Chapters 3 and 8

Many people tend to drastically oversimplify past and present economic systems. Usually, people tend to think that their current economic system is far more advanced than their ancestors’ economies. However, past systems such as foraging were extremely complex. Also, what most do not realize is that foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, and agriculture are still alive today—even within our contemporary, industrialism/informatics society.

(Old and new economies, as seen through the eye of the modern man.)

For example, consider foraging, “a mode of livelihood based on resources that are available in

nature through gathering, fishing, hunting, or scavenging.” This seems like the mode of livelihood least likely to still exist in our society, right? Wrong. People hunt in the United States a great deal. My Dad, in fact, hunts deer. Thus, he supplements a modern industrialism/informatics system—“the mode of livelihood in which goods and services are produced through mass employment in business and commercial operations and through the creation, manipulation, management, and transfer of information via electronic media”—with foraging, “the oldest way of making a living.”

Indeed, my Dad and I also participate in horticulture, “a mode of livelihood based on cultivating domesticated plants in gardens with the use of hand tools.” We grow squash, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, and other plants. It is, in fact, extremely common in the North Georgia region, in which I live, for people to be both foragers and horticulturalists. These systems also provide for a mode of “personalized consumption” because it leads naturally to farmers’ markets where people buy produce directly from the producer. Miller even acknowledges the farmers’ market system in Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World.

In addition, being part of a foraging and horticulture microculture provides a “social safety

net” because of “leveling mechanisms” that are an unwritten part of the society. This leveling mechanism is a “norm . . . an accepted standard for how people should behave that is usually unwritten and learned unconsciously through socialization.” If one person or family has a surplus of a certain meat, fruit or vegetable, then that person is expected to give away the extra. Later, when the people in the sharing circle have a surplus, they will in turn give away what extra food they have. This is a system of “generalized recipricoty”—“a transaction that involves the least conscious interest in material gain or thought of what might be received in return and when the return might occur”—which is a form of “balanced exchange”—“a system of transfers in which the goal is either immediate or eventual balance in value.” For instance, my neighbor Charlotte made peach preserves and gave some to me. In return, a few weeks later, I brought over brownies that I made. She has also given me apples and vegetable plants. So, when I went home to the mountains, her husband asked me to pick up sorghum and honey, the staple items of my region.

Thus, because we are part of a group that shares foraged and grown food items, we are a “band, the form of political organization associated with foraging groups, [involving] flexible membership and no formal leaders.” Indeed, everyone in my group is either “related through kinship,” which comprises most of the group, or they are neighbors or people with whom we have a significant sort of friendship. We even “come together at certain times of the year” around holidays due to “foraging patterns and ritual schedule.” At these times, the men will go hunting either together or by themselves, and the women will have potlucks and exchange food items and recipes. Indeed, we even have an informal “leadership” because it is my grandmothers that host the holiday events.

If someone in the band breaks the norms of our group, they will face the typical small-scale

society form of “social control”—“shaming and ridicule.” Indeed, it is a norm in our group that neighbors should give to the correct person any mail mistakenly delivered to them. Recently, though, my neighbor Marty—who is Charlotte’s sister—gave away my $50 pair of shoes and kept for herself my $25 kayaking gloves, both items that I bought offline. I handled the situation “at the interpersonal level through discussion,” and she paid me back for my items. However, her remediation was helped along by the fact that Charlotte found out what Marty had done and rebuked her.


Apart from modern foraging and horticultural systems, though, everyone participates in the systems of pastoralism—“a mode of livelihood based on domesticated animal herds and the use of their products, such as meat and milk, for 50 percent or more of the diet”—and agriculture—“a mode of livelihood that involves growing crops on permanent plots with the use of plowing, irrigation, and fertilizer; it is also called farming.” All of the food we buy in the supermarket, or anywhere else, comes from pastoralism and agriculture.

Therefore, it is irrational that Barbara Miller should need to make it clear that the model in the book does not “imply a judgment about the sophistication or superiority of more recent modes of livelihood.” This is because all of these modes of livelihood still exist today in our modern society, as evidenced in my own life.