Transcript Introduction to Social Anthropology B

Introduction to Social
Anthropology B
Lecture 5
1
• Why should people work hard and
produce more than they consume?
• Basic concepts of economic anthropology
• Use example of Potlatch to think about it
2
The idea of surplus
• that which is produced over and above that
which the individual consumes
• or that which is produced over and above that
which is needed for subsistence
Marxist critique of capitalist society • surplus value is unrewarded labour and source
of exploitation in capitalist society
• anthropologists have applied the ideas to
understanding inequalities in pre-capitalist
societies
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Three key questions of political
economy
• How is surplus produced?
• How are those surpluses distributed
through society?
• How are those distributions justified?
4
In hunting and gathering societies
• Only temporary surpluses were produced
• These were distributed according to the
principle of generalised reciprocity
• The ideology of such societies is value
generosity, sanction hoarding and to have
no concept of private property.
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In tribal societies of Highland New
Guinea:
• Women in households worked to raise
sweet potatoes and pigs
• Pork redistributed by ‘big men’ through
feasts
• Ideology of gender, kinship and achieved
status.
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Surpluses are circulated through
society by:
•
•
•
•
Generalised reciprocity
Specific reciprocity
Redistribution
Accumulation
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Tribal societies
• Historically the shift from reciprocity to
redistribution is seen as crucial to the
development of chiefdoms and political
systems intermediate between bands and
the state.
• Tribal societies are characteristically ones
based on horticulture or pastoralism and
organised around extended kinship groups
8
Potlatch
• North West Coast Indian
Societies:
– Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Haida
and Tlingit
• Live from salmon and sea
• Rich range of material
goods including symbolic
goods.
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• Rank societies –
every one had a place
in an order of
precedence – some
lineages were more
noble than others.
• Noted for their
elaborate feasts
giving away or
destroying ever larger
amounts of goods.
sheldonmuseum.org/tlingitdance.htm
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Shakes Island and the Chief Shakes Tribal House in
Wrangell Harbor, Wrangell, Alaska.
11
Ranked lingeages enable every to know who is
above and who below them in the system
•
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/descent/unilineal/segments.html
12
Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• Traditional NW Coast Indian potlatches were
held when new high ranking individuals
assumed the office of chief.
• They later became a means by which persons of
high status might compete for even higher status
through the grandiose display and even
destruction of wealth.
• They were outlawed by the Canadian
government but conducted clandestinely,
ceremonies continue legally now among people
such as the Kwakiutl.
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Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• Among the Kwakiutl it is the
most important public
ceremony for the
announcement of significant
events and the claiming of
hierarchical names, hereditary
rights and privileges.
• Such announcements or
claims are always
accompanied by the giving of
gifts from a host to all guests.
The guests are invited to
witness the enactment of the
claims and will be expected to
subsequently validate a hosts
claims.
• Each guest receives gifts of
varying worth according to his
status.
•
http://ybc40.com/blogimages/potlatch.jpg
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Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• The host with the support of his family, numina (the next largest
tribal subdivision) or tribe invites other equivalent groups. The size
of the gathering reveals the affluence and prestige of the host.
• Gifts are given to guests in the order of their tribal importance and
the gift is of a value commensurate with the persons rank. High
ranking chiefs receive more than lesser men.
• The value and quantity of gifts reflects on the glory of the donor. The
gifts he gives away – or in some cases the property he publicly
destroys are marks of his wealth, rank, generosity and self-esteem.
Over a period of time they also measure the power and prestige that
he will be able to maintain over others of high status. For at the later
potlatch each high ranking guest will try to return as much or
preferably more than he received.
• To keep track of the gifts distributed and the precise hierarchy of
guests, each donor has the assistance of a recorder who maintains
the correct social form and avoidance of offence.
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Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• Potlatch gifts vary widely
from money to property.
They include boats,
blankets, flour, kettles,
fish oil and in former
times slaves.
