Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 16:10:25 -0600
Subject:  Anthro, foragers, classes


[My apology for premature transmission earlier.]

>>> Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>  5/13/96, 04:57am >>>
[snip]
In other words, [Engels] argues that class society did not grow
directly out of forager society at all.
---

I wonder, aren't class and foraging not-quite-comparable things?  I
mean, one could have a class society that lived by foraging, no?  I
agree that it looks like classes developed along with agriculture
[mainly] and perhaps herding as well.  Engels tried to make the
connection and explain why this occurred.

But there are many varieties of foraging societies as well.  The
Kwakiutl, for instance, famous for "big men" and potlatches, are
considered "complex foraging societies".  They present a huge
contrast to, say, the Ache [prounce the e like "ay"] of the temperate
rain forest of Paraguay, or the Hadza of Tanzania.  

The Kwakiutl had no farming or herding at all.  But they had
permanent villages, long-term sturdy buildings, named positions of
special social status, partly hereditary, culminating in the "big
man" position.  They also had various property rights of lineages to
specific salmon fishing spots and such, some quantities of storable
goods, and lots of inequality between villages, lineages, families.

It looks something like classes to me.  [Somebody has probably
noticed and written about that before.]  So, maybe this kind of
non-egalitarian, competitive "complex foraging" society could develop
classes to some degree before agriculture/herding were developed, and
we could end up with classes and cities by that route.

In fact a lot of the areas known for early civilizations were very
fine areas for foraging.  River deltas and fertile land around
wetlands are not only good for agriculture, they are highly
productive of edible plants, year-round fishing, waterfowl, etc.  I'd
expect there was lots of this going on in the Nile Valley at one
time, and I know that first nations in present US are still gathering
cattail root, pollen and wild rice in canoes in marshes and shallow
lakes.  

Also, farmers still forage, and there are several such mixed
economies still surviving today.  Low pop. density, small gardens,
slashing, burning and shifting every few years, some of them are the
picture of equality and non-government - nothing resembling classes
or differential wealth or power at all, barely even any hierarchal
notion of kinship and gerontocracy.  

Point is, among foraging societies, or any other category based on
food production methods, there is a broad range of social
arrangements, from one extreme of everybody having very similar
stuff, status and standard of living, to the other extreme of
inequality.  

Why these differences occur among foraging societies [for instance]
is a topic that has received quite a lot of attention from some
anthros and others.  Here I'll mention just one general pattern.

Where food resources are rich, dense, predictable [largely a matter
of climate] foragers have more inequality and various property
rights, and the geographic range covered by anyone person or family
is smaller, compared to areas with less dense, more energetically
expensive and unpredictable resources.

This type of difference has especially been studied among the Western
Shoshone of the Great Basin in western US.  A single "culture" as
self-defined and observed [one language] spread from western Utah
clear across Nevada and up a bit onto the Sierras of California,
providing a big climatic range.  Those in the well-watered foothills
compared to those in the semi-desert showed the differences in
mobility and property mentioned above.

Note:  I'm not talking about private property with the specific legal
definitions of modern capitalism.  Some property rights were
exclusive use-rights, for instance, they could not be sold off to
anyone, they could be passed only to members of one's own lineage. 
"Property rights" are highly variable and malleable.

Lisa



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