Deck 11: Making a Living 

Question 1

Despite differences arising from environmental variation, all foraging economies have shared one essential feature:

A) their willingness to test out new food-producing technologies to see if they are any better than what they are used to.
B) their reliance on welfare supplied by state-level societies.
C) their reliance on available natural resources for their subsistence, rather than controlling the reproduction of plants and animals.
D) their interest in developing irrigation technologies to control sources of water.
E) their emphasis on devising new forms of organic pesticides.

Answer 1

their reliance on available natural resources for their subsistence, rather than controlling the reproduction of plants and animals.

Question 2

Why do anthropologists question the idea that present-day foragers can be compared to Paleolithic foragers?

A) Present-day foragers have been in contact with food-producing and industrialized societies for long periods of time and all live within nation-states that inevitably affect their livelihood.
B) There are no present-day foragers.
C) The types of foraging vary so widely that few generalizations can be drawn.
D) Paleolithic foragers were prelinguistic.
E) Paleolithic foragers were not Homo sapiens.

Answer 2

Present-day foragers have been in contact with food-producing and industrialized societies for long periods of time and all live within nation-states that inevitably affect their livelihood.

Question 3

Because nonindustrial economies can have features of both horticulture and agriculture, it is useful to discuss cultivators as being arranged along a cultivation continuum. Which of the following generally occurs in moving toward the more intensive end of the cultivation continuum?

A) increased egalitarianism
B) improved overall health status of the population
C) increased leisure time
D) longer fallow periods
E) increased permanency

Answer 3

increased permanency

Question 4

Which of the following was a characteristic shared by recent foraging communities?

A) They lived in marginal environments that were of little interest to food-producing societies.
B) They spoke simplified languages.
C) They fished a great deal.
D) They relied on welfare supplied by state-level societies.
E) They devolved to foraging from a more advanced level of subsistence.

Question 5

What is a mode of production?

A) the land, labor, technology, and capital of production
B) a postindustrial adaptive strategy, such as commercial agriculture or international mercantilism
C) the cultural aspect of any given economy, such as changing fashions in the textile and clothing industry
D) the way a society's social relations are organized to produce the labor necessary for generating the society's subsistence and energy needs
E) whether a society is foraging, horticulturalist, or agriculturalist

Question 6

Which of the following statements about shifting cultivation is true?

A) It is typically associated with the use of draft animals.
B) It relies extensively on chemical fertilizers.
C) It requires cultivators to change plots of land, with the fallowing durations varying in different societies.
D) It cannot support permanent villages.
E) It requires irrigation.

Question 7

What kinds of societies are typically associated with slash-and-burn cultivation?

A) nonindustrial societies
B) nomadic societies
C) state-level societies
D) foraging societies
E) hydraulic societies

Question 8

Which of the following are most characteristic of foragers?

A) unilineal descent and ancestor worship
B) permanent villages and full-time priests
C) a redistributive economy and specialized leadership roles
D) territoriality and organized warfare
E) high mobility and small groups with flexible affiliations

Question 9

Intensive agriculture

A) is not ecologically destructive when it is done with fuel-efficient machinery.
B) is an ecological improvement over sectorial fallowing.
C) has a significant impact on the environment, but this impact is very localized and can be controlled.
D) has significant environmental effects, such as deforestation, water pollution, and reduction of ecological diversity.
E) can actually breed greater ecological diversity.

Question 10

Which of the following is NOT characteristic of band-organized societies?

A) permanent villages
B) all related by kinship or marriage
C) minor contrasts in prestige
D) fewer than 100 people
E) an egalitarian social structure

Question 11

Which of the following does NOT occur in moving along the cultivation continuum?

A) Village size increases.
B) Land is used more intensively.
C) Population density increases.
D) Societies become more egalitarian.
E) Villages are located closer together.

Question 12

Which of the following is a characteristic of most foraging societies?

