In the Introduction, "Foragers and Others," by Lee and Daly, it's acknowledged that "Hunter- gatherers are a diverse group of peoples living in a wide range of conditions." Nevertheless,
within the range of variation, certain common motifs can be identified. Hunter- gatherers are generally peoples who have lived until recently without the overarching discipline imposed by the state. They have lived in relatively small groups, without centralized authority, standing armies, or bureaucratic systems. Yet the evidence indicates that they have lived together surprisingly well, solving their problems among themselves largely without recourse to authority figures and without a particular propensity for violence (p. 1 -- my emphasis).
With reference to hunter-gatherer social life, they write as follows:
The basic unit of social organization of most (but not all) hunting and gathering peoples is the band, a small- scale nomadic group of fifteen to fifty people related by kinship. Band societies are found throughout the Old and New Worlds and share a number of features in common. Most observers would agree that the social and economic life of small-scale hunter gatherers shares the following features.
First they are relatively egalitarian. Leadership is less formal and more subject to constraints of popular opinion than in village societies governed by headmen and chiefs. Leadership in band societies tends to be by example, not by fiat. The leader can persuade but not command. . .
Mobility is another characteristic of band societies. People tend to move their settlements frequently, several times a year or more, in search of food, and this mobility is an important element of their politics. People in band societies tend to "vote with their feet;' moving away rather than submitting to the will of an unpopular leader. Mobility is also a means of resolving conflicts that would be more difficult for settled peoples.
A third characteristic is the remarkable fact that all band-organized peoples exhibit a pattern of concentration and dispersion. Rather than living in uniformly sized groupings throughout the year, band societies tend to spend part of the year dispersed into small foraging units and another part of the year aggregated into much larger units. . .
A fourth characteristic common to almost all band societies (and hundreds of village based societies as well) is a land tenure system based on a common property regime (CPR). . . In traditional CPRs, while movable property is held by individuals, land is held by a kinship- based collective. . . [my emphasis]
Under "Ethos and Word View," Lee and Daly give special importance to sharing, as
the central rule of social interaction among hunters and gatherers. There are strong injunctions on the importance of reciprocity. Generalized reciprocity, the giving of something without an immediate expectation of return, is the dominant form within face-to-face groups. Its presence in hunting and gathering societies is almost universal. [My emphasis.]
Another important element shared by almost all hunter-gatherer groups is Shamanism:
Shamanism is another major practice common to the great majority of hunting and gathering peoples. The word originates in eastern Siberia, from the Evenki/Tungus word saman meaning "one who is excited or raised.” Throughout the hunter-gatherer world community-based ritual specialists (usually part-time) heal the sick and provide spiritual protection. They mediate between the social/human world and the dangerous and unpredictable world of the supernatural. Shamanism is performative, mixing theatre and instrumental acts in order to approach the plane of the sacred (pp. 3-5).
In sum, what just about all hunter-gatherer populations would appear to have in common (with certain important exceptions) are: small bands; lack of central authority; tendency toward non-violence; relatively egalitarian ethic; mobility; flexible patterns of concentration and dispersion; communal ownership of property; "generalized reciprocity" (i.e., sharing of most resources with no expectation of return); shamanism.
I've quoted at length from Lee and Daly, highly respected authorities on hunter-gatherer societies, because just about everything they find that all or almost all such peoples have in common are features already identified here as characteristic of HBC. So we must ask the following question: is this commonality due simply to the fact that the three groups we've been using to construct our HBC model, EP, WP and Bu, are themselves hunter-gatherers? In other words, are all hunter-gatherers to be explained by "hunter-gatherer-ivity"? Or, to put it in functionalist terms, is hunter-gatherer culture in general a function of hunting and gathering in particular? I wonder how many functionalists have realized how circular this "explanation" is. Hunters and gatherers apparently live the way they do because they hunt and gather. And they hunt and gather because that's the way they live.
Is there an alternative explanation? Yes, of course, and I've thoughtfully provided it. Hunters and gatherers live the way they do not because they hunt and gather (duh!), but because they are highly conservative peoples who have gone to a tremendous amount of trouble over many thousands of years to preserve their traditional way of life, based on traditions that could only have been established tens of thousands of years ago by their common ancestors, a very particular group who actually existed at a very particular time and place, whom I've been referring to as HBP. This would explain not only why they all seem to share so many core values, but also why they continue to live by hunting and gathering, wherever possible, in the face of so many forces at work in the world of today trying to "modernize" them.
(to be continued . . . )
Excellent review, Victor, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI would hold a third alternative view: those characteristics are naturally human (though they express themselves better in hunter-gatherer societies because that's also the most naturally human way of life: 95% of H. sapiens history as distinct species probably). Agriculture and civilization are huge evolutionary leaps, even if they are essentially cultural (rather than biological).
This viewpoint I hold based in my personal experience as a (formerly) young man participating of flexible urban peripheral social networks (of anarchist or autonomist tinges). All those cultural features I can recognize in these social networks I have belonged to, except to some extent communal property (private property is a central tenet of modern Capitalist societies, though even this was breached at times experimentally) and shamanism (we are too rationalist mostly, though of course some were actors and artists, and/or flirted with phychedlic "new age" mysticism and the like, quite seriously in some cases).
