Abstract
A fact of life for farmers, hunter-gatherers, and fishermen in the rural parts of the world are that crops fail, wild resources become scarce, and winds discourage fishing. In this article we approach subsistence risk from the perspective of “coexistence thinking,” the simultaneous application of natural and supernatural causal models to explain subsistence success and failure. In southwestern Madagascar, the ecological world is characterized by extreme variability and unpredictability, and the cosmological world is characterized by anxiety about supernatural dangers. Ecological and cosmological causes seem to point to different risk minimizing strategies: to avoid losses from drought, flood, or heavy winds, one should diversify activities and be flexible; but to avoid losses caused by disrespected spirits one should narrow one’s range of behaviors to follow the code of taboos and offerings. We address this paradox by investigating whether southwestern Malagasy understand natural and supernatural causes as occupying separate, contradictory explanatory systems (target dependence), whether they make no categorical distinction between natural and supernatural forces and combine them within a single explanatory system (synthetic thinking), or whether they have separate natural and supernatural categories of causes that are integrated into one explanatory system so that supernatural forces drive natural forces (integrative thinking). Results from three field studies suggest that (a) informants explain why crops, prey, and market activities succeed or fail with reference to natural causal forces like rainfall and pests, (b) they explain why individual persons experience success or failure primarily with supernatural factors like God and ancestors, and (c) they understand supernatural forces as driving natural forces, so that ecology and cosmology represent distinct sets of causes within a single explanatory framework. We expect that future cross-cultural analyses may find that this form of “integrative thinking” is common in unpredictable environments and is a cognitive strategy that accompanies economic diversification.
Highlights
The subsistence farmer, forager, and fisherman contemplating choice of crops, livestock, and prey inevitably faces the reality that crops fail, livestock sicken and die, foragers and fishermen come home empty handed, and selling prices in the marketplace drop
The studies reviewed here support a specific form of integrative thinking in which people ascribe activity risk to natural factors (Study 1) and personal risk to supernatural factors (Study 2), and supernatural and natural forces form a hierarchy within a single explanatory system (Study 3)
Further research is required to understand exactly what separates forces like rain, wind, pests, and germs from ancestors, spirits, God, and astrology. This investigation of coexistence thinking was framed around an apparent paradox in the ecology and culture of subsistence risk in rural southwestern Madagascar
Summary
The subsistence farmer, forager, and fisherman contemplating choice of crops, livestock, and prey inevitably faces the reality that crops fail, livestock sicken and die, foragers and fishermen come home empty handed, and selling prices in the marketplace drop. Sometimes the causes of economic failures are observable. Crops may fail because of drought or pests or because the farmer did not spend enough time weeding, and a fisherman may return to shore with low catch due to unfavorable winds. In other cases the reasons for failure may be less apparent. A farmer may lose a bountiful crop the night before she intends to harvest due to a sudden windstorm or grasshopper swarm. A fisher may unexpectedly find that a batch of fish prepared for smoking have turned rotten
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