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 **Main reading:** Palmer (2020); Kimmerer (2011)
+===== A story of yams =====
+People of Auhelawa grow most of their own food, the most important of which is //wateya// (//Dioscorea alata//), a species of yam.
+| *ʻWateya* are | During the hungry time (*tagwala*), people eat |
+| - planted after Christmas\\  - tended carefully for seven months\\  - harvested all at once\\  \\  People eat as little as possible of the harvest\\  \\  The best is reserved for gifts | - sweet potato\\   - cassava\\   - *halutu*, another species of yam\\   - banana\\   - breadfruit\\   - fish\\   - greens\\   - pineapples (especially around Christmas)\\   - large boiled chestnuts\\   - wild mushrooms\\   - pumpkin\\   - sometimes taro |
+\\
+OK, a lot of food. But, for Auhelawa, it’s not “real food,” because //ʻwateya// is real food.
+During //tagwala//, people are “hungry” because they are only eating “bad food.”
+===== Natural causes? =====
+Over history, a number of thinkers have tried to explain people’s differences by saying they are caused by climate.
+  * In the //Politics//, Aristotle states that people living in colder climates are incapable of governing themselves (Aristotle [350BC] 1885, 218)
+  * Ibn Khaldun, Arab historian, argued that the most advanced civilizations lay in temperate climates and not in tropical ones (Siddiqi and Oliver 2005).
+  * Montesquieu ([1748] 1777, 296–98) says that people of “southern” climates are indolent physically and mentally, and thus live by traditional rules that they never think about changing.
+  * In Boas’s time, Ellen Churchill Semple and Ellsworth Huntington argued that all cultures were products of their environmental geography (see Wallis 1926).
+Many of these arguments are sophisticated and appear to be bolstered by evidence, but they all sound the same.
+===== Boasian cultural determinism and the environment =====
+  * Culture determines how people adapt
+  * Two cultures adapt to the same environment in different ways
+    * Hopi and Navajo peoples live in the same arid landscape, but have completely different ways of obtaining food to sustain themselves (Lowie 1917, 50–51)
+  * Nature limits what people can do, but less than you might think
+    * Tubetube island in Papua New Guinea is a low-lying atoll and has little topsoil for making extensive food gardens.
+    * Yet it supports a larger population than its gardens can sustain.
+    * The island is rich in clay that can used to produce pots; people on Tubetube trade their pots with partners on larger islands for all the food they need (Macintyre 1980).
+===== There are many different types of adaptation =====
+==== Foraging or “hunting and gathering” ====
+Based on the collection of wild foods and game (fish and meat).
+==== Pastoralism ====
+Based on the tending of herds of domesticated animals, e.g. cows, reindeer, sheep, camels, yaks.
+==== Horticulture ====
+The cultivation of several different food crops in small plots and usually using simple hand tools.
+==== And one more… ====
+===== Agriculture =====
+Agriculture is often distinguished from horticulture by the size and scale of production, thanks to the use of specialized steel tools and draught animals, if not machines.
+  * Peasant agriculture is a mixed type in which families produce their own food, and sell surpluses of commodity crops.
+  * Industrialized agriculture is the intensive production of commodity crops like rice, corn, wheat specifically for sale and usually for use in the industrial manufacture of food.
+  * Peasants are partly integrated into a market economy and specialized division of labor. Industrial farms feed people in societies with a complex division of labor, and today, capitalist, market economies
+See Eriksen (2015, 255–56) for more information.
+===== Are these types of adaptation absolute? =====
+No, most societies are a mix of all of them. We can say that one type dominates, but it does not mean it excludes other possibilities
+All of these types have fuzzy boundaries anyway, so we can never be absolutely sure whether a society is primarily based on one type or not.
+The difference between horticulture and agriculture is supposedly technological, but it really is marked by a change in the social system.
+===== Hunter-gatherers: The West’s noble/savage =====
+=== Contradictory stereotypes of foragers ===
+  * They’re starving; and they have a naturally healthy diet
+  * They forage and hunt because they don’t know how to do anything else; and they are in harmony with nature
+=== The West’s favorite prop for any debate about life ===
+  * Hunter-gatherers are “our contemporary ancestors” (Some anthropologists say this about every indigenous society; viz. Chagnon 1983, 214).
 ===== References and further reading =====
+Aristotle. (350BC) 1885. //The Politics//. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Oxford: Claredon Press. https://archive.org/details/politicsofaristo01arisuoft/page/218/mode/2up.
+Chagnon, Napolean. 1983. //Ya̦nomamö: The Fierce People//. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=MPArAAAAYAAJ.
+Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2015. //Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology//. 4th ed. London: Pluto Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183p184.2.
 Kimmerer, Robin. 2011. “Restoration and Reciprocity: The Contributions of Traditional Ecological Knowledge.” In //Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration: Integrating Science, Nature, and Culture//, edited by Dave Egan, Evan E. Hjerpe, and Jesse Abrams, 257–76. Washington, DC: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-039-2_18.
+Lowie, Robert Harry. 1917. “Culture and the environment.” In //Culture and ethnology//, 47–65. New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie. http://archive.org/details/cultureethnology00lowiiala.
+Macintyre, Martha. 1980. “Changing Paths : An Historical Ethnography of the Traders of Tubetube.” Ph.D. thesis, Canberra, A.C.T.: Australian National University. https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/7534.
+Montesquieu, Baron de. (1748) 1777. //Complete Works, Vol. 1 (The Spirit of Laws)//. London: T. Evans & W. Davis. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/montesquieu-complete-works-vol-1-the-spirit-of-laws#lf0171-01_label_1040.
 Palmer, Christian T. 2020. “Culture and Sustainability: Environmental Anthropology in the Anthropocene.” In //Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology//, edited by Thomas McIlwraith, Nina Brown, and Laura T. de González, 357–81. Arlington, Va.: The American Anthropological Association. https://pressbooks.pub/perspectives/chapter/culture-and-sustainability-environmental-anthropology-in-the-anthropocene/.
+Siddiqi, Akhtar H., and John E. Oliver. 2005. “Determinism, Climatic.” In //Encyclopedia of World Climatology//, edited by John E. Oliver, 333–36. Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3266-8_67.
+Wallis, W. D. 1926. “Geographical Environment and Culture.” //Social Forces// 4 (4): 702. https://doi.org/10.2307/3004448.