Carole Counihan, cited in the text, notes that her younger female interviewees were

Feedback: The postwar capitalist market also drew younger Florentines into new kinds of paid occupations, which led to modifications of the earlier gendered division of labor, without eliminating it entirely. Counihan describes the struggles of Florentines of her generation, especially women, who needed to work for wages but who were still expected to maintain a household and a paying job at the same time and who often could not count on assistance from their husbands with domestic chores, including cooking.

Page reference: The Anthropology of Food and Nutrition

a. liberated from having to cook and clean up after cooking by the transformations of the Italian economy.

b. sharing household tasks, including cooking, equally with their husbands.

c. expected to work for wages, but also maintain the household, including doing the cooking.

d. still doing all the food preparation for the large extended peasant family.

Type: true-false

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 27]

27) The distributive process known as exchange is central to the functioning of capitalist free enterprise.

Feedback: Exchange is the transfer of objects and services between social actors.

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Production, Distribution, and Consumption?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 28]

28) According to Wilk and Cliggett, which model of human nature is based on the assumption that people’s motivations are shaped by culturally specific belief systems and values guided by a culturally patterned view of the universe and the human place within it?

Feedback: Some economic anthropologists are committed to the social model of human nature. This means that they pay attention to “the way people form groups and exercise power” (Wilk and Cliggett 2007, 42). This view of human nature assumes that people ordinarily identify with the groups to which they belong and, in many cases, cannot even conceive of having a self with interests that diverge from the interest of the group.
Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?

a. The self-interested model

b. The social model

c. The moral model

d. The religious model

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 29]

29) According to Hann and Hart, neoclassical economic theory

Feedback: Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the views of early economic thinkers like Adam Smith were transformed into neoclassical economics, which remains the foundation of formal economics today. As Hann and Hart explain, neoclassical economics “still celebrated the market as the main source of increased economic welfare; but it replaced the classical view of economic value as an objective property of produced commodities, to be struggled over by the different classes, with a focus on the subjective calculations of individuals seeking to maximize their own utility” (2011, 37). This was a key turning point in the history of economics that produced the divergent theoretical positions, identified by Wilk and Cliggett, about which economists and economic anthropologists continue to disagree today.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. replaced the classical view of economic value as an objective property of produced commodities.

b. rejected the subjective calculations of individuals seeking to maximize their own utility.

c. was developed by Adam Smith.

d. focused on the economic views of Marcel Mauss.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 30]

30) According to Wilk and Cliggett, the development of neoclassical economic theory was a key turning point in the history of economics because it

Feedback: As Hann and Hart explain, neoclassical economics “still celebrated the market as the main source of increased economic welfare; but it replaced the classical view of economic value as an objective property of produced commodities, to be struggled over by the different classes, with a focus on the subjective calculations of individuals seeking to maximize their own utility” (2011, 37). This was a key turning point in the history of economics that produced the divergent theoretical positions, identified by Wilk and Cliggett, about which economists and economic anthropologists continue to disagree today.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. produced a unified position about human nature that resolved disputes that used to divide those who analyzed economic systems.

b. realized Adam Smith’s original views which had previously been suppressed.

c. gave rise to the divergent theoretical positions on human nature about which economic anthropologists continue to disagree.

d. finally paid attention to the economic views of Marcel Mauss.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 31]

31) In many small-town cafes in Minnesota, there is a dice cup on each table, used by the morning-coffee regulars to see who pays for the coffee each day. This works because the regulars assume that “it’ll all even out eventually.” Another phrase for this is

Feedback: Generalized reciprocity is found when those who exchange do so without expecting an immediate return and without specifying the value of the return. Everyone assumes that the exchanges will eventually balance out.
Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. balanced reciprocity.

b. generalized reciprocity.

c. negative reciprocity.

d. redistribution.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 32]

32) The theft of a few head of cattle from your herd by a neighboring group of herders from whom members of your family had rustled a few head of cattle in the past would be an example of which mode of exchange?

