Anthropology Friday: Reindeer Economies: Hunters, Pastoralists and Ranchers (pt 4/4)

From Ingold

Hello everyone, and welcome to the final Anthropology Friday: Reindeer Economies: Hunters, Pastoralists, and Ranchers [PDF] by Ingold. As usual, I am using “” instead of block quotes and in some cases I have skipped his in-line citations in order to increase readability.

“It would appear to require no more labour to manage a pastoral herd of two thousand than a domestic herd of two hundred. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, the animals need no longer be tame, and do not therefore demand the same degree of attention. Secondly, whereas the solidarity of a domestic herd rests upon the sum of dyadic ties between individual animals and the herdsman, stability in a large pastoral herd is maintained as a result of bonding between the animals themselves. Thirdly, since the pastoralist has relinquished his dependence upon the herds of wild reindeer, he is in a better position to prevent his animals from straying to join the wild population. There is therefore a kind of ‘take-off point, beyond which the only limits to growth are the absolute Malthusian checks of famine and disease. …

“[Since women tend to milk animals] In short, there is some justification in the milch pastoralist’s equation of wealth in large stock with ‘wealth’ in women and children. Milch animals must be tame, and are therefore incorporated into a structure of domestic relations that includes human subordinates in the household. In effect, every household head commands the services of two reproducing populations, of women and of female stock, and his main concern is to balance the growth of the one against that of the other. The greater the number of his human dependants, the more animals must be available to feed them; yet the larger the herd, the more labour is required for its management. A wealthy owner may distribute surplus stock as gifts or loans among friends and kin who may be in need, in the expectation of a delayed return. Alternatively, he may acquire additional labour through the exchange, in marriage, of a part of his stock-holding for a woman who will eventually found a new sub-household, and thereby make possible a further increase in the herd. …

reindeer being milked

“Milch pastoralism therefore combines a pressure to maximize the reproductive potential of women with a tendency towards maximal dispersion of animals. It follows that the overstocking of pastures ‘can be as much of men as of their beasts, the latter being merely the consequence of the former’…

“Consider now the carnivorous pastoralist. The supply of labour is not, for him, an immediate constraint on herd growth: it is normally enough that each household can call upon the services of a single herdsman, or perhaps two if the herd becomes large. However, to supply the needs of himself and his family, he has actually to destroy a part of his wealth. Far from constituting a measure of prosperity, the accumulation of dependants places a direct drain on his material assets. No wonder, then, that he prefers to restrict the size of his domestic group, …

“In brief, hospitality among milch pastoralists breaks out upon the multiplication of the herds; among carnivorous pastoralists it accompanies their decimation.

“The propensity of carnivorous pastoralists for miserliness, and the marked unevenness in the distribution of wealth that ensues, contrasts most strongly with the wide range of social involvement and comparative equality in stock-holding for which milch pastoralists are noted…

Rachel and Jacob by William Dyce

“More commonly, pastoral assistants are not impoverished householders, but propertyless bachelors, who come to occupy a position not unlike that of sons in their masters’ households. They may indeed be made into ‘sons’, through the legal fiction of adoption, or through uxorilocal marriage to the master’s daughter …

Genesis 29 Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east.

² And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks: and a great stone was upon the well’s mouth. …

⁹ And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep; for she kept them.

¹⁰ And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. …

¹³ And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister’s son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these things.

¹⁴ And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him the space of a month.

¹⁵ And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? tell me, what shall thy wages be?

¹⁶ And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.

¹⁷ Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured.

¹⁸ And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.

¹⁹ And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me.

²⁰ And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.

²¹ And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her.

²² And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast.

²³ And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her.

²⁴ And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for an handmaid.

²⁵ And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?

²⁶ And Laban said, It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.

²⁷ Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.

²⁸ And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also.

