Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Original Affluent Society


From looking at some of my Friday Flowers this term

Maybe these wrinkles are the reason I've had painting difficulties
This trimester, I'm taking Introduction to Anthropology, Indo-European Folktales, and French 103. I'm really enjoying all my classes; my professors are good. I've been painting more, since more of my brushes and watercolor paints are up here for the spring term. I'm pretty pleased with some of my efforts, if I do say so myself. I haven't been as happy with some of the stuff I've tried to do on larger paper--maybe that has something to do with how rippled the paper has become...I should probably try to use up this block before it gets any older and sadder.

I learned something interesting in Anthropology today. We've been reading The Dobe Ju/'hoansi by Richard Lee for one of our class readings. It's about Richard Lee's ethnographic work with a group of people in the Kalahari desert in Africa. Along with his ethnographic work, he also collected scientific data about number of calories, types of foods consumed, and hours worked. Interestingly, he found that only about 20 hours per week were spent on getting food. When he added in housework, tool repair, and other types of work, (work that we in Western society would not count as part of a traditional 40hr work-week job), that number came to about 42 hours of work per week. Calorically, the Ju/'hoan diet was appropriately meeting their needs for nutrition and diversity. This was a bit strange to me, because it's the opposite of what most people probably expect. Marshall Sahlins also wrote an essay further exploring the topic of the hunter-gatherer society's work week. I'm not really sure what it means, but it was still interesting.
Can you guess this landmark?

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