Feedback: Negative reciprocity is an exchange of goods and services in which at least one party attempts to get something for nothing without suffering any penalties.
Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

a. balanced reciprocity.

b. generalized reciprocity.

c. negative reciprocity.

d. redistribution.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 33]

33) To the question “Why do people X raise peanuts and sorghum?” Malinowski would reply

Feedback: The internal explanation for human consumption patterns comes from the work of Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski’s version of functionalist anthropology explains social practices by relating them to the basic human needs that each practice supposedly fulfills. Basic human needs can be biological or psychological. Whatever their origin, if these needs go unmet, Malinowski argued, a society might not survive. Malinowski proposed a list of basic human needs, which includes nourishment, reproduction, bodily comforts, safety, movement, growth, and health. Every culture responds in its own way to these needs with some form of the corresponding institutions: food-getting techniques, kinship, shelter, protection, activities, training, and hygiene (Malinowski 1944, 91).

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. to meet their basic human need for food.

b. because peanuts and sorghum are the only food crops available in their ecozone that, when cultivated, will meet their subsistence needs.

c. because to eat peanuts and sorghum makes an important statement of social identity in society X.

d. because both foods taken together provide complete proteins.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 34]

34) Annette Weiner argues that the role of women’s wealth in Trobriand society

Feedback: Weiner argues that women’s wealth upholds the kinship arrangements of Trobriand society. It balances out exchange relationships between lineages linked by marriage, reinforces the pivotal role of women and matriliny, and publicly proclaims, during every funeral, the social relationships that make up the fabric of Trobriand society. The system had been stable for generations, but Weiner suggested that it could collapse if cash ever became widely substitutable for yams. Under such conditions, men might buy food and other items on the market. If they no longer depended on yams from their wives’ kin, they might refuse to supply their wives’ kin with women’s wealth. This had not yet happened at the time of Weiner’s research, but she saw it as a possible future development.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. had increased since Malinowski first visited the field.

b. was less important today than it was when Malinowski first described it in 1917.

c. could disappear if cash ever became widely substitutable for yams.

d. had been substantially undermined by colonial rule.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 35]

35) According to Daniel Miller, for many observers of global consumption, Coca-Cola is

Feedback: The change of focus promoted in Miller’s writing about anthropological studies of consumption is nowhere better in evidence than in his own research on the consumption of Coca-Cola in Trinidad (Miller 1998). He points out that for many observers of global consumption, Coca-Cola occupies the status of a meta-symbol: “a symbol that stands for the debate about the materiality of culture” (Miller 1998, 169). That is, Coca-Cola is often portrayed as a Western/American commodity that represents the ultimately destructive global potential of all forms of capitalist consumption.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

a. an important source of nutrition in regions of the world where the diet is insufficient.

b. an example of the advantages of globalization, as it provides both work and uncontaminated beverages.

c. a symbol of the destructive global potential of capitalist consumption.

d. a cause of obesity and tooth decay in increasingly large parts of the world.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 36]

36) The bulk of Carole Counihan’s data on food and nutrition in Tuscany came from

Feedback: Counihan began collecting food-centered life histories from women but eventually collected them from men as well. Because these life histories came from individuals from different generations, they reflected historical changes in the political economy of food that had shaped the lives of her interview subjects over time.

Page reference: The Anthropology of Food and Nutrition

a. old restaurant menus from nineteenth-century Florence.

b. food-centered life histories from individuals from different generations.

c. cook-books written by important Tuscan chefs in the early twentieth century.

d. interviews with nutritionists at Italian universities.

Type: true-false

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 37]

37) The three major phases of economic activity are production, distribution, and consumption.

Feedback: Anthropologists generally agree that economic activity is usefully subdivided into three distinct phases: production, distribution, and consumption. Production involves transforming nature’s raw materials into products useful to human beings. Distribution involves getting those products to people. Consumption involves using up the products—for example, by eating food or wearing clothing.
Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Production, Distribution, and Consumption?

a. True

b. False

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 38]

38) “Goods assembled in ownership make physical, visible statements about the hierarchy of values to which their chooser subscribes.” Explain what this statement means for the anthropological study of objects and provide in your response.

Feedback: In the early twentieth century, for example, French anthropologist Marcel Mauss ([1950] 2000) contrasted noncapitalist gift exchanges (which are deeply embedded in social relations and always require a return gift) with impersonal commodity exchanges typical of the capitalist market (in which goods are exchanged for cash and exchange partners need have nothing further to do with one another). For other anthropologists, however, Mauss’s binary division seemed to exclude too much variation. For example, Marshall Sahlins (1972) drew on the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi (e.g., 1977) to propose that three modes of exchange could be identified historically and cross-culturally: reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 39]

39) Define the concept of mode of production, and describe and discuss the three major modes of production outlined by Eric Wolf.

