Subsistence And Change by Garth Massey

Author:Garth Massey [Massey, Garth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000313536
Google: -AeiDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-11T03:42:55+00:00

Relations of Production: A Summing Up

As an economic unit the household involved in agropastoral subsistence production displays three basic conditions which dictate its organization: its size (and potential growth or decline); its ability to draw members of other households into its activities; and the facility with which it can shift labor from one activity to another. Each of these has been demonstrated in the situations of the preceding case studies. They direct the present and future intentions of the household, determine the efficiency with which labor is used, necessitate the mobilization of one institutional practice or another, and clearly distinguish those households that are doing well from those in need of serious adjustment of their circumstances.

Households in most cases can be described as labor poor, with members usually seeing their situation as limited by an inadequate supply of labor. "If I had an older son, I could have camels that would cost nothing to graze in the baadiya and would be shared among my family when I die." "There was so little sorghum harvested because I had no one to help me in the field." "We would like to have goats, but who will watch them?" Such remarks are a reflection of what many people see as their most serious problem: too little help. In most situations, a careful allocation of labor is mandatory for a household to meet its most basic subsistence needs.

Efforts to increase household labor include retaining the services of grown children after marriage or delaying their marriage. Inanayaal is one means of retaining the labor of a daughter, though this may mean waiting to collect her brideprice. Sons are encouraged to continue working on their father's holdings by the promise of a larger inheritance when the father dies and by receiving small portions of their father's property between the time they reach maturity and marry.

Polygyny, too, increases the size of a household, but will not have an appreciable immediate impact on its economic opportunities. New wives do not bring children by a previous marriage with them. A new wife who becomes a new mother will have her labor restricted. Young children put a strain on food resources until they are able to work. An adult woman who has no children will be able to engage in considerable work, but in many years her needs will nearly equal her contributions. Still, polygyny is an important means of increasing household labor.

Engaging in cooperative work groups, drawing on relatives and hiring labor give households opportunities and costs that can be critical to their production system. There are limits to which a household can increase its available labor pool, and the return is often not worth the expenditure. At other times the investment is a good one. There are critical times in the life of a household when it is better, though not immediately economical, to employ others or shift resources to their use. Keeping a farm cultivable, retaining a herd for which it cannot presently care, and turning marketable products over to relatives generally improves a household's economic opportunities at a future time.

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