Question

What does anthropologist Richard Lee mean by communal mode of production and how has it been pivotal for the !Kung adaptation to the Kalahari desert? What happened when this mode was threated by placing the !Kung in reservations, using N!ai's experience (film) as example?

Answer 1

Ricard B Lee of the Department of Anthropology of the university of Toronto has made substantive contributions not only to the ethnography of the specific society. Ricard Lee has been a central figure in major anthropological debates, including what has come to be known as the Kalahari desert.

San is a relatively small group of people whose communities are throughout the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. They are well known in hunting, gathering subsistence strategy ( foraging mode of production). Richard Lee and other anthropologists view the san as maintaining this old but adaptable way of life, even in the life-changing external circumstances.

These anthropologists view the san as isolated who are not, and have never been part of a greater Kalahari economy. The anthropologist believes that the san has adapted over time but without help from other societies. Emphasis is thereby placed on the cultural continuity and the cultural integrity of the san peoples.

The! Kung San: Men, Women, and work in a foraging society, his main goal was to be fully immersed in the!Kung San culture so that he could fully understand their way of life.

Like all humansystem society 's subsistence system is intricately linked to other aspect of culture such as kinship, politics and religion . Althrough we can study these system in isolation, it is important to remember that in the real world all aspect of culture overlap in complex way.Consider harvest ritual , for example, which are religious ceremonies focused on improving the food supply.Working to put food on the table is the essential taskof every family or household, and this work is the basis of domestic economy that interact with the mode of production and modes of exchange described in the economics

When anthropologist first began to examine subsistence systems, they started like all scientist do, with classification . Beyond this basic division, anthropologists recognise four general type of food system as mode of subsistence.

The four modes of subsistence are ;

Foraging

Pastoralism

Horticulture

Agriculture

FORAGING

Hunding and gathering

society that rely primary on wild plant and animal food resources

PASTORALISM

Subsistance system in which people raise herd of domesticated livestock.

HORTICULTURE

Small scale cultivation of crop intended primarily for subsistance

AGRICULTURE