Feedback: Wolf’s three modes of production have been particularly important in human history: (1) a kin-ordered mode (Figure 11.5), in which social labor is deployed on the basis of kinship relations (e.g., husbands/fathers clear the fields, the whole family plants, mothers/wives weed, children keep animals out of the field); (2) a tributary mode, “in which the primary producer, whether cultivator or herdsman, is allowed access to the means of production while tribute [a payment of goods or labor] is exacted from him by political or military means” (Wolf 1982, 79); and (3) the capitalist mode, which has three main features: the means of production are private property owned by members of the capitalist class, workers must sell their labor power to the capitalists to survive, and surpluses of wealth are produced that capitalists may retain as profit or reinvest in production, to increase output and generate further surpluses and higher profits.

Page reference: Does Production Drive Economic Activities?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 11 Question 40]

40) Discuss the consumption of Western market commodities throughout the world in our current era of globalization. In your answer, pay attention to how commodities are used, as well as to the effects of contemporary economic institutions on most of the world’s population.

Feedback: Consumption usually refers to the using up of material goods necessary for human survival. These goods include—at a minimum—food, drink, clothing, and shelter; they can and often do include much more. Until quite recently, the study of consumption by economists and others has been much neglected, especially when compared to distribution or production. It seemed clear either that people consume goods for obvious reasons or that they consume goods as a result of idiosyncratic personal preferences. In either case, studying consumption seemed unlikely to reveal any interesting cultural patterns. As we will see below, however, anthropologists have always noticed striking differences in consumption patterns in different societies that seemed hard to reconcile with accepted economic explanations. Historically, anthropologists have taken three basic approaches to account for these patterns: (1) the internal explanation, (2) the external explanation, and (3) the cultural explanation.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 11 Question 41]

41) Describe the different modes of exchange operating in the society of the United States. What are their interrelationships with one another? Provide examples for each mode of exchange. How do they interact with each other?

Feedback: . In the early twentieth century, for example, French anthropologist Marcel Mauss ([1950] 2000) contrasted noncapitalist gift exchanges (which are deeply embedded in social relations and always require a return gift) with impersonal commodity exchanges typical of the capitalist market (in which goods are exchanged for cash and exchange partners need have nothing further to do with one another). For other anthropologists, however, Mauss’s binary division seemed to exclude too much variation. For example, Marshall Sahlins (1972) drew on the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi (e.g., 1977) to propose that three modes of exchange could be identified historically and cross-culturally: reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange.

Page reference: How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 11 Question 42]

42) Analyze what is meant by the claim that consumption needs are culturally shaped. Illustrate your analysis with examples.

Feedback: We have seen that human beings (along with many other organisms) are able to construct their own niches, buffering themselves from some kinds of selection pressures while exposing themselves to other kinds. This means that human populations, even those with foraging technologies, are not passive in the face of environmental demands. On the contrary, people have the agency to produce a range of cultural inventions—tools, social relations, domesticated crops, agroecologies. Or as Marshall Sahlins (1976) put it, human beings are human “precisely when they experience the world as a concept (symbolically). It is not essentially a question of priority but of the unique quality of human experience as meaningful experience. Nor is it an issue of the reality of the world; it concerns which worldly dimension becomes pertinent, and in what way, to a given human group” (142). Because human beings construct their own niches, they construct their patterns of consumption as well.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 11 Question 43]

43) Describe and discuss the elements in Marshall Sahlins’s argument about “the original affluent society.” How do these elements compare and contrast with your own society? What does this mean for production, distribution, and consumption in the contemporary world?

Feedback: Marshall Sahlins coined the expression “the original affluent society” to refer to the Ju/’hoansi and other foragers like them. In an essay published in 1972, Sahlins challenged the traditional Western assumption that the life of foragers is characterized by scarcity and near-starvation (see Sahlins 1972). Affluence, he argued, is having more than enough of whatever is required to satisfy consumption needs. There are two ways to create affluence. The first, to produce much, is the path taken by Western capitalist society; the second, to desire little, is the option, Sahlins argues, that foragers have taken. Put another way, the Ju/’hoansi foragers used culture to construct a niche within which their wants were few but abundantly fulfilled by their local environment. Moreover, it is not that foragers experience no greedy impulses; rather, according to Sahlins, affluent foragers live in societies whose institutions do not reward greed.

Page reference: Why Do People Consume What They Do?