Date: Tue, 9 Apr 96 11:36:34 GMT
Subject: Re: TREE article



The passage below strikes me as odd.

I think perhaps it is because it seems to be asking the question
"why do individual men hunt ?" , which just seems to be an odd
question.

I think the reason I see this question as basically odd, is that
it is essentially non Marxist ( shock ! horror ! ). The reason 
I feel this is that it is not starting with what I see to be 
the basic unit of production, the group, and working to the 
individual, but the other way round.

Under feudalism there are in a way two basic units of production :
the familly and the village. Under capitalism, there is the factory.
For these modes of production, these are the places we have to start.
Surely, for hunter gathers, we have to start with the group ?

Why do men hunt ? I would hazard a guess that without hunting, the
basic diet can stop the group starving, but in the long term, it
would lead to unacceptably high levels of disease and malnutrition.
The group can only survive and prosper when it harvests at the top
of the food chain, although it could probably subsist for months at
a time without particularly successful hunting.

Any status individual men got from this flows from this function 
within the group.


> 
> Why do men hunt?
> 	The economics of defense create a potential social benefit to
> foragers who acquire resources too expensive for anyone to
> monopolize.  Since non-acquirers can expect to benefit, they have a
> direct interest in monitoring and exploiting the success of acquirers
> targeting such items.  A forager attracts favorable attention by
> taking resources that many can expect to consume.18 
> 
> 	This is an alternative to the long standing hypothesis that men hunt
> to provision their wives and offspring.  Men's foraging may often be
> mating rather than parenting effort.20  Because of the marked
> differences in the defendability of various resource types foraging
> can serve different goals: either feeding one's "own" or attracting
> positive attention from potential allies and mates.  Those seeking
> the former should pursue defendable resources, but favor companions
> who target items that are widely shared.  Where men have more to gain
> from allies and additional mates than from contributing to the
> welfare of wife and offspring, they should pursue widely shared foods
> that earn them favorable social attention.  When additional mates are
> scarce, mens's foraging patterns may be shaped by mate guarding.21 
> 

Adam.

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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