Hunter-gatherer situations

Annual Review of Anthropology, 1988

Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, 2016

Senri Ethnological Studies, 2000

Introduction to the Special Issue of "Hunters and Gatherers in the Industrialised World", Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, XXXII, 4-2016 Intro: The idea of this edition basically stemmed out of the Eleventh Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies (CHAGS), organised at the University of Vienna in Autumn 2015. It was part of a loose series of conferences on this topic staged in various cities and continents (Lee/Daly 1999: 10; Hitchcock/Biesele 2000: 1f), inspired by the ground breaking and highly influential academic conference called “Man the Hunter” in Chicago in 1966, which was proclaimed as a “watershed of knowledge about foragers” (Kelly 1995: 9). All these events had a fairly common point of departure: the – mainly but not exclusively – anthropological investigation of people, many of whom – though not all – researchers assume to live a clearly identifiable way of life, which is based more or less on subsistence-related hunting, gathering and fishing without efforts at domestication. The obvious ambivalences inherent in this preliminary attempt to pin down the scientific knowledge production in the form of a “minimal definition” (Lee/Daly 1999: 3), as well as the different concepts used to describe such societies (among others, “foragers”, “hunters”, and “gatherers”), already hint at the fierce controversies which shake this field and debate. With this edition, we want to highlight the fact that many of the hunting and gathering societies live in mixed economic ways and under a broad range of political regimes. Furthermore, we state that “sole” hunters and gatherers live in a (post-)industrial world, the rationales of which impact on micro- and macro-scales of indigenous livelihoods as well as on their everyday lives. This brings about to greater or lesser degree intense instances of contact between neighbouring groups, as well as with stakeholders from state and industry. In the following, we explain why a static approach to hunters and gatherers societies (and sometimes their comparison with stone-age societies) is rejected by the authors of this volume. Why do we draw attention to this apparently very specific academic field? What is it about these societies that could be of interest in a journal dedicated to questions of North-South relations and the deeply problematic notion of ‘Development’? The task of this introduction will partly consist in the cautious effort to sketch some fundamental points of connection between the academic reflection on hunters and gatherers on one hand, and the appraisal of the notion of ‘Development’, as well as of the ideological foundations of so-called ‘advanced’ modern capitalism and its contradictions – including the historically produced North-South divide – on the other. We try to show that both currents – anthropology and the idea of ‘Development’ – share a dark and often ignored core, which is rooted in the basic material and epistemological power relations of the contemporary dominant form of social becoming........

American Anthropologist, 1992

In the complex history of hunter-gatherer studies, several overlapping and at times antagonistic discourses can be discerned. However, one critique has emerged that would render all huntergatherer discourses irrelevant and do away with the concept altogether. The paper explores the poststructuralist roots of this "revisionism" and then argues why the concept of hunter-gatherer continues to be politically relevant and empirically valid. However, if they are to fulfill their promise of illuminating an increasingly fragmented and alienating modernity, hunter-gatherer studies will have to become more attuned to issues ofpolitics, history, context, and reflexivity. HUNTER-GATHERER STUDIES HAVE HAD a rather stormy history. The field has always been marked by controversy, and even the concept of hunter-gatherers itself has waxed and waned in importance. There have been periods in the history of anthropology when the very concept was tabooed, others when it was popular. Within the discipline today, the idea of hunter-gatherer has radically different receptions. Some see it as totally absurd, a derivative of outmoded evolutionary theory, while others see it as an eminently sensible category of humanity with a firm anchor in empirical reality. I noted a strong tendency toward the latter view at the Sixth Conference on Hunter-Gatherers (CHAGS) at Fairbanks, May-June 1990. At least no one advocated canceling the sixth CHAGS for lack of subject matter. Even if it is agreed that hunters and gatherers exist, almost everything else about them is a matter for contestation. While some fields have crystallized a canon, there is no danger of that in hunter-gatherer studies; the field remains as fractious and controversyprone as ever. And in recent years a new element has been added to the many voices within the field, a body of opinion that would call into question the entire enterprise and abolish the concept of hunter-gatherers altogether. It would be hard to imagine a more fundamental challenge. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to define the range of anthropological practices that constitute hunter-gatherer studies today and to explore the roots-social, ideological, and epistemological-of the field's crisis in representation. Some of these difficulties become apparent at the outset when we try to define what we mean by hunter-gatherers.' Economically we are referring to those people who have historically lived by gathering, hunting, and fishing, with minimal or no agriculture and with no domesticated animals except for the dog. Politically gatherer-hunters are usually labeled as "band" or "egalitarian" societies in which social groups are small, mobile, and unstratified, and in which differences of wealth and power are minimally developed. Obviously there is a degree of fit between "forager" subsistence strategies and "band" social organization, but the fit is far from perfect. Strictly economic definitions of foragers will include a number of peoples with ranking, stratification, and even slavery-the Northwest Coast groups-while the notion of"egalitarian bands" will include a number of small-scale horticultural and pastoral societies-in Amazonia, for example, and some Siberian "small peoples."

Hunter-gatherer studies had long been the last vestige of anthropology's quest for natural man (Barnard 2004) Although they are no longer the dominant form of human sociality and adaptation, and exist today in relatively minor numbers, hunter-gatherers continue to be the focal point of fundamental debates in anthropology and related fields of inquiry. From the romanticism of Rousseau and the rhetorical extremism of Hobbes, to the evolutionary baseline of Morgan and the ecological idealism of 1970s ethnographers, perceptions of "hunter-gatherers" have both conformed to and effected changes in anthropological inquiry and western society. Having undergone so many and so frequent conceptual shifts in the past two centuries, "hunter-gatherer" is a construct, some have argued, with no empirical or evolutionary validity. Clearly people have lived off the land without the aid of agriculture or animal husbandry, so at the level of subsistence, "huntergatherer" is a meaningful category. However, none of the essentialist qualities once assigned to this mode of subsistence hold up to serious cross-cultural analysis. That is, hunter-gatherer subsistence is not structurally linked to egalitarianism, generalized reciprocity, and settlement mobility, to name a few of the more prominent features. Moreover, hunter-gatherer populations once believed to be deeply rooted in evolutionary time are now understood as historical consequences of state expansion and political oppression. So, what does the concept of "huntergatherer" mean these days and what does anthropological knowledge of people living off the land tell us about long-term evolutionary trends, on the one hand, and modern power relations, on the other?

This article was originally published in the International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution's administrator. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution's website or repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier's

2001

Anthropological and behavioral ecological studies of living hunter-gatherers have flourished since the 1960's. Researchers have developed and followed a variety of paradigms, each with its own assumptions and objectives, based on the behavior of hunter- gatherer communities. I argue here that in order to evaluate the validity of the use of a specific hunter-gatherer group for particular paradigmatic purposes, details of the histor- ical and social context of the group are needed. The use of an inappropriate group, as determined by its context, can call into question the conclusions of a study. A method for classifying hunter-gatherer groups according to progressive stages of his- torical contact and interrelations with agricultural neighbors is proposed. The use of this classification system can aid in analyzing and answering important questions concerning the hunter-gatherer adaptation: what explains immediate return and delayed return sys- tems? Why do hunter-gatherers persist...