ANTH_100_LECTURE_11_PART_2_SPRING_2023_

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ANTH 100 - LECTURE #11, PART 2 (SPRING, 2023).mp4 Speaker 1 [00:00:06] Oh, it's not fucking funny, man. Unidentified [00:00:16] Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Speaker 1 [00:00:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, little fella. Y'all just saying how I got that ass up like a missing in the woods. Woody Woodpecker. Would it be good? But know, man, moving on up in the yard for, like, a little out bit until the day. That's what my wife and mother came in one day late last night, being the last two one out. But I felt good. They got her right. The stove with the brown night bombshell that was jumping up the fake. I looked over my shoulder and my couple was killed by my whole school saying, Oh, when I'm busted, Move. You want to say the least. Here. Speaker 2 [00:01:45] Welcome back, everyone. Hello. Welcome back to Anthropology 100. We are here picking up where we left off with part two of lecture number 11. And this is economics in life. So let me just skip forward to the slide where we left off. I'll just do a really quick recap. You know, There we are. Okay, we'll just. We'll pick up here. I hope everyone is. Is well today. Um. Oh. Oh, we haven't been wearing glasses for very long, and I can never, ever. I know I always complain about this in some of my other classes, but I can never keep the things clean. CHEESEMAN Yeah, I hope everyone is doing well. Um, everything is is well here. Okay, So let's let's let's get to this. We were going through these three patterns that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They can be, but in certain contexts, such as hours, you can have a combination of all three of them. And I think we went through it last time. The three different forms of reciprocity and now taking out will jump into redistribution. So for reciprocity, we had generalized, if you remember, that it's really about exchanging gifts, but there's no sort of tab taken in terms of, you know, temporal expectation or time expectation or you've got to give me a gift of the equivalent value at such and such a date. As long as things are exchanged at some point, but no one is really taking tab. And I talked about the myself and how this is based on trust in love and respect, right? Then we had balanced reciprocity. When you do, there is an expectation of return in a specified time and that return should be of of equal value. Then I kind of mentioned that sort of wedding gift with my friend Mike, that sort of instance. There are example. And then negative reciprocity is when somebody cheats someone and tries to get something for free or more than they should. And I talked about sort of sketchy used car sales tactics, which are always interesting. So jumping into redistribution, this is sort of a very different principle because now you're sort of dealing with, you know, a jump in terms of scale and complexity and so redistribution. You know, at its base in terms of understanding requires some organization and, you know, a complicated organization where things can be sort of brought to some sort of how can you say that can be a conceptual area, physical area, and then redistributed or given out accordingly? And so the textbook refers to the agents or the individuals in charge of this is controllers. I don't know. I don't know. Usually governments, you know, in terms of taxation or tribute or what have you. But we'll follow the textbook and say these controllers occupy and maintain a very important central position here to receive these contributions from. Sorry. That's a Skype. Ring that's coming from nowhere. Huh? Okay. Anyways, that's the weirdest thing. You know, And so members of a group, a given social group needn't be massive, but the organization has to be such that they can handle this. Receive contributions, economic or otherwise, from all members of the group to be sort of tabulated, systematized, and then given back out, maybe in the same form or a different form. And as I just said, these these agents, in terms of redistribution, take these contributions and make sure that they're sometimes equally given out to each member of the group. And I think our textbook does a

