Reddit mentions of The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society

I would really like to read what others have to say! I even decided to look up in the book I use to teach Intro to Anthropology and there's no definition of wealth! Egad! Checked some of the other intro-like textbooks and there's no definition either!


In any case, I am even more interested in the "maximizing utility/fun".

It's been a loooong time since I took a full blown Economics class (we talk about Economics in Anthropology, but always from an anthro perspective).

>The more technology an individual has the more varieties of goods can be consumed and hence welfare would be better

This is assuming then that fun and utility lie within goods (and not just goods but a variety of them). I think this is a troublesome perspective, and centered in modern industrialized notions of an economy.

But, your question takes me to the notion of an "Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Salihns^1 ^2 . He defined affluence as having more than enough of what you need to satisfy your consumption needs (notice how "wealth", a modern notion, is avoided). You create affluence by either:

1. producing a lot (like Western capitalist society)
   or
   
2. desiring little (like many hunter-gatherer societies)
   
   So, for example, Robert Lee^3 studied the Ju/'hoansi --his study was one of the inspirations for Sahlins' "Original Affluent Society". Lee found that they spent around 20 hours per person per week collecting what they need to consume (food)-far less time than agricultural and industrialist societies (although you can argue that they don't spend as much time in collecting food, but in collecting what they need -money or goods-- to then get food and other foods).
   
   So, foraging societies use their culture to construct a niche where they desire less, but all they desire is fulfilled, in abundance, by their environment.
   
   
   To directly answer your questions:
   
   >What is the definition of wealth?
   
   It seems there is an idea that wealth follows the layman notion of having an excess of what is valuable in a society. So a variety of goods, although valuable in US culture, might not be as valuable as in other places. Although, we can talk about how that might be influenced through culture contact --that's for another post!
   
   >Is a technologically improved society better off than a hunter-gather/primitive one?
   
   I think this is a loaded question. "Better off" is qualitative and subjective. If you are placing value on the variety of goods and the consumption of goods, then I guess a "technologically improved" society is better off. If you take into consideration the cultural norms that dictate how the society values, then probably they are on the same playing field --each society in their own contexts.
   
   
   Disclaimer: Many have critiqued that Lee and others only considered food acquisition as work and did not take into consideration food processing and cooking. From wiki^4:
   
   >When total time spent on food acquisition, processing, and cooking was added together, the estimate per week was 44.5 hours for men and 40.1 hours for women, but Lee added that this is still less than the total hours spent on work and housework in many modern Western households^5.
   
   
   Edit: I think the last paragraph in the first link I provided nails it:
   
   Assuming poverty as a lack of wealth:
   
   >The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo.