ANTH_100_LECTURE_11_PART_I_SPRING_2023_

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Oct 30, 2023

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ANTH 100 - LECTURE #11, PART I (SPRING, 2023).mp4 Speaker 1 [00:00:04] Oh, hey, everyone. Welcome back to. And through apology 100. It's me. I'm back. I'm picking up where my beautiful and extremely intelligent wife Alexis left off. I don't know if I can do as good a job as she has been doing, but I will try. And at this point in the course, things will take a markedly or marked shift from looking at biological anthropology and archeology. And now we're nudging over into socio cultural anthropology and a little bit of of linguistics, which we'll do a little bit later on. So, you know, things are going to are going to be a little bit different. Yes, there will be terms to understand and sometimes there are a lot of them, but they're not. It won't be like the first half of the course in terms of memorizing dates and being able to apply those in multiple choice questions. So these are, you know, we're dealing with the realm of the cultural, the social, the political, economic. And so I'm hoping that these definitions in these terms might be a little bit more intuitive because many of you will have first hand experience with some, if not all, of. So here. Here we are. It's a fantastic day outside. I'm sitting here with our dog, Atticus, who's a standard golden doodle. Who with this? This. This is a tail. Yeah, he's. He's. He's tired with his. With his puffed up. We got him shaved a little while. Oh, my gosh. A little while ago. Who. Who was this? Well, this just. I know. So he's probably going to. Oh, join me for a little bit, and I'm sure he'll get bored and run off. How is everyone doing today? Hopefully. Well. Yeah. So what are we going to do today? Well, we're going to be talking about the significance of the economy, economic processes, economic relations. And they're really broad sense. This idea of political economy, which is not something we're going to want to be too concerned with now, but we'll end the lecture with the definition of what political economy is studying, Economic impacts on politics and political impacts on the economy, I guess, is a really quick definition there. We're going to take a look at just a few things. Right. You know. I never use textbooks. I think I told you this right at the beginning. And there's a reason. And it's because you're cramming so much information. And I wouldn't want to write one of these things. Maybe I should. I don't know how it would take forever. But anyways, cramming so much information and selectively. Obviously picking and choosing what you discuss. That you're always going to leave things out. And I find that in textbooks they kind of sometimes, unless it's a textbook like in this section, we have the first half of it for biological. It's okay. I know Alexis had some issues with it, but I've got some issues because it seems like with the more cultural oriented chapters, it's sort of jarring because it jumps around to places and leaves some things overly defined and then some things under defined and in undertreated and under emphasize. Oh, I don't know. I don't know if I'll be using this textbook again. I know we both had some regret, but it's always for men. It's always difficult. But once you get into the upper your courses that I usually teach, I never I just use in my classes. Ethnography is even the bigger courses that I used to teach when I was in the School of Public Health and Health Systems, which has now been changed, I think the School of Public Health Sciences perhaps. But I used to teach, used to cover the social determinants of health class, which was a huge class, and I refuse to use a textbook and I just chose representative articles and book chapters and loads of examples from work, and it worked out really well. But owing to budget cuts, it's ridiculous. Anyways, I won't complete that sentence. So anyways, I don't like the textbook. It jumps around in. Some of the transitions seem like there's some sequitur is going on there. So something that logically doesn't follow from what was just talked about. So if I complain, you know, I'm not trying to be cranky for the sake of being cranky, but okay, so we're going to look at how anthropologists understand economic processes, broadly defined economic relations and in some ways how those affect conditions, social relationships. We're going to consider how we understand these ideas of production, distribution and consumption, that anthropologists being academics are always hilarious or always splitting hairs. It is something we need to only focus on production. No, we need to

