Author : Wahid Ahmad
Understanding how
people get their food has often been overlooked in the study of human culture.
Many have treated it as straightforward, just needing basic categorization and
common sense. But there are three big problems with this approach.
First, there's been
confusion between technology (know-how) and equipment (tools). Subsistence
isn't just about tools; it involves a lot of knowledge too. This mix-up has led
to a bias towards materialistic explanations of how people get food.
Second, there's a question
of whether ways of getting food, like hunting or farming, are just technical
skills or part of larger social systems. The argument here is that how people
get their food is tied to broader social structures and ways of organizing
society.
Third, there's the
issue of how we classify different ways of getting food. For example, what
exactly counts as "hunting"? Different researchers define it in
different ways, which can lead to confusion.
Most of the variation
in how people get their food comes from the combination of different techniques
rather than the techniques themselves. And it's not just about what tools are
used; it's also about how people interact with the environment, how much effort
they put in, and how it affects the landscape.
Anthropologists have a
term for how people interact with their environments to make
a living: mode of subsistence. Four main modes of subsistence have been used throughout human history: gathering-hunting,
pastoralism, plant cultivation, and industrialism/post-industrialism. Each of
these modes incorporates distinctive strategies for producing, exchanging, and
consuming the things that people need to survive. At the most fundamental level
are the basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and health. Modes of
subsistence provide solutions to meet these needs by generating materials from
the environment and developing techniques of labour and forms of technology to
process those materials. Beyond these very important functions, modes of
subsistence also organize society to get the necessary work done. Societies
develop roles, groups, and institutions to divide up the workload of producing
things. Modes of subsistence also entail specific ways of trading and
circulating things within and beyond local groups. And finally, modes of
subsistence emphasize certain ideals and values.