Economic Systems

Economic System

Economic systems consist of production where we create products and services, consumption

where we consume or use products and services, and exchange where we sell goods and services.

A concept of Marxist almost explains the anthropology’s inquiry field when at the same time

demonstrating a valuable theoretical system for examining the behaviors related to the work. As

per the studies of Karl Marx from 1818 to 1883, production relations and grouping of services

implies that how humans associate themselves with the physical work and how humans

associated themselves socially with one another are confined up well organized in particular and

important manners.

As indicated by Marx and Engels, people consider production modes as a certain way of showing

their life, on behalf of them a certain approach to life. Since people articulate their life, the way

they are, what they thus agree with their production together with what they can produce, and in

what ways they can produce.

A production mode basically is the connection between two elements, first, production forces

and the other is production relations. In production forces, comes our power of labor and

production, production methods, tools, apparatus, technologies, buildings, better land, and raw

material. On the other hand, in production relations, comes our power and control, property,

productive sources of society, laws, supportive work associations, connections among humans

and things, and connections among social classes.

The Big Questions

Now, we will ask the big questions, what, how, and how, and why like what are the 5 production

modes? How are the production modes linked with exchange and consumption? How and why in

contemporary times, consumption, production, and exchange changes?

Part I. Production Modes

Mode of Production is the major technique of creating money in a society. There are five

production modes available: hunting, agriculture, farming and agriculture, pastoralism, and

information age and industrialism.

Hunting: depends upon the foods that are naturally available in the universe. In history, it was the

main mode of production. Nowadays just 250000 humans all around the world use this as their

primary mode of production. This mode of production keeps the equilibrium between resources

and lifestyle. Hunting also termed as diving labor based on age, gender, the property shared,

equality in society, nomadic style, and long term sustainability. Most modern hunters live in

marginal areas for example deserts, circumpolar regions, and tropical rainforests. Their sources

of food comprising of berries, nuts, and different fruits, and vegetables growing on surfaces like

melons, honey, roots, insects, and eggs.

Agriculture: It includes the production of food crops in the fields or gardens with the help of

hand tools. Different types of foods like yams, manioc, bananas, etc. are grown. Production of

crops helps to keep population denser than the hunting. It depends upon growing farm plants in

the fields with the help hand apparatus. These agriculture products are usually replaced by

hunters and traders with pastoralists in the exchange of livestock products. Many thousands of

people all over the globe still practice this mode of production. The most dominant regions of
agriculture are available in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central, Pacific,

and South America along with Islands of the Caribbean.

Pastoralism: this mode depends upon the herd of domestic animals and livestock. These animals

offer more than half of the diet of the group. People who use pastoralism, they trade with

different groups to obtain goods and foods which they cannot produce. They keep on moving

their livestock new pastureland for the purpose of sustainability. This mode of production offers

milk products and milk, infrequent slaughtering animals for their meat. They have developed

sustainable economies in those environments where resources are in deficit.

Farming: This mode relies on the intensive production strategy. They require more labor,

utilization of fertilizers, water supply control, and utilization of animals. Their settlement is

permanent. The density of the population is greater than any other production mode. The first

systems of agriculture were noted from the Neolithic period which started almost 12000 years

ago in Iraq. Farming depends upon the crop growing in the permanent fields with the help of

irrigation, flowering, and fertilizers.

Information and Industrialism: the impacts of civil war led to industrialism development. With

the development of communication, transportation, ranching, farming, and mining increased the

rate of production. It depends upon the production of the goods by means of the employment of

mass in commercial operations as well as a business utilizing manipulation, creation,

management, and information transfer with the help of electronic media. It started soon after the

half of the nineteenth-century contrast to those production modes which were available in the

world a long time ago.

Part II. Modes of Consumption and Exchange

There are two main consumptions modes, minimalism, and consumerism.

Crossing the field: linkage of labor's gender with the growth and diet. Usually, males are taller

when compares to females, but the variation degree is in the culture. Genetics impact height and

it is also impacted by the culture and environment by nourishment.

Modes of Exchange: there are three exchange modes; balanced exchange, redistribution, and

unbalanced exchange. Many aspects are involved in the unbalanced exchange including

permanent and impermanent. For example, the majority of the markets in China are female.

Part III. Globalization and Changing Economies

This has impacted the attraction of western products, impacts on privatization, ecstasy and

international channels, credit cards, and so on.

How are production modes linked to Consumption and Exchange?

They are linked through non-market and market-based systems. In the hunters, consumption

comes in minimalist, and exchange comes in personalized and balanced exchange. Industrial and

agricultural modes of production comes in consumerist where profit dominates connections of

societies: an unbalanced exchange. Anthropologists compare consumption modes nonrenewable

resources, information technology, and industrialism. Whereas in the capitalist system of the

farm, land available is not equal and there are income gaps among the people with lands and

people without lands. Hunting societies demonstrate minimalist consumption mode. Societies of

industrial capitalists represent consumerist consumption mode. In economies of the non-market

majority of the consumers either produces products for themselves or buy from others. In market

economies consumption is mainly depersonalized by the international mass population.

Exchange modes agree to the consumption and production modes. In hunting societies, there is a

balanced mode of exchange, with the purpose of maintaining the price of products traded equally

many times. In the balanced mode of exchange, people with social connections among one

another and the connection is strengthened by constantly trading.

In the market exchange, the purpose of the marketing incomes dominates the connections of

societies, people who exchange, may be don’t know each other, don’t have any social

connections.

How are Consumption, Production, and Exchange changes in modern times?

They are changing through economic globalization, high demand for western products in non-

western markets, replacements of crops with cash crops for personal consumption and creating

risk for nutrition, increase in the personal debt globally, and the majority of the groups are

turning back to the traditional patterns. Exchange, Consumption, and production are changing

internationally because of economic globalization. There is a high demand for western products

like steel axes in the non-western markets, non-industrialized market goods have to be purchased

a fact that drives individuals to work in exchanging of cash in order to purchase things.