A) sedentism
B) social stratification
C) irrigation
D) large population
E) egalitarianism

Question 13

This chapter's description of the San Bushmen's relation to the government of Botswana provides a telling example of how

A) human rights are limited.
B) foraging communities' identities are being reshaped by their relationships with NGOs.
C) the foraging lifestyle has finally become a thing of the past.
D) foragers are willingly choosing to change their lifestyles and become a part of the global village.
E) more and more foragers have come under the control of nation-states and are now influenced by the forces of globalization.

Question 14

What happens as one moves along the cultivation continuum?

A) More time for leisurely pursuits becomes available.
B) Ceremonies and rituals become less formal.
C) The use of communal cooking-houses becomes more common.
D) The use of land and labor intensifies.
E) There is a heavier reliance on swidden cultivation.

Question 15

A horticultural system of cultivation is characterized by

A) developing almost exclusively in arid areas.
B) the use of irrigation and terracing.
C) intensive use of land and human labor.
D) lack of proper knowledge about plant domestication.
E) periodic cycles of cultivation and fallowing.

Question 16

What term refers to the type of pastoral economy in which the entire population moves with their animals throughout the year?

A) foraging
B) pastoral nomadism
C) balanced subsistence
D) discretionary pastoralism
E) transhumance

Question 17

Which of the following statements about irrigation is FALSE?

A) Irrigation is one of the defining characteristics of foraging societies.
B) Irrigation usually enriches the soil.
C) Irrigated fields are labor intensive.
D) Irrigated fields typically increase in value through time.
E) The Ifugao of the Philippines used irrigation canals.

Question 18

Yehudi Cohen's adaptive strategies

A) suggest multidirectional relationships between a society's mean and its mode of production.
B) suggest that economic systems are a better way of categorizing societies than relying on cultural patterns.
C) suggest an association between the economies of societies and their social features.
D) suggest hypothetical correlations-that is, a causal relation between two or more variables, such as economic and cultural variables.
E) have strong predictive powers when analyzed in computer models.

Question 19

In which food production system does part of the group's population accompany the herds to distant pastures and the remaining population maintain year-round villages and grow crops?

A) modified foraging
B) intensive agriculturalist
C) transhumance
D) pastoral nomadic
E) mixed specialization

Question 20

In recent times, many foraging groups have been exposed to the idea of food production but have not adopted it. Why?

A) They did not have the skills or tools to do so.
B) People naturally resist change, especially foragers.
C) Their own economies provided a perfectly adequate and nutritious diet, with a lot less work.
D) They had to ask permission from the state to do so.
E) They did not realize the advantages of food production.

Question 21

Horticulture refers to low-intensity farming that often uses slash-and-burn techniques to clear land.

Question 22

Which of the following economic principles is generally dominant in industrial society?

A) the market principle
B) redistribution
C) negative reciprocity
D) generalized exchange
E) balanced reciprocity

Question 23

Generalized reciprocity

A) disappears with the origin of the state.
B) usually develops after redistribution but before the market principle.
C) is characterized by the immediate return of the object exchanged.
D) is exemplified by silent trade.
E) is the characteristic form of exchange in egalitarian societies.

Question 24

Who are peasants?

A) anyone who falls below the poverty line
B) people who ignore social norms of behavior
C) anyone who lives in the country
D) small-scale farmers who own their own land and sell all their crops to buy necessities
E) small-scale farmers with rent fund obligations

Question 25

How are nonindustrial economic systems embedded in society?

A) People are not aware that they are working toward a goal.
B) Most nonindustrial economies are managed systems.
C) Most economic activity takes place far from home.
D) The economic system has little to do with the everyday life of the people.
E) The economic system cannot easily be separated from other systems, such as kinship.

Question 26

Which of the following is NOT associated with the market principle?

A) industrialism
B) the law of supply and demand
C) impersonal economic relations
D) kin-based generalized reciprocity
E) the profit motive

Question 27

What are the means, or factors, of production?