just focus on distribution now. We need to focus on consumption. Well, dudes, how about we focus on them all because they're all very important. We'll consider these things. I've got an itchy beard. We're going to look at how goods are distributed, how they're sort of transferred between parties, individuals and groups otherwise known as exchange. And we'll look at the effects of these on people in their everyday lives. In a modern, late modern capitalist, more specifically neo liberal context that we're living in now. There's a lot of violence that. Occurs out of distribution, production and consumption. And that violence manifests itself in the form of poverty, whether absolute or relative. And it's really quite. Unfortunate sometimes, and this is a direct consequence of our socioeconomic system and how exclusionary and structurally violent the system can be. Sure. Of course, there are people who are winners. I'm seeing every day. Much to my annoyance, sometimes on my Instagram feed, you know, former professional skateboarders or current professional skateboarders who are, you know, who have lucked out. One such individual. His name is Rob Dyrdek. He had he had a fairly successful, successful show on MTV called Rob and Big with his bodyguard. And, you know, Rob Dyrdek used to be a pro for a company called Alien Workshop, which if you see the board right on the end there. This one here, this is a GNC neo blender pro model. Giant stands for Gordon Smith. Neil Blender went on to develop Alien Workshop, which was or code development anyways which was it was is a fairly successful skateboard company. But anyways, this Rob Dyrdek individual was a pro writer. I had his board in 1992 and now he's kind of ventured into all kinds of things. He's he's, you know, a bona fide entrepreneur and is really driven by this good old American entrepreneurial spirit make money in whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think his show, Robin, they got canceled. Then he had a newer one called Ridiculousness, which is dumb because they just watch Fail Army with some B-list celebrities and just laugh at it. I don't know how that turned to do a show, but it's MTV or whatever. But they went and now he makes cheese balls and sells them and he does these inspirational podcasts about how to make money and be successful. And I'm just like, Dude, what are you doing? It's always these cheesy things like, Know, here he is. I don't know why I've got them on here. This is Rob Dyrdek. How's it going, bro? So that's backwards for you. But basically it's a true wealth can bias how much your time is worth, what the value of your time is, and where is you're going to actually spend money to get time back? Because believe me, a true success is when you understand time at such a level that you know exactly where you could spend money to do it. He's talking it out of his asshole. Rob I agree with you and I don't want to. Mm. He's on the other side of. Production, distribution and consumption. He's had a series of accidents. He's had his name sort of sort of carry him through shoe sponsors by DC, pretty big company. He's on the side of the haves, not the have nots. None of this is possible on the side of the have nots, contemplating time, thinking about investments. Give me a break. There are people in our city who are having a very difficult time making ends meet and don't have the the luxury to sit back and watch these sort of, you know, financially focused self-help videos. We're going to look at some in some ways not so much the different ways people consume material goods. And I'll I'll make a crack at the textbooks. Definition. I've got allergies and it just came into my nose. Sorry, Atticus, I'm going to use your tail. I'm just kidding. I do have allergies and they're annoying, but I'm going to make a crack at or take a take issue with the textbook definition of consumption. Then we're going to turn our computers off. Do it. Do it. And then how? Like a great day. Thinking about anthropology, economic relations. What's so. Humans. When we gather into social groups, when we're thrown into the world, we're thrown into social groups. By default, we don't really have any choice. And we're an interesting species. Because we have basic needs. But then we have too many other needs. And that's what really, if you ask me, marks us off from our sort of close relations. Genetically and biologically, humans have too many needs, and this is what causes trouble. But we're able to meet these needs and create new ones through social organization. I feel like

we're starting from scratch here. Right. But what is social organization? Exactly. And I'm really sorry. You know, I don't I don't want any of you to think this is condescending by looking at these really basic terms here. But we've got people in fourth year in this class. You know, we've got people in first year in this class. We've got people who have taken anthropology courses before, and we've got people, let's say, from computer sciences, engineering, math never, ever taken an entire course in their lives. And now that we're we're sort of really bringing about a shift here. I feel like I've got to do my due diligence and really cover these things. Social organization. What is it? Well, it's just patterned social relations. The textbook definition, you know, the patterning of human intended independence in a given society through the actions and decisions of its members. So members come together. They understand that in order to solve problems, in order to go about the needs and requirements of everyday life, people need to come together and form social relations, you know, whether it be extended families, nuclear families. Oh, my gosh. Families based on, let's say, what's called fictive kin networks, like in my own field work most. Let's say, of the homeless youth I was working with all the time, every day. I didn't really have blood relations either their parents had died or they didn't want anything to do with them. So they created relationships with friends that were stronger or just as strong as blood ties. And we call this fictive kin networks. But so social organization really is just people being interdependent on each other. And, you know, what defines relationships are based on cultural understandings, norms, and moors of, you know, what's appropriate, what's not, etc.. So sorry, societies living in certain contexts will come together in certain ways to meet these demands of everyday living. So let's say going back in time, whether it be and maybe we'll make some Canadian references here. First Nations banned war. We'll go back in time, let's say, to a round contact, maybe 15, 1600s, well into maybe 100 years after that. First Nations bands typically who weren't sedentary like the hereon would participate in something called fusion fusion. And so there would be groups of sometimes, oh gosh, maybe ten, 20 families. And if this could increase to 50, sometimes to 100 at points, depending on the season, and then they would disperse into smaller, more nuclear units throughout the year, depending on, you know, what what was happening at the time. So in the winter, people would come together and stayed together and they would need that interdependence in order to survive. So food storage is would have to be access would have to be added to food, would have to be distributed, redistributed in shared. But then in the summertime, families would disperse and this would be that sort of fusion aspect. They would go off and start collecting berries. Oh, my gosh, whatever, whatever food, stuff, hunting, deer or whatever. Flora and fauna would assist in help them get by. And so they were really in a constant state of flux in living a nomadic or semi-nomadic existence in the Inuit. Much, much the same in some ways as well, you know, would come together in the summers around Hudson's Bay trading posts around the time of contact. Of course, this really precipitated and caused a lot of socio economic change, which was in a lot of ways fairly disastrous biologically with bringing diseases from which the indigenous population had zero immunity to and then 100% deadly disastrous after due to the effects of colonization and colonialism. So depending on the environment, people would approach these problems and find solutions in distinct ways which were obviously socially and culturally resonant. Economic anthropology really is that subbranch a socio cultural anthropology that considers economic life economic relations processes in the effects on social aspects of everyday life to be. This is what economic anthropologists focus on. But it's interesting because when you're looking at the textbook, they make it sound like only economic anthropologists look at this in socio cultural anthropologists. Medical anthropologists don't. But that's not true. And it kind of I'm just I was underlining it, you know, with a few attacks and it's like, well, you know, from my dissertation as someone who is a socio cultural but also a medical anthropologist, I had to look in-depth at economic aspects of Ontario and the Ontario Works legislation and the

