MODES OF PRODUCTION

An economy is a system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources; economics is the study of such
systems. Economists tend to focus on modern nations and capitalist systems, while anthropologists have broadened
understanding of economic principles by gathering data on nonindustrial economies. Economic anthropology studies
economics from a comparative perspective (see Gudeman, ed. 1998; Plattner, ed. 1989; Sahlins 2004; Wilk 1996). A
mode of production is a way of organizing production—“a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to
wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge” (Wolf 1982, p. 75). In the capitalist
mode of production, money buys labor power, and there is a social gap between the people (bosses and workers)
involved in the production process. By contrast, in nonindustrial societies, labor is not usually bought but is given as
a social obligation. In such a kin-based mode of production, mutual aid in production is one among many
expressions of a larger web of social relations. Societies representing each of the adaptive strategies just discussed
(e.g., foraging) tend to have a similar mode of production. Differences in the mode of production within a given
strategy may reflect the differences in environments, target resources, or cultural traditions (Kelly 1995). Thus, a
foraging mode of production may be based on individual hunters or teams, depending on whether the game is a
solitary or a herd animal. Gathering is usually more individualistic than hunting, although collecting teams may
assemble when abundant resources ripen and must be harvested quickly. Fishing may be done alone (as in ice
fishing or spearfishing) or in crews (as with open-sea fishing and hunting of sea mammals).

Production in Nonindustrial Societies

Although some kind of division of economic labor related to age and gender is a cultural universal, the specific tasks
assigned to each sex and to people of different ages vary. Many horticultural societies assign a major productive role
to women, but some make men’s work primary (see the chapter on gender for more on this). Similarly, among
pastoralists, men generally tend large animals, but in some cultures women do the milking. Jobs accomplished
through teamwork in some cultivating societies are done by smaller groups or individuals working over a longer
period of time in others. The Betsileo of Madagascar have two stages of teamwork in rice cultivation: transplanting
and harvesting. Team size varies with the size of the field. Both transplanting and harvesting feature a traditional
division of labor by age and gender that is well known to all Betsileo and is repeated across the generations. The
first job in transplanting is the trampling of a previously tiled flooded field by young men driving cattle, in order to
mix earth and water. They bring cattle to trample the fields just before transplanting. The young men yell at and beat
the cattle, striving to drive them into a frenzy so that they will trample the fields properly. Trampling breaks up
clumps of earth and mixes irrigation water with soil to form a smooth mud into which women transplant seedlings.
Once the tramplers leave the field, older men arrive. With their spades, they break up the clumps that the cattle
missed. Meanwhile, the owner and other adults uproot rice seedlings and bring them to the field. At harvest time,
four or five months later, young men cut the rice off the stalks. Young women carry it to the clearing above the field.
Older women arrange and stack it. The oldest men and women then stand on the stack, stomping and compacting it.
Three days later, young men thresh the rice, beating the stalks against a rock to remove the grain. Older men then
attack the stalks with sticks to make sure all the grains have fallen off. Most of the other tasks in Betsileo rice
cultivation are done by individual owners and their immediate families. All household members help weed the rice
field. It’s a man’s job to till the fields with a spade or a plow. Individual men repair the irrigation and drainage
systems and the earth walls that separate one plot from the next. Among other agriculturalists, however, repairing
the irrigation system is a task involving teamwork and communal labor.

Means of Production
In nonindustrial societies, there is a more intimate relationship between the worker and the means of production than
there is in industrial nations. Means, or factors, of production include land (territory), labor, and technology.

Land
Among foragers, ties between people and land were less permanent than among food producers. Although many
bands had territories, the boundaries usually were not marked, and there was no way they could be enforced. The
hunter’s stake in an animal being stalked or hit with a poisoned arrow was more important than where the animal
finally died. A person acquired the rights to use a band’s territory by being born in the band or by joining it through
a tie of kinship, marriage, or fictive kinship. In Botswana in southern Africa, Ju/’hoansi San women, whose work
provided over half the food, habitually used specific tracts of berry-bearing trees. However, when a woman changed
bands, she immediately acquired a new gathering area. Among food producers, rights to the means of production
also come through kinship and marriage. Descent groups (groups whose members claim common ancestry) are
common among nonindustrial food producers, and those who descend from the founder share the group’s territory
and resources. If the adaptive strategy is horticulture, the estate includes garden and fallow land for shifting
cultivation. As members of a descent group, pastoralists have access to animals to start their own herds, to grazing
land, to garden land, and to other means of production. Labor, Tools, and Specialization Like land, labor is a means
of production. In nonindustrial societies, access to both land and labor comes through social links such as kinship,
marriage, and descent. Mutual aid in production is merely one aspect of ongoing social relations that are expressed
on many other occasions. Nonindustrial societies contrast with industrial nations in regard to another means of
production: technology. Manufacturing is often linked to age and gender. Women may weave and men may make
pottery or vice versa. Most people of a particular age and gender share the technical knowledge associated with that
age and gender. If married women customarily make baskets, all or most married women know how to make
baskets. Neither technology nor technical knowledge is as specialized as it is in states. However, some tribal
societies do promote specialization. Among the Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil (Figure 7.3), for instance,
certain villages manufacture clay pots and others make hammocks. They don’t specialize, as one might suppose,
because certain raw materials happen to be available near particular villages. Clay suitable for pots is widely
available. Everyone knows how to make pots, but not everybody does so. Craft specialization reflects the social and
political environment rather than the natural environment. Such specialization promotes trade, which is the first step
in creating an alliance with enemy villages (Chagnon 1997). Specialization contributes to keeping the peace,
although it has not prevented inter village warfare.