fairly good job. I mean, again, like all like all textbooks, it's not not the greatest and it can't go too far in depth and in detail. But I think. Yeah. And then jumping again, as the textbook does into market exchange. Now we have we're sort of building up in terms of scale in complexity. What the heck? Okay. I'm just going to ignore that. So market exchange involves trade, which as we know, is a fairly basic exchange of goods, but it also involves money, which is a symbolic medium that is agreed upon. It has no inherent value in and of itself, but it has an agreed upon symbolic weight in value, usually tethered to some sort of gold standard, i.e. gold, you know, and it becomes that very medium of exchange and can assign value to goods. The mechanism in the social mechanism that regulates all of these processes is what's understood is the market or in our case, in late modern capitalism, the free market, which is based on Marx's understanding, which is general principle of supply and demand, which is a price mechanism for regulating exchange. And, you know, if things are in short supply and demand is up, that gives justification, as I think I said last Monday, for prices to to go up or to go down if it's the inverse relationship. So speaking of which, we'll just talk a little bit about Karl Marx here. This is the man himself. Who his personal life was. Well, a little bit tragic in some ways. You know, a little bit of a rocky relationship with his wife. Lost a young son, which I think devastated him. So. But, you know, as as a social philosopher and economic philosopher. You know, he had quite a lot to say and was very, very productive throughout his life and especially with his his partner, Friedrich Engels. According to Marx, and I would say Engels to. Production itself was the motor of the driving force behind all economic processes and activity in this involved work or labor. And what Marx understood as modes of production. Which we'll get into and we'll offer will offer up some definitions. But what Mark thought was that the physical act in process of of work. Which I guess you could sort of understand as well as transformation links all social groups to the material world, to the environment. And it's in that process of transforming the environment to somehow meet the needs of the group where that relationship is is forged, really. And it's a really interesting one. And so, you know, these are sort of very basic insights. But humans come together. We're always in groups to take. What the natural world has sort of provided and transform it and change it into forms that are not only usable to us, but usable and also meaningful at the same time. Right. And this is always undergirded by cultural processes of, of value, belief, etc.. So again, compared to a lot of our counterparts. It were a very. Or it's such an interesting species. I mean, yes, you know, you have various apes who are able to use tools. So in some ways, you know, there are there there are some really interesting cognitive dynamics going on there in symbolic thought as well, you know, But it's nowhere near the extent to which humans are able to really transform whatever environment, whether it's an Arctic environment, you know, whether it's a very hot and arid environment, we're able to, you know, through processes of cultural processes, through working together, transform those contexts and make those contexts livable, but again, also meaningful. I think what Marx and Marx and Engels want us to know is that all human labor is always social labor. We have to do this through the prime medium of communication, right, to make sure that there is a division of labor. That there are tasks allotted to to various individuals in the group and that people are sort of working together in terms of that that transformative outcome and process. Okay, So this is just a little little meme thing that's spinning like crazy and took too long. Marc says the capitalist mode of production and accumulation and therefore capitalist private property which he always took issue at, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of self earned to private property. In other words, the expropriation of the labor laborer. So what happens with capitalism is that a select group of people have the means and the wealth to buy and own property, which is another mode of transforming the world, which many indigenous groups you know throughout history. It didn't understand, couldn't even conceive of that the world was the world for them and was not something to be owned and to profit from, which is such a distinctive cultural orientation, very readily relativistic. But

what happens is that the bourgeoisie or the bourgeois or the sort of upper classes with the means to buy and purchase things in the means to exploit laborers or what Marx referred to as the proletariat are able to buy. Patches of of land, property and own them. And it. Gets very complicated in terms of conflict between these two groups, those who have the means to buy things and own things and those who do not. And in Marx's sort of world in the 19th century, these were sort of, you know, I don't want to see simplistic, but the oppositions between them sometimes are a bit simplistic. So in terms of our definitions here for Marks, the first one is this idea of mode of production. And so these can sometimes be a little bit confusing. There are three of them. And I'll do my best to sort of suss them out for you. But mode of production is really about organization in how labor is understood and organized in a particular context, using the tools available, the skills available, the hierarchies in terms of division of labor within this social context, and also the knowledge about how to do things right. So it's a particular mode. Capitalism is a mode of producing things, right? So I really tried to reduce this and say it's really the how of labor, How is it done right? How do you do this kind of work? How how is it organized? Secondly, you've got the means of production, right? So this is the what? Of labor. What do you do? How you know, and I can already see here now that my my distinctions are sort of collapsing a little bit. But in terms of means of production, the means through which and by which you can produce really simply the tools, the skills, the organization in that knowledge that is employed in terms of making a living. So, you know, I think Marx might say in this case it might be like the factories and the machinery in factories. These are the means of production. So this would definitely be the tools and how these places, these I don't want to call them institutions, but how they're organized. Lastly, you've got the relations of production. But again, he said that labor is always social. So these are the social relationships which bring people together and allow them to use a particular means of production. Right. Those tools within a given mode of production, let's say, in a capitalist context. So, you know, the different productive tasks assigned to different social groups, these are the relations of production. So again, social means of production. These are physical things like the tools, the places where work is done in the mode of production. Is that particular approach or configuration, right? If that makes if that makes any sense. Now, again, following the lead of our textbook, we jump from remarks and then we get read into a marxist, or maybe some would say a Marxian inspired anthropologist who tried to employ Marx's understandings to understanding how different groups go about doing things. This one stern looking dude, this is Eric Wolfe, and he wrote a very, some would say very important. I only read parts of it a very, very long while ago. So this is sort of, you know, having to refill through the familiarize myself. But back in 1982, he wrote this very influential economic anthropological book called Europe and the People Without History. And in this book, he proposes that there are three modes of production that were important in our important throughout human history. And it's it's always a little difficult when you get these academics to come along and say, okay, there are only three things that are important throughout all of human history. So, you know, I understand through the noise of human history, you know, trying to think, you know, oh, come up with only three. I get it. It's a practical thing to do in its pedagogical right in terms of teaching. But sometimes you have to be a little bit a little bit skeptical. So he explains that, number one, there's a kitchen ordered mode, and this is a labor that is really understood and undertaken on the basis of purely kinship relations. So if you're thinking of, you know, really small scale contexts and I've got here an example, I think the textbook might mention that as well, the family farm. So if you've got a family farm that's basically its own social unit, you've got family members who are given different tasks. So if you go back to those Marx's relations of production, this is strictly limited to the family. And so, you know, each family member will have their own allotted task and they'll have to do that alongside their other family members. And this is based on those those ties. And again, if you want to think of a family farm, you know, if

