Brian Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856267
- eISBN:
- 9780824873059
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856267.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Feasting emerges from the pages of this book as far more than gustatory and social diversions from daily work routines. Instead, feasting in tribal societies plays a critical role in village social, ...
More
Feasting emerges from the pages of this book as far more than gustatory and social diversions from daily work routines. Instead, feasting in tribal societies plays a critical role in village social, political, and economic dynamics. Alliances are brokered by feasts, debts created, political battles waged, and large amounts of food are produced. A main argument of the book is that feasting has been one of the most important forces in creating cultural changes since the end of the Paleolithic. Enormous pressures are created by feasts and their promoters to increase food and prestige item production to achieve social and political goals. The domestication of plants and animals probably resulted from such feasting pressures. This volume documents the dynamics of traditional feasting and the ways in which the bewildering array of feasts benefits hosts. It argues that people’s abilities to marry, reproduce, defend themselves against threats and attacks, and to defend their interests in village politics all depend on their ability to engage in feasting networks. As such feasting in these societies has important survival and fitness consequences. To be excluded from feasting networks means to be subject to attack from social predators, in some cases leading to enslavement.Less
Feasting emerges from the pages of this book as far more than gustatory and social diversions from daily work routines. Instead, feasting in tribal societies plays a critical role in village social, political, and economic dynamics. Alliances are brokered by feasts, debts created, political battles waged, and large amounts of food are produced. A main argument of the book is that feasting has been one of the most important forces in creating cultural changes since the end of the Paleolithic. Enormous pressures are created by feasts and their promoters to increase food and prestige item production to achieve social and political goals. The domestication of plants and animals probably resulted from such feasting pressures. This volume documents the dynamics of traditional feasting and the ways in which the bewildering array of feasts benefits hosts. It argues that people’s abilities to marry, reproduce, defend themselves against threats and attacks, and to defend their interests in village politics all depend on their ability to engage in feasting networks. As such feasting in these societies has important survival and fitness consequences. To be excluded from feasting networks means to be subject to attack from social predators, in some cases leading to enslavement.
Kim Sterelny
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- April 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197531389
- eISBN:
- 9780197531419
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197531389.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
No human now gathers for himself or herself the essential resources for life: food, shelter, clothing and the like. Humans are obligate co-operators, and this has been true for tens of thousands of ...
More
No human now gathers for himself or herself the essential resources for life: food, shelter, clothing and the like. Humans are obligate co-operators, and this has been true for tens of thousands of years; probably much longer. In this regard, humans are very unusual. In the living world more generally, cooperation outside the family is rare. Though it can be very profitable, it is also very risky, as cooperation makes an agent vulnerable to incompetence and cheating. This book presents a new picture of the emergence of cooperation in our lineage, developing through four fairly distinct phases. Our trajectory began from a baseline that was probably fairly similar to living great apes, who cooperate, but in fairly minimal ways. As adults, they rarely depend on others when the outcome really matters. This book suggests that cooperation began to be more important for humans through an initial phase of cooperative foraging generating immediate returns from collective action in small mobile bands. This established in our lineage about 1.8 million years ago, perhaps earlier. Over the rest of the Pleistocene, cooperation became more extended in its social scale, with forms of cooperation between bands gradually establishing, and in spatial and temporal scale too, with various forms of reciprocation becoming important. The final phase was the emergence of cooperation in large scale, hierarchical societies in the Holocene, beginning about 12,000 years ago. This picture is nested in a reading of the archaeological and ethnographic record, and twinned to an account of the gradual elaboration of cultural learning in our lineage, making cooperation both more profitable and more stable.Less
No human now gathers for himself or herself the essential resources for life: food, shelter, clothing and the like. Humans are obligate co-operators, and this has been true for tens of thousands of years; probably much longer. In this regard, humans are very unusual. In the living world more generally, cooperation outside the family is rare. Though it can be very profitable, it is also very risky, as cooperation makes an agent vulnerable to incompetence and cheating. This book presents a new picture of the emergence of cooperation in our lineage, developing through four fairly distinct phases. Our trajectory began from a baseline that was probably fairly similar to living great apes, who cooperate, but in fairly minimal ways. As adults, they rarely depend on others when the outcome really matters. This book suggests that cooperation began to be more important for humans through an initial phase of cooperative foraging generating immediate returns from collective action in small mobile bands. This established in our lineage about 1.8 million years ago, perhaps earlier. Over the rest of the Pleistocene, cooperation became more extended in its social scale, with forms of cooperation between bands gradually establishing, and in spatial and temporal scale too, with various forms of reciprocation becoming important. The final phase was the emergence of cooperation in large scale, hierarchical societies in the Holocene, beginning about 12,000 years ago. This picture is nested in a reading of the archaeological and ethnographic record, and twinned to an account of the gradual elaboration of cultural learning in our lineage, making cooperation both more profitable and more stable.
Brian Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856267
- eISBN:
- 9780824873059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856267.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This introduction discusses why feasts are important to study for both archaeologists and ethnographers, especially at the transegalitarian level. It sets out the major concepts of transegalitarian ...
