Who are we? Where do we come from? Who were our ancestors? How are humans interconnected? A series of questions that cross our mind billions of times. To answer many of these questions and to analyze the social and cultural behavior of human beings I tried to immerse myself in this subject of anthropology. I was amazed to discover how man, being a social animal, has evolved to the level of perfection in so many ways. There is an old Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. This week 4 lecture revolves around the idea of how societies thrive to earn decent bread and butter to support and feed themselves and their families. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Not long ago, we all made a living by forging our needs directly from nature. Everyone had equal access to everything they needed. Topic 4 focuses primarily on economic anthropology, a type of cultural anthropology that studies economic systems. Economic systems include production (making things), consumption (using things), and exchange (transferring things). The way we produce, consume and exchange is strongly influenced by our surroundings and the environment in which we live. The four modes of subsistence are defined by the tasks involved in obtaining food and how members of society are socially organized to perform these tasks. We can think of each culture's subsistence system as a set of survival strategies developed uniquely to adapt to a particular environment. For example, if we look at video 1 of hunters and gatherers in Alaska, in addition to facing very harsh and extreme climate conditions, they still prefer to live in their country of Dena'ina. Helen who lives in Lime village reminds me of my grandmother who left no stone unturned to teach her new generation ways to survive when environmental and economic conditions are not favorable. The phrase that stands out in this video and that struck me the most is that "it is the duty of today's parents and grandparents to teach the next generation how to survive". Because culture shapes how we see and interact with the environment, different societies may adapt to similar environments in different ways depending on available resources. For most of our history, humans have lived a nomadic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers. About 14,000 years ago, towards the beginning of the Neolithic, humans adopted a more sedentary lifestyle and over time transitioned to a fully agricultural subsistence economy. The shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to dependence on agricultural production is commonly considered one of the most important achievements in human history. After production and consumption comes the concept of exchange. The concept of exchange is hilariously explained by clips from the big bang theory which beautifully exemplify the concept of reciprocity. In my opinion exchange is simply a source of bringing two individuals or a country together and binding them in a relationship, which could be an obligation. Topic 5 is quite interesting because I have never had the time to fully analyze the concept of kinship. All I knew was that I had brothers and sisters and only they are known as my relatives. The rest of the cousins are classified as my relatives. Speaking of the patrilineal system, we Muslims take our father's name as our surname, proper.
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