Of course, you could well argue that anarchist (and generally socialist) thought is impregnated of more or less explicit primitivism since its inception and that therefore is somehow normal that we adopted such customs spontaneously. But, while ideology could have helped us to accept such values, these were not, in many cases, the ones we were raised on, much more "normal", authoritarian, militarist or patriarchal.
And I always had the feeling that these my urban "neo-primitivist" networks ultimately failed (often enough at least) because of the lack of an economic bound precisely. Everything was too much only defined by affinity (emotions, affections and disaffections) and there was nothing more solid to cement such networks more tightly, on more earthly basis.
But guess that ultimately I might be coincident somewhat with the fuctionalists, though I suspect that I'm more of an essentialist humanist. However, my emphasis on these being natural, imprinted, human tendencies, connects well with your emphasis in conservatism. However it would be less a cultural conservatism (that does exist but hardly at such extreme depths of time) but an innate "human way of life", shaded here and there by the local cultural traditions and peculiarities.
I like the dispersion and concentration idea. Fission and fusion is another, related one. This has an impact on the genetics of foragers. Intermediary birth-death ratios seems to be another foraging universal. Agriculturalists have high fertility and high mortality.
ReplyDeleteNo social coercion is an interesting one. It does pop up among the Piraha (the South American foraging isolate that linguist Everett claims has a unique cultural profile that affects their language structure and makes it more primitive in many respects (counting, kinship categories, etc.) than the generic Chomskyan "human language."
Generalized exchange may be applicable to goods and services. But when it comes to the exchange of humans, the situation if different: lots of foragers in South America (including the Piraha) and Australia participate in direct affinal exchange.
I also doubt that all of these components of foraging lifestyle are either necessary or exclusive to this category. They are facets of human behavior that manifest themselves in different, totally unrelated times, places and situations.
The small size of a foraging population is not unique to them: many niche religious groups who live in relative isolation and are economically self-sufficient (Mennonites, Hutterites, etc.) are small in size. They practice agriculture and cattle-breeding, though.
Also, consider this example:
"People in band societies tend to "vote with their feet;' moving away rather than submitting to the will of an unpopular leader. Mobility is also a means of resolving conflicts that would be more difficult for settled peoples."
This is strikingly similar to the way Americans (industrial, nuclear-family-based not foraging/band population) solve their employment woes: they tend not to fight for their rights in the workplace but rather migrate elsewhere and find another job. In Europe it's been traditionally different. In general, horizontal mobility in the U.S. (including the number of people living in mobile homes) is unparalleled for an industrial society. In a word, "voting on their feet" may be a function of long-term high-mobility (in the U.S. the legacy of the colonization and the westward movement) and not "foraging."
Regarding the word "shamanism" it comes from the language of a population that's not foraging but cattle-breeding. The amount of regional variation subsumed under the heading "shamanism" is too large to treat it as a universal.
Western people tend to idealize foragers and imitate them. The sad part is that there may be very little, if anything, that's unique to foragers apart from the fact that they live off hunting and gathering. And this is one thing that Western emulators don't imitate.
And this is one thing that Western emulators don't imitate.
ReplyDeleteCan't. There are crucial constraints imposed by the socio-economic reality and legal framework.
I knew of a group of, mostly German, hippies who did live largely in such a forager style (in teepees and all) but it was only possible in a small corner of the Pyrenees. They dreamt of travelling the world and foraging maybe the fruits of the Mediterranean (grapes, olives, etc.) but the reality they did not want to face is that all that is private property and was legally and practically impossible for them to do so. They thought of crossing to Morocco for instance, but they would be just kicked back as soon as the North African authorities would notice their odd way of life (i.e. not turists with hard currency).
The mobility you mention in the USA and non-existent in Europe is probably also due to the same kind of constraints. Even if I'd like to migrate to, say, Germany, I'd have to learn the language first of all in order to find a job. That's a problem that does not exist in North America north of Río Grande. Anyhow, you idealize the US system: most low class people don't ever (or seldom) migrate. Even in the USA people develop roots and social networks which are as important to real life as may be a salary.
"Anyhow, you idealize the US system: most low class people don't ever (or seldom) migrate."
ReplyDeleteThe data I have mostly concerns people of lower economic status. A combination of vast geographic expanses and a developed automobile culture (cars are cheap, gas is cheap, highways are everywhere, campers and RVs are very popular) enables people of lower economic status to migrate quite freely and to substitute horizontal mobility for upward mobility. This trend has exacerbated during the current recession. Upper-middle class is more stable but they also take advantage of the "car culture" by readily engaging in longer commutes but enjoying suburban existence.
"I knew of a group of, mostly German, hippies who did live largely in such a forager style (in teepees and all) but it was only possible in a small corner of the Pyrenees."
