Studying Foraging Societies

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What can we learn from studying foraging societies? Is there anything we can learn regarding our relationship to the environment, or our family members, for example? Throughout foraging societies material is moved throughout the community equally which strengthens their responsibilities to one another. The wandering routine and compulsion to share hinder the growth of separate wealth. Since no one exercises ownership practices of access or control over materials, there is not a division of society. Foragers do not have many material items, but they are satisfied with what they have. Foragers do not constantly strive for more. As long as they have enough food and do not have to find any; they have lots of down time to do what they want to do. Foraging societies live in very different environments and their needs will vary. Foraging societies live in different environments all over the world, but there are certain similarities in their sociocultural methods. The most important similarity is that they depend on the environment to live. Foragers have a very different connection with their surroundings than other types of societies. Contemporary foragers are confined mostly to the Arctic, the desert, and the rainforest. These are places that others did not want to inhabit because of environmental barriers in food production. This allows the foraging communities to continue to remain fairly isolated, or having interaction with other societies on their own terms. There are many things that we can learn from the Foraging communities. These communities are not wasteful of their resources, and they are also not gluttons. They consume food and other resources immediately. They keep very little, if any extra resources. They do not store resources because they will then be tied to one particular location. They rely on the environment around them at the time of their

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