Ontario Works Act. And I didn't take any classes in my undergrad, my master's, or at the doctor level in strictly economic anthropology. So that's a little bit of a misconception. Lionization there textbook textbooks, but. Like. No offense. Lavender salts and za'atar. It's okay. Okay. So let's let's get into a couple of of lost you definitions here. So production, distribution and consumption. What are they? And that's why I've got the question mark in the title. Well, they're aspects of economic activity. And over the decades, economists and economic anthropologists and sociocultural and maybe medical anthropologists have all debated. What do you focus on first and what do you hone in on to the exclusion of other things? And is that detrimental? Well, we'll find out. So production is simply really, as it is, the production of things that you use either on their own or that you transform into other products. Distribution is after. Processes of production have taken place and there has been or have been some kind of transformation of raw materials into a product that someone wants. It's how do you get these products to people, you know, transportation, logistics, etc.. And that's what we can understand is distribution. And these are kind of no brainers. Simply consumption is the use of products in whatever way. And products can range from things that are products of commodity chains, like are shirts or clothing, which have a very interesting sort of lifecycle unto themselves or foodstuffs where there we go, heading out, Adi, don't shoot. So every time he gets off of a chair, sometimes he'll do this sort of lean in is like, Yeah, I'm just going to bust one out for you. And then he just yet he leads. Okay. Luckily, I don't smell anything and they're pretty violent rank. So as I said, you know, anthropologists, if you can see my cursor, they're always debating, you know, which ones are more important. And they'll get heated and angry at conference presentations. And I'll say right off the bat, I think it's sort of silly to look at one to the exclusion of the others. I think they all need to be understood as a piece and all altogether. But we'll look at the economic activity. And here we have this sort of the three pillars of economic experience in activity in life. So production, again, is the collection of resources. Processing of resources, the manufacture of products at whatever level, depending on what it is, you know, things can be more complicated. The distribution, which again, is really just the transportation logistics of bringing products to places, you know, historically, you know, some products could travel great distances, They can travel, you know, great distances now, but with much more efficiency in transport, logistics, consumption, is the purchase in use or in some ways the literal consumption of goods, if we're talking about foodstuffs. So it's just a little bit of history here. And I know this is fairly dry to many individuals, and it's not because it's not economics proper. We won't get into this in detail. This is a gloss, but the discipline of economics as an economic. Academic focus didn't really happen. And I'm sure, you know, obviously historians had their their selective focus on this over the millennia. But really, typically in Europe and North America, it didn't come into being as a specialized focus until the industrial revolution and capitalism really started to make inroads. And I really use that term, you know, specifically here and on purpose. And so we're talking about the 1700s, late 1700s. And so around the time that Adam Smith had his go with the Wealth of Nations. So, you know, this is, again, a gloss, but capitalism came to eclipse in replace the feudal economic system where as many of you probably know, you know, you would have a land owner and he would say to a serf or peasants, you can have this plot of land, which, if my memory serves me correctly, is referred to as a fief. And you can work it, but it's not yours, it's mine. And I have it by the sheer fact that I have a title which I got from my family, and it's sort of immovable and, you know, there's no how can you say fluidity in terms of mobility, Right. Things are kind of frozen. In status. And so you would have to work for a feudal lord in vassal. I think if my my understanding is correct and there was a hierarchy here. And so, you know, a Lord could own the land, but he would have to pledge allegiance to a king, Knights could as well. And in return for owning that land, if there was a war, they would have to fight on behalf or alongside the king, on behalf of the king. Usually in this cause, tension, in problems and alliances and allegiances

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