Cultural Anthropology Ch. 6

Front 1

Economic Anthropology

Back 1

- Subdiscipline of anthropology that focuses on subsistence strategies and economic systems. How people meet their survival needs and make their living. Economic anthropologists study the ways that people organize their labor, allocate various tasks among members of their communities, and share or distribute goods and services within their settlements as well as with people in other communities or regions.

Front 2

Subsistence Patterns

Back 2

Methods of obtaining food using available land and resources, available labor and energy, and technology.

Front 3

Foragers

Back 3

Peoples whose subsistence pattern is hunting and gathering.

Front 4

Food Producers

Back 4

Users of a subsistence strategy that transforms and manages the environment in order to obtain food.

Front 5

Pastoralism

Back 5

A subsistence strategy focusing on raising and caring for large herds of domesticated animals.

Front 6

Horticulture

Back 6

A subsistence strategy that focuses on small-scale farming using a relatively simple technology.

Front 7

Agriculture

Back 7

A subsistence strategy focusing on intensive farming, investing a great deal of time, energy, and technology.

Front 8

Carrying Capacity

Back 8

The number of people who can be sustained by the resources and environment in which they live.

Front 9

Settlement Pattern

Back 9

The way people distribute themselves in their environment, including where they locate their dwellings, how they group dwellings into settlements, and how permanent or transitory those settlements are.

Front 10

Reciprocity

Back 10

Principles of mutual gift giving.

Front 11

Redistribution

Back 11

The gathering together and then reallocation of food and resources to ensure everyone's survival.

Front 12

Leveling Mechanisms

Back 12

Cultural practices designed to equalize access to food, resources, and social prestige through a community so that no one individual can amass greater wealth or greater prestige than other people.

Front 13

Nomads

Back 13

People that do not have permanent homes but travel to sources of food as the food becomes available.

Front 14

Optimal Foraging Theory

Back 14

Application of animal studies and decision theory to human foraging.

Front 15

Transhumance

Back 15

The practice among pastoralists of moving to new pastoral land on a seasonal basis.

Front 16

Surplus-

Back 16

Food and other goods that are produced at a level greater than that needed for survival.

Front 17

Sedentary Communities-

Back 17

Settlement pattern involving long-term, permanent settlements.

Front 18

Slash-and-Burn (Swidden) Cultivation-

Back 18

A farming technique for preparing new fields by cutting down trees and bushes and then burning them in order to clear the land and enrich the soil with nutrients.