• Blankets became a
standard for measuring
wealth
• More recently gifts have
include sowing machines,
furniture even pool tales.
http://www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history
/blanket/history/
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Coppers
•
Probably the most valuable
potlatch material has little intrinsic
worth but enormous symbolic
value. They are coppers – large
piece of eaten sheet copper
shaped like shield with a ridge
running down the centre of the
lower half. They are painted with
black lead and a design is incised
through the paint. Each copper
has a name and its potlatch
history determines its value. One
copper called “all other coppers
are ashamed to look at it” had
been paid for with 7500 blankets
another known as “making the
house empty of wealth” was worth
5000 blankets.
http://www.tlingit-haida.nl/Potlatch.htm
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Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• Rivalries also develop when two men compete for the
same name, song, or other privilege. Each contestant
recites his closest genealogical connection with the claim
and tries to out do his rival in the amount of property he
can give away.
• The more you give the more you create obligations to
return the gifts and to recognise status from others.
• The guests / witnesses to these dramatic acts of the
potlatch act as judges to the claims, ultimately they
decide the victor. A powerful and prestigious man can
sway public opinion by recognising the claim of one
contestant over another at a subsequent potlatch.
Indeed this is a basic principle of the potlatch, a
successful potlatch in itself cannot legitimise a claim. It is
the behaviour of other hosts at later potlatches that
validate a claim once and for all.
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Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• The Potlatch became subject to an enormous inflation leading to
destruction rather than redistribution of wealth.
The Greatest Potlatch in each 20 year period 1849-1949
Period
No. of Blankets
Before 1849
320
1849-1869
9,000
1870-1889
7,000
1890-1909
18,000
1910-1929
14,000
1930-1949
33,000
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Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• Blankets were burnt rather than given away.
• In the heat of rivalries contestants sometimes break off a
piece of a copper, thereby destroying its value and give
the piece to their rival. The rival might then bring out his
own copper of at least equal value, break it, and give
both pieces back to the opponent.
• Great merit come to the man who threw his copper into
the sea “drowning it” thus showing his utter contempt for
property and implying that his important was such that
what he destroyed was of little concern to him. In time
this ostentatious destruction of property included canoes,
house-planks, blankets, and even slaves in former days.
20
Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• The Northwest Coast
chiefdoms had originated the
potlatch as one way to
redistribute surplus. But the
Whites, in their scramble to
obtain sea-otter and fur seal
pelts, pumped vast amount of
fresh wealth into the system.
• The potlatch simply could not
handle the new flood of mass
produced fabrics, guns, metal
kitchen utensils, cheap
jewellery, steel tools, and other
products of industrialised
Europe and USA.
http://www.tlingit-haida.nl/images/cole87.jpg
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• So one cause for the
explosion of the potlatch
was the deluge of white
wealth that the NW coast
surplus economy did not
need.
• A second factor was that
diseases introduced by
the whites trading ships
and the deadly warfare
due to the whites’ guns
caused NW coast
populations to plummet.
• Fewer Indians were
available to share the
fantastic abundance.
•
http://www.ccthita.org/images/memorial.jpg
22
Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• Further more, the numerous deaths left open
more noble titles than there were persons of
high rank to bear them. The humble man who
had been among the last to receive his small
present at the previous year’s potlatch suddenly
found himself, though the death of those ahead
of him, a contender for the role of heir
presumptive to the chief. He would not be the
sole contender, however, probably half a dozen
other humble men had also risen for the same
reason.
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Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950:
62-97)
• A bitter competition developed to give potlatches of
unprecedented lavishness. The sole rationale for these
potlatches was to allow one man to claim prestige over
another so he could fill a vacant high rank. No longer did
the potlatch serve its traditional functions of redistribution
of wealth, validating rank, and making valued alliances.
• The wealth of these new rich seemed limitless, more
than they could ever consume at a potlatch. So they
instead destroyed vast amounts of wealth before the
horrified eyes of the guests, as well as the other
contenders to dramatise the extent of their holdings.
Fortunes were tossed into potlatch fires; canoes were
destroyed; captives were killed. The competing
claimants had no alternative but to destroy even more
property at their potlatches.
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What lessons to be learnt?
• The impetus to production are social
relationships and institutions
• Redistribution enables the some in society to
gain social prestige.
• Institutionalised competition creates demands
beyond those required for subsistence
• Generalised reciprocity, specific reciprocity,
redistribution, accumulation, are terms which
give us a language with which to compare
societies.
• Wealth has symbolic as well as material
dimension. It symbolises social relationships.
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