“Though the contract is of the same type, an exchange of herding labour for subsistence plus a cut of each year’s calves, assistantship of this kind must be viewed in relation to the devolution of property within the household, rather than as a form of mutual aid between households. Two questions immediately arise. Firstly, what social conditions are likely to give rise to propertyless or disinherited youths? Secondly, why should a household that is short of manpower seek to expand by adopting ‘fictitious’ sons, instead of breeding sons through real or ‘fictitious’ wives?…

“By sending surplus sons into the service of the rich, as herding assistants, the poor pastoral household can prevent the division of its herd into units of a size below the viable minimum. By taking in assistants, the rich household secures not only additional labour, but also potential heirs. …

“Superficially, pastoralists look very much like capitalists. Their individualism, pragmatism and competitiveness, and above all, their desire to accumulate material wealth, appear to indicate significant convergences on the level of values and ideologies. …

“Thus the Latin word for money, pecus, referred equally to a herd of domestic livestock; whilst the Greek word for interest on a financial loan, tekhos, denoted also the progeny of an animal. Marx long ago pointed out the implications of deriving the meaning of ‘capital’ from its folk etymology:

“‘Were the term capital to be applicable to classical antiquity . . . then the nomadic hordes with their flocks on the steppes of Central Asia would be the greatest capitalists, for the original meaning of the word capital is cattle’…

From Ingold

“Though qualitatively distinct from hunting and pastoralism, ranching combines elements of both: ecologically, the relation between men and herds is one of predation; socially, ranching contains a principle of divided access to live animal property. This combination, I shall argue, follows from the introduction of a market in livestock, and entails, in turn, the division of control over more or less exclusive blocks of territory. …

“It is perhaps understandable that ranching peoples have, at least until recently, received very little positive attention or sympathy from anthropologists, for they may be held directly responsible for the obliteration of native cultures from large areas of the globe, including much of North and South America, southern Africa, and Australasia. But their neglect is unfortunate, since a comparison with ranching could greatly enhance our comprehension of the nature of pastoralism. …

“A few examples will serve to emphasize the predatory character of herd exploitation under ranching. In Argentina, the ranch economy originated in the hunting of feral cattle, which were initially valued for their hides. On the High Plains of North America, the Texas longhorns that were introduced to stock the ranges in the early days of the great cattle boom were ‘almost as wild as the buffalo that they supplanted, . . . for behind them were generations of untamed ancestors’. These beasts, which had turned feral during the period of the Civil War, were collected up in communally organized ‘cow-hunts’, on which were modelled the roundups of the range country. In northern Brazil, in the Rio Branco region described by Riviere, the development of ranching apparently proceeded through the appropriation of herds of wild cattle whose numbers had increased rapidly following their initial introduction into a vacant niche: The ranching technique requires the cattle to fend entirely for themselves on the open savanna.

“Today there are still completely wild herds that are never rounded up and that carry no brand; these are said to have been even more numerous in the past. Even those cattle that have an owner and are regularly rounded up are half wild.  In the chase, these Brazilian cattle can outrun horses, especially in wooded or rocky terrain, and once having taken refuge in such an area, they are almost impossible to root out. The native term for the roundup, campeada or ‘campaign’, with its connotations of military conflict, epitomizes the character of the relation between man and animal, which here seems to have erupted into one of mutual and violent antagonism. …

“The second factor to distinguish the association between men and herds under ranching from that which obtains under pastoralism follows from the first: if animals are not under the continuous supervision of herdsmen, they cannot be defended against predatory attack. It will be recalled that the pastoralist, by protecting his herd, aims to eliminate the destructive impact of predation rather than the predators themselves. The rancher, by contrast, faced with a threat of this kind to his stock, will embark on offensive campaigns aimed directly at the extermination of agents of predation. Chief among these have often been indigenous populations of human hunters, whose traditional grounds were overrun by the stockman and his herds. On the High Plains of North America, for example, native Indian hunters reasonably considered the range cattle of the white man to be as fair game as the buffalo which he had slaughtered in such huge numbers in order to make way for them. The response of the stockman was not to protect the herd but to hunt the Indian…

John Wayne

“[Ranching] also tends to promote an overtly egalitarian ethic, celebrating  technical competence, physical strength and masculinity. The cowboy on the North American Plains derives esteem from his skill in the hazardous tas  of controlling a herd of wild cattle from horseback, just as the Indian hunter before him competed for esteem in running down the herds of buffalo. …