I've heard about these people, and even planned to pay them a visit at a tip from a Belgian friend of mine. Many groups in Europe have attempted a return to nature and the establishment of colonies in the wilderness. They do adopt some subsidiary foraging techniques but still rely mostly on agriculture and cattle-breeding and "civilized" goods that are now available in local stores.
Maju, as you know, one of the basic questions that keeps coming up in history is the question of whether certain traits are "hard-wired" into us biologically or simply handed down as traditions from one generation to the next. It was once assumed for example that all animal behavior was purely natural, i.e. "instinctive," but now we see more and more evidence that animals also have culture -- transmitted via traditions.
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing The March of the Penguins, for example, I've often wondered if this very strange behavior is due purely to instinct or to some tradition that got started at some point and simply continued, as the younger Penguins followed the older ones, year after year, until they became the older ones, followed by their own young and so on for thousands of years.
This may well have originated as a Darwinian adaptation, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily biological. Those Penguins that just happened to go a certain way for a certain distance may have been the ones that survived and the tradition they established at that point survived with them.
My own inclination is not to assume anything, so I'm reluctant to assume that there is some built-in "natural" human instinct that imprinted our ancestors with certain core values. Until we locate some gene associated, for example, with egalitarian thinking or non-violence, we won't have any real evidence that such values are an intrinsic part of human nature. Even the differences we see between Chimp and Bonobo behavior may have their origin in culture rather than biology.
In any case, my intention here is not to convince people that we should all be socialists or anarchists simply because our ancestors were (for whatever reason, either traditional or biological). If there is any moral to the story I'm trying to tell, it's that we have no reason to assume either that humans are "naturally" competitive and violent or that our "stone age" ancestors maintained a culture of competition and violence. Because all the evidence points in the opposite direction. And since we see essentially the same culture surviving in the values of at least some of today's hunter-gatherers then we must take very seriously the possibility that "Utopian" societies of this kind ARE in fact sustainable, and not some sort of idealist fantasy totally removed from reality.
Thanks, German, for your interesting thoughts on the various types of foraging society and what they might mean. I too am very wary of universals and agree that there is no such thing as a universal type of foraging culture.
ReplyDeleteI disagree however with your theory that the existing patterns reflect meaningless historical events. I see them as reflections of very specific events that we can potentially recreate, at least to some extent.
"Regarding the word "shamanism" it comes from the language of a population that's not foraging but cattle-breeding. The amount of regional variation subsumed under the heading "shamanism" is too large to treat it as a universal."
Paleo-Siberians never bred cattle. Many of them were herd-followers, and all of them can indeed be considered hunter-gatherers, yes, but of a specialized type, related to cattle breeders. While the term itself is derived from a Siberian language, and the practice was once thought to have originated in Siberia, I think that most invesigators would now agree that it is a very widespread practice and that we can't be sure where it originated -- though the genetic evidence clearly points to Africa. What we find among the Bushmen and Pygmies of today could be called "proto-shamanism," if you prefer, but the terminology is of secondary importance. The real question is whether certain "shamanistic" practices are all survivals from an ancestral prototype or whether all, most, or some were "independently invented." There is, I think, a hard-core of shamanistic or if you prefer quasi-shamanistic practices that are so widespread that it's impossible for me to believe they are not the product of a common tradition.
I understand your reluctance. I just happened to "see it" as I read your post and compared with my vital experience. It was an "eureka moment" of those. I don't say it's "hard wired" but that we tend to fall back to it by default, when the cultural overruling program collapses (even if only partly). That way we never go blank (unlike Microsoft software).
ReplyDeleteWe may have that basic program, which we can overwrite by culture, Pavlovian conditioning and/or willpower but that is there anyhow. It is a good basic and valid program that works well specially in basic socio-economic conditions (foraging).
Similarly sybling or brother/sister kinship systems may also be default.
In any case, my intention here is not to convince people that we should all be socialists or anarchists simply because our ancestors were...
Neither was mine. But I've always been intrigued by the fact that so many people can't be tamed ("educated") in the estabilished cultural values successfully (and that includes competion). I have always suspected that this was because these social values were somehow anti-natural and now I understand that better, I believe.
Thanks to this post of you largely but also to the reflexive process I've been through while reading and discussing at this blog, specially since your coming-back. You have gone through a quite in depth exploration of what means to be hunter-gatherer and it has helped me a lot in understanding what means to be human ultimately.
And I realized that just before my previous post. Thanks a lot, Victor.
Maju: "I have always suspected that this was because these social values were somehow anti-natural and now I understand that better, I believe."
ReplyDeleteI understand how you feel, and I've often felt the same way. Competition and violence seem "unnatural" to me as well, but then so does hunting, which is pretty basic for hunter-gatherers, no? What's more important, for me, is that there is very strong evidence to counter the argument that our "stone-age" ancestors were competitive and violent -- whether due to either nature or nurture seems almost beside the point. AND the evidence that a sharing, caring society, based on cooperation, and with values that foster non-violence (at least in principle), can survive and has indeed survived for far longer than any other.
"You have gone through a quite in depth exploration of what means to be hunter-gatherer and it has helped me a lot in understanding what means to be human ultimately."
Thanks, Maju. That means a lot.