John W. Bennett

The ecological transition : cultural anthropology and human adaptation

Written during the height of the ecology movement, The Ecological Transition is a stunning interdisciplinary work. It combines anthropology, ecology, and sociology to formulate an understanding of cultural-environmental relationships. While anthropologists have been studying relationships between humans and the physical environment for a very long time, only in the last thirty years have questions inherent in these relationships broadened beyond description and classifi cation. For example, the concept of environment has been extended beyond the physical into the social.

Canal Irrigation and Local Social Organization [and Comments and Reply]

Theory linking labor inputs of irrigation agriculture to social organization is briefly reviewed. Labor input is distinguished into five tasks: construction, maintenance, allocation, conflict resolution, and organization of ritual. A sample of world communities is canvassed in search of structural variation. A rationale for studying these phenomena in a local, rather than a society-wide, context is presented. Types of ties of the locality with the larger system are explored. Several propositions about pervasive external linkages with local phenomena are presented. Millons results, showing no relationship between size of irrigation system and centralization, are challenged. It is found that often irrigation management roles are embedded in other socially powerful roles rather than forming part of a specialized bureaucracy. Conditions for role embeddedness are explored.

Food and Culture in Southern Illinois--A Preliminary Report

G enesis. Scientific examination of food habits in American rural communities seems to date from the post-World War I period, when a number of modest studies emanated from agricultural colleges and rural sociology departments of state universities.2 These studies emphasized the necessity for modifying cooking techniques and food-choices for dietary improvement, and suggested practical techniques for that purpose. This same tradition persisted in the later attempts of various government agencies, particularly those associated with the wide-scale activities of the Department of Agriculture. Thus NYA has experimented with model cooking projects, Farm Security with garden and canning instruction, WPA with school lunch programs. The Consumer Purchases Studies of the Department of Agriculturure represent an elaborate extension of this type of research.3 A second approach to the study of food habits can be seen in the various laboratory studies of the experimental modification of diet in controlled groups, by students of social and child psychology.4 In many of these ex-

A Basic Demographic Unit [and Comments and Reply]

In common with other patrilineal band societies, the Australian dialectical tribe is a nonpolitical product of the system of face-to-face interactions characteristic at this economic level. The components of the density of communication, explored in another place, explain the cellular nature of the relatively homogeneous linguistic communities which are recognized by the natives as tribal units. The optimum or equilibrium population for such dialectical tribes in Australia statistically approximates 500 persons. Data are here presented to indicate that when such systems are disturbed, through fragmentation resulting from the introduction of new initiatory ceremonies, systematic forces restore these units to their optimum numbers with the passage of time. These are self-defining units, and they provide a basic demographic unit, called the Z-tribe, as a scale interval for measuring the effect of other social phenomena. With multivariant analysis this scale can be extended to measure the impact of various levels of political and social organization as well as patterns of face-to-face interaction based upon differing cultural and environmental variables. Appendices include some examples in which the Z-tribe scale could be usefully employed for further detailed analyses.

Reciprocal Economic Exchanges among North American Agricultural Operators

T HIS PAPER concerns the custom of exchanging labor, services, and goods practiced by North American agricultural operators. The existence ofthese forms of exchange in rural areas is commonplace knowledge, although surprisingly few serious tudies have appeared. The objective of the paper is to provide an analysis of the social and economic functions ofa typical case of these exchanges, and to point out some theoretical implications for economic anthropology.

Communes and communitarianism

The social ills of our time are compounded of many things: they defy simple analysis and invite polemic. There are classic contradictions in the record: the increasing size of our organizations and the impersonality and irresponsibility of authority, clashes with our traditions of individual liberty leading to escalating assertions on both sides-and strong feelings of alienation and loss of identity. In the 1960s self-assertion had a brave and nostalgic quality, as people moved by the thousands into little groups, seeking autonomy and identity in their occupations, sex, books, drugs, crafts, religion, and recreation. By the 1970s the increasingly strident demands of their members for the right to do what they want made it seem that American society (and certainly British and to an increasing extent every industrial society) consisted entirely of people presenting nonnegotiable demands with no regard for the scarcity principle or the rights of others. Vine deLoria Jr. exemplifies the moods: his assertion of group autonomy for the Amerinds in the 1960s was an act of forthright liberalism; by the 1970s his proposals for a new federated America with absolute guarantees for minority group autonomy had an anarchic, anti-social sound. (Is there any such thing as American society?)

Food and Social Status in a Rural Society

In a particular rural-to-urban, sacred-secular change, one of the transitional features is the development of a status system based upon economic position, stimulated by the desire for security in an insecure economy. One of the important symbols of status, and of aspiration for higher status, is food. Its psychological and symbolic functions in the status-prestige structure of an Ohio riverbottoms culture are analyzed in detail.

Approaches of the Japanese Innovator to Cultural and Technical Change

EUROPEAN nations experienced modernization as part of a gradual historical development from feudal society through nationhood and the industrial revolution. Nonliterate tribal societies have undergone related changes as a consequence of colonialization and economic exploitation by the West. In most cases change in these societies has taken the form of a haphazard transition, with accompanying disharmonies in rate and scale as measured by the classic European evolution. Non-Western civilized societies, like Japan, commenced their transformation to modern industrial nationhood from stages of relative political and economic complexity, and with varying degrees and kinds of prior association with Western nations.

The America-educated Japanese, I: The Student in America: Theory; Background; Images

light on how these images form and change in the course of their experience in America and in Japan. The analysis is based upon a study of Japanese students on American university campuses, and a companion study of returned students in Japan.’ Within the total research program, images were only one of the problems studied. In its most general terms, the research was directed primarily toward the analysis of study abroad as an instance of intercultural experience. Apart from its theoretical importance for the study of culture contact and change, intercultural experience is of critical significance in international relations today, characterized as they are not only by the impact from afar of ideas and institutions but also by the direct personal contact of foreigners with every level of the home population. THE NATURE OF THE SUBJECTS

The Japanese character

George A. De Vos. Socialization for Achievement: Essays on the Cultural Psychology of the Japanese. With Contributions by Hiroshi Wagatsuma, William Caudill, and Keiichi Mizushima. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. xv + 612 pp. Illustrations, tables, figures, appendixes, bibliography, and index.