32 Chapter 8: Subsistence
Learning Objectives
• Identify the four modes of subsistence and describe the major activities associated with obtaining food in each system.
• Explain the difference between wild and domesticated resources and how plants and animals are domesticated.
• Explain the relationship between the subsistence system used in a society and the amount of private property or wealth differences that develop.
• Assess the ways in which subsistence systems are linked to expectations about gender roles.
• Categorize the social and economic characteristics associated with agriculture and describe the benefits and drawbacks of the agricultural subsistence system.
• Analyze the ways in which the global agricultural system separates producers from consumers and contributes to wealth differences.
• Appraise the ways in which human intervention in the environment has made it difficult to separate the “natural” from the human-influenced environment.
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Think about the last meal you ate. Where did the ingredients come from? If it was a cheeseburger, where did the cow live and die? Now think about all the food you consume in a normal week. Can you identify the geographic origin of all the ingredients? In other words, how much do you know about the trip your food took to arrive at your plate? How much you know about where your food comes from would tell an anthropologist something about the subsistence system used in your community. A subsistence system is the set of practices used by members of a society to acquire food. If you are like me and you cannot say much about where your food comes from, then you are part of an agricultural society that separates food production from consumption, a recent development in the history of humans. People who come from nonagricultural societies have a more direct connection to their food and are likely to know where 100 per-cent of their food comes from.
Finding food each day is a necessity for every person no matter where that person lives, but food is not just a matter of basic survival. Humans assign symbolic meaning to food, observing cultural norms about what is considered “good” to eat and applying taboos against the consumption of other foods. Catholics may avoid meat during Lent, for instance, while Jewish and Islamic communities forbid the consump-tion of certain foods such as pork. In addition to these atti-tudes and preferences, every society has preferred methods for preparing food and for consuming it with others. The cultural norms and attitudes surrounding food and eating are known as foodways. By studying both the subsistence system used by a society to acquire food and the foodway associated with consuming it, anthropologists gain insight into the most important daily tasks in every society.
STUDYING SUBSISTENCE SYSTEMS
Since the need to eat is one of the few true human universals, anthropologists have studied subsistence sy