“Among the cattlemen of Roraima, the contract between owner and ranch-hand is formally of the same kind as that between master and assistant among, say, the Chukchi. Each year, or sometimes every two years, the vaqueiro receives one quarter of the calves found in the annual roundup. …

“work as a ranch-hand represents a fairly sure path to future economic independence. The case of the man who began his career as a propertyless waif and is now in possession of more than 5000 head of cattle, managed by vaqueiros of his own, may be matched by precisely similar success stories among the Chukchi. Moreover, the parallel is confirmed on the ideological plane: the Roraima ranch-hand, like the Chukchi assistant, is regarded as a member of the family, raised by the ranch-owner as he would raise his own sons. …

“The Lappish pastoral band (sit’da) comprises a small number of families who reside and migrate together, and who co-operate in the management of an aggregate herd of individually owned stock. In size, the siida is of the same order as the Athapaskan local band, with a population of a few tens, or around two to six households; though occasionally a single household might migrate on its own. Manker’s census of siidas among the Swedish mountain Lapps gives an average of around five households, or twenty persons, per unit. There is a tendency towards seasonal aggregation and dispersal: the larger summer herding units segment into two or more smaller bands at the onset of winter, and regroup in spring. …

“To translate these extremes on the scale of prestige and influence in terms of a dichotomy between ‘wealth’ and ‘poverty’ is, in my view, fundamentally misleading, for it obscures the fact that the object of accumulation is to give stuff away. Strathern’s point, with regard to the informal leaders or ‘bigmen’ of the New Guinea Highlands, that ‘it is not the fact of wealth but its deployment which is important’, applies with equal force to the Eskimo umealik and the coastal Chukchi e’rmecin. For this reason, I prefer to regard these figures as ‘men of influence’ rather than of wealth, through whose hands is channelled the flow of raw materials and finished products from producers to consumers. The produce of the leader’s own labour, and that of his followers, is pooled in the household store, for subsequent redistribution to a wider range of recipients. Prior to redistribution, the store may be full to overflowing; but subsequently it might be the ‘man of influence’ himself who is materially impoverished.

“In times of scarcity, too, ‘it was the successful hunter and his family who might go hungry, since in his generosity he gave away whatever he had at hand’. In short, wealth in the products of hunting can only generate prestige if its amassment is followed promptly by its disbursement. The man who hoards at the expense of his neighbours does so in flagrant disregard to his own self-respect.”

EvX: Compare this to our own society, in which the only similar things I can think of are weddings and to some extent children’s birthday parties and Christmas. These can be pretty substantial, but few people undertake them with the goal of wiping themselves out economically.

“Indeed, the effect of the transition from hunting to pastoral relations of production appears to be to pit strength against wealth. To gain influence, the hunter directs his energies, in competition with his rivals, towards the immediate extraction of animals from nature. By contrast, if the pastoralist is to use his superior strength to secure control over the wealth on which influence depends, he must direct it towards the expropriation of animals from other people. It is in this light, I suggest, that we should interpret the theme of violence permeating Reindeer Chukchi ideology. For the e’rmecin, in stereotype, is not merely ‘strong’ and ‘influential’, but is also the perpetrator of assault in the form of theft and homicide. Courage and endurance are matched not by an open-handed generosity, but by treachery and deceit. Chukchi lore abounds in tales of ‘strong’ assistants who plot to murder their masters in order to usurp their position in the ‘front’ of the camp …

“Violence of this kind is unknown in the maritime communities. Here the strong man achieves mastery by virtue of his superiority as a provider for the people of his settlement; and if he violates the rights of others, it is not by seizing their property, but by refusing to share with them what is initially his… In short, as the live animal resource passes into the domain of human property relations, competitive strength is redirected from the interaction between men and animals to the interaction between men in respect of animals. The pastoralist becomes a predator on his own kind, deploying his physical capabilities in the practice of negative reciprocity.”

EvX: And that’s the end. To be honest, this was a bit of a dry book, and while parts of it were interesting, I am glad to be finished with it.