A) labor forces organized by kinship ties
B) synonyms of a society's mode of production
C) a society's major productive resources, such as land and other natural resources, labor, technology, and capital
D) the ways a society organizes production
E) a society's institutional mechanisms for making sure that everyone is productive

Question 28

Economic relationships are characteristically embedded in other relationships, such as kinship, in all of the following kinds of societies EXCEPT

A) pastoralists.
B) horticulturalists.
C) industrial.
D) chiefdoms.
E) foragers.

Question 29

Unlike in industrial societies, where economic alienation is common, in nonindustrial societies

A) the relations of production, distribution, and consumption are social relations with economic aspects.
B) alienation is an ascribed status.
C) alienation is pervasive.
D) social relations are embedded in all relations except the economic ones.
E) alienation is suffered only among the poorer classes.

Question 30

The high level of intensification and long-term dependability of horticulture paved the way for the emergence of large urban settlements and the first states.

Question 31

Which of the following kinds of exchange is characteristic among the members of a family?

A) generalized reciprocity
B) balanced reciprocity
C) negative reciprocity
D) redistribution
E) None of the answer choices are correct.

Question 32

Economic anthropologists have been concerned with two main questions, one focusing on systems of human behavior and the other on the individuals who participate in those systems. The first question is: How are production, distribution, and consumption organized in different societies? The second question is:

A) What motivates people in different cultures to produce, distribute or exchange, and consume?
B) What encourages overconsumption in Western economies?
C) Why has the myth of the profit-maximizing individual been so pervasive, despite evidence to the contrary?
D) What has been the impact of globalization at the level of individuals?
E) What are the best ways to convince individuals in funding agencies of the value of ethnographic knowledge in the realm of economics?

Question 33

The Kalahari Desert of southern Africa is home to the foraging group known as the Ju/'hoansi San.

Question 34

In order to intensify production, agriculturalists frequently build irrigation canals and terraces.

Question 35

Which of the following statements about peasants is NOT true?

A) They are not part of the world market.
B) They owe rent to the government.
C) They practice small-scale agriculture without modern technology such as chemical fertilizers and tractors.
D) They all live in state-organized societies.
E) They owe rent to landlords.

Question 36

Domesticated animals, more specifically their manure and their pulling capabilities, are key components of horticulture.

Question 37

Most contemporary foragers live in remote areas, completely cut off from contact with other modern, agricultural, and industrial communities.

Question 38

Which of the following statements about potlatching is NOT true?

A) Potlatching is well documented among Native American communities of the North Pacific Coast of North America.
B) Potlatching was misinterpreted as a classical case of economically wasteful behavior.
C) Potlatching is a form of exchange that has long-term adaptive value.
D) Potlatching is an example of competitive feasting.
E) Potlatching is a case that proves that the profit-maximizing motive is a human universal.

Question 39

Although agriculture is much more productive per acre than horticulture, horticulture is more reliable and dependable in the long run.

Question 40

Agriculturalists tend to live in permanent villages that are larger and closer to other settlements than the semipermanent settlements of horticulturalists.

Question 41

With balanced reciprocity, the giver expects something in return equal to what was given.

Question 42

A mode of production is a way of organizing production, whereas the means of production include the factors of production, such as land, labor, and technology.

Question 43

Anthropological analysis of potlatching contradicts the classic economics assumption that individuals are, by nature, profit maximizers.

Question 44

Band- and tribal-level societies actively promote craft and task specialization.

Question 45

In most foraging societies, private ownership of bounded land has been almost nonexistent.

Question 46

Potlatching is a form of competitive feasting that enables individuals to redistribute surplus materials while simultaneously increasing their own prestige.

Question 47

With generalized reciprocity, the individuals participating in the exchange usually do not know the other person prior to the exchange.

Question 48

In transhumant societies, the entire group moves with their animals throughout the year.

Question 49

Pastoralists are specialized herders whose subsistence strategies are focused on domesticated animals.

Question 50

In nonindustrial societies, economic activities are embedded in the society.

Question 51

The market principle dominates economic activities in band-level foraging societies.