Alienation in Industrial Economies

There are some significant contrasts between industrial and nonindustrial economies. When factory workers produce
for sale and for their employer’s profit, rather than for their own use, they may be alienated from the items they
make. Such alienation means they don’t feel strong pride in or personal identification with their products. They see
their product as belonging to someone else, not to the man or woman whose labor actually produced it. In
nonindustrial societies, by contrast, people usually see their work through from start to finish and have a sense of
accomplishment in the product. The fruits of their labor are their own, rather than someone else’s. In nonindustrial
societies, the economic relation between coworkers is just one aspect of a more general social relation. They aren’t
just coworkers but kin, in-laws, or celebrants in the same ritual. In industrial nations, people don’t usually work with
relatives and neighbors. If coworkers are friends, the personal relationship usually develops out of their common
employment rather than being based on a previous association. Thus, industrial workers have impersonal relations
with their products, coworkers, and employers. People sell their labor for cash, and the economic domain stands
apart from ordinary social life. In nonindustrial societies, however, the relations of production, distribution, and
consumption are social relations with economic aspects. Economy is not a separate entity but is embedded in the
society.

A Case of Industrial Alienation

For decades, the government of Malaysia has promoted export-oriented industry, allowing transnational companies
to install labor-intensive manufacturing operations in rural Malaysia. The industrialization of Malaysia is part of a
global strategy. In search of cheaper labor, corporations headquartered in Japan, Western Europe, and the United
States have been moving labor-intensive factories to developing countries. Malaysia has hundreds of Japanese and
American subsidiaries, which mainly produce garments, foodstuffs, and electronics components. In electronics
plants in rural Malaysia, thousands of young women from peasant families now assemble microchips and
microcomponents for transistors and capacitors. Aihwa Ong (1987) did a study of electronics assembly workers in
an area where 85 percent of the workers were young unmarried females from nearby villages. Ong found that, unlike
village women, female factory workers had to cope with a rigid work routine and constant supervision by men. The
discipline that factories value was being taught in local schools, where uniforms helped prepare girls for the factory
dress code. Village women wear loose, flowing tunics, sarongs, and sandals, but factory workers had to don tight
overalls and heavy rubber gloves, in which they felt constrained. Assembling electronics components requires
precise, concentrated labor. Demanding and depleting, labor in these factories illustrates the separation of
intellectual and manual activity— the alienation that Karl Marx considered the defining feature of industrial work.
One woman said about her bosses, “They exhaust us very much, as if they do not think that we too are human
beings” (Ong 1987, p. 202). Nor does factory work bring women a substantial financial reward, given low wages,
job uncertainty, and family claims on wages. Young women typically work just a few years. Production quotas, three
daily shifts, overtime, and surveillance take their toll in mental and physical exhaustion. One response to factory
relations of production has been spirit possession (factory women are possessed by spirits). Ong interprets this
phenomenon as the women’s unconscious protest against labor discipline and male control of the industrial setting.
Sometimes possession takes the form of mass hysteria. Spirits have simultaneously invaded as many as 120 factory
workers. Weretigers (the Malay equivalent of the werewolf) arrive to avenge the construction of a factory on
aboriginal burial grounds. Disturbed earth and grave spirits swarm on the shop floor. First the women see the spirits;
then their bodies are invaded. The women become violent and scream abuses. The weretigers send the women into
sobbing, laughing, and shrieking. To deal with possession, factories employ local medicine men, who sacrifice
chickens and goats to fend off the spirits. This solution works only some of the time; possession still goes on.
Factory women continue to act as vehicles to express their own frustrations and the anger of avenging ghosts. Ong
argues that spirit possession expresses anguish at, and resistance to, capitalist relations of production. By engaging
in this form of rebellion, however, factory women avoid a direct confrontation with the source of their distress. Ong
concludes that spirit possession, while expressing repressed resentment, doesn’t do much to modify factory
conditions. (Other tactics, such as unionization, would do more.) Spirit possession may even help maintain the
current system by operating as a safety valve for accumulated tensions.