Hunter-Gatherer Society

Description

From the Wikipedia:

"A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. Hunter-gatherers obtain most from gathering rather than hunting; up to 80% of the food is obtained by gathering. The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely more upon domestication (see agriculture and pastoralism and neolithic revolution) is not clear-cut, as many contemporary societies combine both strategies to sustain themselves."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer_society)

Key Book to Read

Recommended by Chris Knight:

• "In 2000, a quite extraordinary book, The Other Side of Eden, was published by the social anthropologist and renowned hunter-gatherer specialist Hugh Brody.9 His gripping book is a masterpiece of narrative and scholarship, gathering together in one volume both the diversity of hunter-gatherer cultures and the core features they have in common." [1]

More information

Concepts

• Hunter-Gatherers’ Egalitarianism‎ ; Equality‎
• Immediate Return Hunter-Gathering Societies‎

Discussions

• Farming and the Origins of Hierarchy‎
• Patrilocal Residence as the Historical Origin of Patriarchy

Books

• The Dawn of Everything‎. By David Graeber and David Wengrow.

• "Our favourites among the ethnographies of our near contemporary hunter-gatherers are [2]

1. Marjorie Shostack, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, 1981;
2. Jean Briggs, Inuit Morality Play: The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old, 1998;
3. Phyllis Kaberry, Aboriginal Women: Sacred and Profane, 1938,
4. Karen Endicott and Kirk Endicott: The Headman was a Woman: The Gender Egalitarian Batek of Malaysia, 2008;
5. Richard Lee, The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society, 1978; and
6. Colin Turnbull, Wayward Servants: The Two Worlds of the African Pygmies, 1978. "

Bibliography

Provided by Daniel Bitton [3] :

Robert Kelly 1995/2014 – The Foraging Spectrum

James Woodburn 1982 – Egalitarian Societies [4]

James Woodburn 2005 – Egalitarian Societies Revisited, in Widlock & Gossa (eds) – Property and equality, Volume 1: ritualisation, sharing, egalitarianism

Richard Lee 2004 – Power and Property in Twenty-first Century Foragers: A Critical Examination [5]

Richard Lee & Irving Devore (Eds.) 1968 – Man the Hunter

Richard Lee & Eleanor Leacock (eds) 1983 – Politics and History in Band Societies

CRITIQUES/DEBATES ON FORAGER EGALITARIANISM

Alan Barnard 1992 – The Kalahari Debate, a Bibliographical Essay [6]

Edwin Wilmsen 1989 – Land Filled With Flies

Roy Richard Grinkger 1991 – Houses in the Rainforest

Richard Lee & Mathias Guenther 1991 – Oxen or Onions? The Search for Trade (and Truth) in the Kalahari [7]

Ted Kaczynski 2008 – The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarchoprimitivism [8]