More
This introduction discusses why feasts are important to study for both archaeologists and ethnographers, especially at the transegalitarian level. It sets out the major concepts of transegalitarian societies, aggrandizers, feast definitions, feast types, functions and benefits of feasts, and feasting characteristics. It reviews some of the major works previously published that discuss traditional feasting in Southeast Asia. Explanations of feasts from different theoretical schools are presented together with the political ecology framework used in this study. Important issues are highlighted and methods used in original fieldwork are presented.Less
This introduction discusses why feasts are important to study for both archaeologists and ethnographers, especially at the transegalitarian level. It sets out the major concepts of transegalitarian societies, aggrandizers, feast definitions, feast types, functions and benefits of feasts, and feasting characteristics. It reviews some of the major works previously published that discuss traditional feasting in Southeast Asia. Explanations of feasts from different theoretical schools are presented together with the political ecology framework used in this study. Important issues are highlighted and methods used in original fieldwork are presented.
Brian Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856267
- eISBN:
- 9780824873059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856267.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The villages in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, host some of the most lavish feasts in Southeast Asia, especially for funerals or memorials. In addition megaliths were raised for the wealthiest deceased ...
More
The villages in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, host some of the most lavish feasts in Southeast Asia, especially for funerals or memorials. In addition megaliths were raised for the wealthiest deceased family members. There is also considerable variability in economics, sociopolitical organization, and feasting within the Torajan area. This chapter discusses and tries to explain some of this variability, from low level transegalitarian villages in poor mountainous areas to the proto- or real chiefdom levels of the valley bottoms where paddy rice produces major surpluses. The corporate kindred with its ancestral house as the center of ritual and feasting activities is a distinctive feature of Torajan societies. Slavery was very developed, and secondary burials were strongly associated with elites in order to provide enough time to amass as much wealth as possible for proper funeral feasts. Why funeral feasts feature so prominently in Southeast Asia tribal societies is discussed. Other feasts were hosted by households, reciprocal work groups, lineages, corporate kindreds, villages, districts, and village alliances.Less
The villages in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, host some of the most lavish feasts in Southeast Asia, especially for funerals or memorials. In addition megaliths were raised for the wealthiest deceased family members. There is also considerable variability in economics, sociopolitical organization, and feasting within the Torajan area. This chapter discusses and tries to explain some of this variability, from low level transegalitarian villages in poor mountainous areas to the proto- or real chiefdom levels of the valley bottoms where paddy rice produces major surpluses. The corporate kindred with its ancestral house as the center of ritual and feasting activities is a distinctive feature of Torajan societies. Slavery was very developed, and secondary burials were strongly associated with elites in order to provide enough time to amass as much wealth as possible for proper funeral feasts. Why funeral feasts feature so prominently in Southeast Asia tribal societies is discussed. Other feasts were hosted by households, reciprocal work groups, lineages, corporate kindreds, villages, districts, and village alliances.
Brian Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856267
- eISBN:
- 9780824873059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856267.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The most active and still vibrant megalithic tradition in Southeast Asia is probably found in Sumba. Given the importance of megaliths and their interpretation in prehistoric archaeology, and given ...
More
The most active and still vibrant megalithic tradition in Southeast Asia is probably found in Sumba. Given the importance of megaliths and their interpretation in prehistoric archaeology, and given the intimate association of megaliths and feasting in the Torajan area, we focused considerable attention on the feasting traditions of Sumba, especially as they related to megaliths. The megaliths are also associated spatially and behaviorally with ancestral corporate lineage houses. The logic of megalithic construction is discussed together with benefits sought by hosts for sponsoring feasts. The range of major feasting types is described.Less
The most active and still vibrant megalithic tradition in Southeast Asia is probably found in Sumba. Given the importance of megaliths and their interpretation in prehistoric archaeology, and given the intimate association of megaliths and feasting in the Torajan area, we focused considerable attention on the feasting traditions of Sumba, especially as they related to megaliths. The megaliths are also associated spatially and behaviorally with ancestral corporate lineage houses. The logic of megalithic construction is discussed together with benefits sought by hosts for sponsoring feasts. The range of major feasting types is described.
Kim Sterelny
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- April 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197531389
- eISBN:
- 9780197531419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197531389.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
This chapter has three interrelated aims: to explain the origins of settled society and farming; the relationship between settled society and the emergence of large and persistent inequalities and ...
More
This chapter has three interrelated aims: to explain the origins of settled society and farming; the relationship between settled society and the emergence of large and persistent inequalities and the surprising stability of cooperation despite the fact that farming societies tend to become increasingly unequal. That is surprising because of the strength of egalitarian forager norms in the cultures from which farming emergences, because these initially unequal societies have not yet established coercive institutions controlled by elites and because the unequal distribution of resources is clearly against the interests of those outside the elite groups. The chapter offers an account of how elite claims for privilege have initial credibility, and of the erosion of options of collective resistance.Less
This chapter has three interrelated aims: to explain the origins of settled society and farming; the relationship between settled society and the emergence of large and persistent inequalities and the surprising stability of cooperation despite the fact that farming societies tend to become increasingly unequal. That is surprising because of the strength of egalitarian forager norms in the cultures from which farming emergences, because these initially unequal societies have not yet established coercive institutions controlled by elites and because the unequal distribution of resources is clearly against the interests of those outside the elite groups. The chapter offers an account of how elite claims for privilege have initial credibility, and of the erosion of options of collective resistance.
