Hunter gathering and agriculture
Friday, January 31, 2014 at 10:47PM 
Since I was brought up in Australia’s Western consumer culture, I have unconsciously accepted a society fuelled by food production as a normal way of life. For me, the term ‘hunter gatherer’ conjures images of ‘bush tucker’, nuts and berries, survival of the fittest. My perception is not inherently negative, rather a romanticised vision of a lifestyle that is foreign to me and, for the most part, outmoded.
The three readings I discuss here forced me to question these preconceived notions. Each highlighted how cultures based around food production are seen as the norm, while other modes of subsistence, such as hunter gathering, are seen as backwards, inferior or socially unacceptable. None of the authors agree with this view, but instead shed light on how and why these perceptions have been socially constructed.
My favourite reading for this topic was a chapter, Creation, from Hugh Brody’s (2001) monograph, The Other Side of Eden. I enjoyed it so much that I later bought the book and read the rest. To summarise a book that I found so eloquent and moving in a few paragraphs will be hard but I will try.
Brody’s professional life has been devoted to the study of hunter gatherer and indigenous cultures. His first experience of living with hunter gatherers, and the one that seems to have been the most instrumental for him, was with the Inuits in the Arctic. Living with a family and participating in the activities of daily life, he learnt to speak 'the real Inuktitut' (Inuit language). He found that the language pointed to some important cultural differences: there were no classes, there were no land rights, there were no monetary values except in dealings with whites.
Language is a recurring theme throughout the book. In the chapter, Creation, Brody reflects on the significance of language to our understanding of the world. He highlights how in the opening lines of Genesis
“language and writing are deemed to be at the heart and origin of everything. The entire world comes from the words of God; these words, caught in the sacred texts of Judaism, are the sum of all knowledge; the world is only that which we say and think and know” (2001: 71).
This ties in with a question raised throughout the book: what about those for whom Genesis is not the creation, those who hunt rather than farm? The central idea introduced in the Creation chapter is that Genesis is an endorsement of agriculture as the dominant mode of production. Not only this, but “it speaks to a particular system of inheritance and property” (2001: 76). It establishes a patrilineal lineage. Men secure the land on which the women can live and provide sons, who will become the inheritors of the next generation. The archetypal farm family.
In my human geography undergraduate degree we looked at the rural idyll as an idealistic concept that is embedded in our imagination and reinforced by art and literature. The chapter, Creation, gave me a fresh perspective on this. It made me think about how such images serve to reinforce and normalise agriculture as a way of life. Brody (2001: 101) argues that "Genesis is the creation story in which aggressive, restless agriculture is explained, is rendered an inevitability". His argument is convincing and highlights the extent to which we take this for granted.
However, Brody introduces a key theme here which challenges common perceptions of farmers as settled and hunters as nomads. He suggests that the reverse is true. One or two generations of farmers may stay settled, but if we look at a longer term picture we see that it is agricultural peoples that have constantly been on the move. Mobility has been the source of colonial power, a relentless pursuit of more arable land.
Hunter gatherers, on the other hand, must know their territories well and this means they tend to stay in a particular area. Brody suggests that we have much to learn from the sophisticated knowledge of hunter gatherers, built up over centuries of learning to use the land sustainably to their long-term advantage.
Guy Diamond’s (2005: 106) chapter, To Farm or Not to Farm, makes a similar point, arguing that the “sharp divide between nomadic hunter-gatherers and sedentary food-producers” is a misconception and that “the shift from hunting-gathering to food production did not always coincide with a shift from nomadism to sedentary living”.
Like Brody, he challenges the modern perspective of hunter gathering culture as inferior. Diamond (2005: 104) suggests that this stereotype arises from the idea that hunter gathering represents hard work, a daily quest for food and life on the brink of starvation. In fact, “only for today’s affluent First World citizens, who don’t actually do the work of raising food themselves, does food production … mean less physical work, more comfort, freedom from starvation”. Diamond, too, presents the knowledge and technologies of hunter gathering societies as every bit as sophisticated as ours, and suggests that we could learn a lot from these cultures.
Rachel Black’s (2007) article, Eating Garbage: Socially Marginal Food Provisioning Practices, provides an interesting point of comparison with the other texts. The focus and context are quite different - 'urban foraging' in France and Italy - but it carries a similar message. ‘Urban foraging’, like hunter gathering, is seen a socially marginal activity.
“In societies where abundance reigns and consumption is essential to the functioning of the economy, and the creation of identity, urban foraging can seem like an affront to cultural norms and may even be declared deviant behaviour” (Black, 2007: 141-2).
In one case study, the Porta Palazzo market in Italy, Black discusses how poverty stricken elderly people have been forced to scavenge through the refuse bins at the market to satisfy their hunger. Black raises an interesting point that, although this could be seen as the failure of the state to provide an adequate pension system, most people she spoke to blamed the disintegration of the traditional family structure, in which the older generation could expect to be taken care of by their children.
The contemporary Western context of Black’s article brings these issues closer to home for me. I have been to both Italy and France, they are cultures I am familiar with and can relate to. The image of Italian pensioners being forced to scavenge through market refuse to satisfy their hunger is all the more shocking for this reason. There is a strong moral and political message for the Western reader. The Italian case study challenges our preconceptions of ‘scavengers’ and anti-social behaviour, which we would usually associate with a younger, politically-active generation. More importantly, Black forces us to question our wasteful consumer culture, to reevaluate our culturally determined ideas about what we consider ‘garbage’ versus what is ‘good to eat’.
References
Black, R. 2007. Eating Garbage: Socially Marginal Food Provisioning Practices. In Jeremy MacClancy et al.,(eds). Consuming the Inedible. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 141-149.
Brody, H. 2001. The Other Side of Eden: Hunter-Gatherers, Farmers and the Shaping of the World. London: Faber and Faber.
Diamond, J. 2005 [1997]. Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. London: Vintage.
food production, subsistence in Production
Reader Comments (3)
Ian Lowe, one of Australian's leading writers on issues about agriculture, environment and sustainability gave the keynote at the Australian Science Communicators conference in Brisbane this week. He reminded us that Australia's hunter gatherers, the aborigines ,lived in harmony with the land and the elements for thousands and thousands of years. We whites have disrupted and exploited the system so extensively in just over two hundred years that we face an unsustainable future. Like Hugh Brody he says we have much to learn from the indigenous people. There are many parallels in The Other Side of Eden to the Australian experience.
I feel I have had many conversations with various people lately about how much we have to gain from indigenous ways of growing and harvesting food. Most importantly, as you talk about, the issue of waste. A very very small and silly example of the 'garbage' vs 'what is good to eat' is seeing people cut tomatoes - almost every person I see (and I'll admit I used to be one of them), cuts off the top where the stalk has been. Why? It doesn't taste any different - perhaps the texture isn't as nice as the other bit but other than that it really is this kind of bazaar 'indulgence'! I know that in the it of scheme of things this is the least of our worries but I just thought about it when reading your post.
Hi Ma, it is so sad. It really hits home when you put a time frame on it like that. I look forward to reading some of Ian Lowe's writing.
Hi Cha, waste really bothers me and I try to be as good as possible. I must admit though, if I am eating tomatoes on their own I cut out that bit. Is it ok that I cut it out, rather than off though? i.e. so as not to waste the nice bits around it?? ;) I don't bother if I am cooking them though.