Abstract
Female agricultural contributions decline with agricultural intensification. We formulate and test a theory of the processes of agricultural intensification that explains a high proportion of the variance in female contributions to agriculture. Five variables show replicable effects across two or more regions of the world. These are number of dry months, importance of domesticated animals to subsistence, use of the plow, crop type, and population density. Of these, the first two are the most powerful predictors of female agricultural contributions, while population density has only very weak effects.MICHAEL L. BURTON is Professor of Anthropology. School of Social Sciences. University of California. Irvine. CA 92717.DOUGLAS R. WHITE is Professor of Anthropology. School of Social Sciences. University of California. Irvine.
Highlights
Jochim, Michael A. 1981 Strategies for Survival: Cultural Behavior in an Ecological Context
We found language family autocorrelation in two cases
As in our paper on Africa (White, Burton, and Dow 1981). we found that we could correct for the first instance of autocorrelation using a dummy variable for Bantu family membership
Summary
Five variables show replicable effects across two OT more regions of the world These are number of d y months, importance of domesticated animals to subsistence, use ofthe plow, C T O t~ype, and population density. FEMALECONTRIBUTIONS TO AGRICULTURE DECLINE WITH AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION (Boserup 1970;Ember 1983;Sanday 1973). Study of this phenomenon has become an important research agenda, motivated by two major anthropological concerns: the crosscultural study of gender roles, and the study of agricultural intensification. In this paper we develop an ecological explanation for variations in female agricultural contributions We focus on both of the issues that have motivated concern with the Boserup hypothesis: gender roles and processes of agricultural intensification. We reexamine anthropological thinking about the effects of tropical climate on social institutions, raising the question whether it is temperature itself, or some other aspect of the tropical climate, that causes high female contributions to agriculture
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