This successfully expands the range of individuals with whom products of labor, such as meat from a kill, must be shared. The effect of these three simultaneous kinship systems is that virtually everyone is kin in Ju/’hoansi society-those who are biologically related and those who are not. This means that an individual would call anyone with his father’s name “father.” The Dobe Ju/’hoansi have a third kinship system that is based on the principle that an older person determines the kinship terms that will be used in relation with another individual (so, for example, an elderly woman may refer to a young male as her nephew or grandson, thus creating a kin relationship). Interestingly, in addition to genealogical kinship, the Dobe Ju/’hoansi recognize kinship relations on the basis of gender-linked names there are relatively few names, and in this society the possession of common names trumps genealogical ties. The resources used to produce goods in a society such as land for farming or factories.Īs discussed in the Marriage and Family chapter, kinship relations are determined by culture, not biology. This example demonstrates how the domestic mode of production organizes labor and daily activities within families according to age and gender. Ultimately, the corn is used to make the daily tortillas the family consumes at each meal. Over the course of the year mothers and daughters typically grind the corn by hand using a metate, or grinding stone (or, if they are lucky, they might have access to a mechanical grinder). The men then weed the crops and harvest the corn cobs, and, finally, the women work to dry the corn and remove the kernels from the cobs for storage. Until the plants sprout, the children spend their days in the fields protecting the newly planted crops. In this family production system, the men generally clear the fields and the whole family works together to plant the seeds. Subsistence farmers produce food for their family’s own consumption (rather than to sell). In southern Mexico and parts of Central America, many indigenous people primarily make their living through small-scale subsistence maize farming. In the domestic mode of production, labor is organized on the basis of kinship relations (which is why this form of production is also known as kin-ordered). The domestic, or kin-ordered, mode of production characterizes the lives of foragers and small-scale subsistence farmers with social structures that are more egalitarian than those characterizing the other modes of production (though these structures are still shaped by age- and gender-based forms of inequality). First, though, we will take a closer look at each of the three modes of production. As we will see in the next section, Modes of Exchange, capitalism also links markets to trade and money in very unique ways. The capitalist mode of production has three central features: (1) private property is owned by members of the capitalist class (2) workers sell their labor power to the capitalists in order to survive and (3) surpluses of wealth are produced, and these surpluses are either kept as profit or reinvested in production in order to generate further surplus. The third mode, capitalism, is the one most familiar to us. In the tributary mode of production, the primary producer pays tribute in the form of material goods or labor to another individual or group of individuals who controls production through political, religious, or military force. However, power and authority may be exerted on specific groups based on age and gender. Domestic or kin-ordered production organizes work on the basis of family relations and does not necessarily involve formal social domination, or the control of and power over other people. Wolf identified three distinct modes of production in human history: domestic (kin-ordered), tributary, and capitalist. Marx argued that human consciousness is not determined by our cosmologies or beliefs but instead by our most basic human activity: work. This concept originated with anthropologist Eric Wolf, who was strongly influenced by the social theorist Karl Marx. \( \newcommand\)Ī key concept in anthropological studies of economic life is the mode of production, or the social relations through which human labor is used to transform energy from nature using tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.
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