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that works. I think it works. Then you have something called the tributary mode. And in so this is where you have a primary producer who gets access to the means of production. So they have access to those tools the way you know, or certain contexts where labor is undertaken. So they have access to it. They may not necessarily own these places or these tools at all, but they can use them. And what they have to do, though, is through their use. They have to pay tribute or taxes, whether it's through B, through goods collecting things or through their own labor. And this is extracted through political means or through military means. So you can produce for oneself using these tools and keep some of the fruits, literally and figuratively, I guess, of your labor. But you also have to set a bit aside and provide for rulers as well. And so if you think about, you know, in a feudal system, I think I mentioned this too last Monday, you have a fief, which is a plot of land. And a peasant working on that land. And the peasant will not own that land, but they're able in essence, more or less almost to rent it from, let's say, not directly from a king, but from a knight or Lord who works for a king force or is under the rule of a king. And so what they produce on that land, let's say, in terms of agricultural efforts, they can keep stuff to live from, but they also have to set aside a portion of it to give to the owner of that land. Right. Whether it be the Lord or whomever. And this is understood as paying tribute. Right. Here's a meme from Eric Wolff. The major force in world history is sheer dumbness. Oh, my gosh, I don't think this is real. But if it is, that is amazing. This guy means business. He's not messing around at all. Oh, my goodness. Thanks, Eric. I think he's dead now. And. It was like all three dead. He's been dead for a long time. Thirdly, now we're sort of. If you want to see us moving up the temporal or time related scale, now we have a capitalist mode of production. And as I had mentioned just a few moments ago, this is where the means of production. So the factories, the tools, the things with which to facilitate labor aren't actually owned by the workers. They're privately owned by the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois, the capitalist class. And so in order to receive a wage or money and this is understood as wage labor, workers have to go to these places where they don't own the means of production and sell their labor. Right. And so they work and they're not working for themselves, but they're working for a company or a corporation or someone else who owns what they're using. And in exchange for their work, they're essentially selling their labor. They get money in return, but there's always an imbalance and the surplus is generated through that. Labor are always owned and become the profits for the owners only, and it could trickle down in terms of, oh, shocks like bonuses or whatever to two workers, but not anywhere near the amount that the owners will receive. So. But. As I'm talking about this, you can sort of see that this opens up the gate in in capitalist contexts and whether it be, you know, the dawn of the Industrial Revolution or now, which is late modern capitalism. This opens up the gate or these processes to plural lines that open up the gates to conflict in everyday life. In that conflict is really based on this basic understanding of the haves and the have nots. Right. And so what about the role of conflict? Well. Usually, and it's not just economic anthropologists, but socio cultural anthropologists, broadly construed have usually and I think this applies more so historically, but usually emphasized the way that societies would or groups would operate to meet their needs and in harmony so they would work together. You know, smaller scale contexts, produce things and things would be okay. There would obviously be conflict, but to minimize them, keep bashing my laptop, to minimize that conflict, there would be social mechanisms put in place, culturally oriented, of course, to keep those conflicts to a minimum or to contain or to smooth them out a little bit. But. In more sort of, you know, complicated, I think, or larger scale contexts. Anthropologists now see that conflict in disorder are unfortunately a natural part of human existence of social existence. And many will employ Marxist or Marxian approaches to offer recognition to that, to understand it, to analyze it, and to also theorize about it or theorize it. So what a lot of Marxist or Marxian oriented anthropologists do through the use of Marxian or Marxist ideas is they use this

idea of a mode of production to understand and. To get a fix on the rule of conflict between certain classes, in particular socio cultural and economic contexts. And again, that's usually between what Marx would say, the proletariat or the worker in the bourgeoisie or the bourgeois. So those who own the means of production, those who control the relations of production and sort of regulate and dictate what it is that the non owners or the proletariat do. And there is some resentment and inherent conflict in that relationship. Right. And it's funny because this is what Marx understood, really class conflict as the driver or the engine of history really is what propels us forward through what he understood as the dialectics of history. But this is for first year. We don't need to really get into that. Like, Oh, I'm clean. So. Another sort of aspect here, along with, you know, mode of production, you've got consumption. And this is an interesting and interesting idea. And this I you know, I don't want to be too cranky here, but I do have to take issue sometimes with the way the textbook goes about things, but it explains or defines consumption as the use of material goods for human survival. And I think if we're talking, let's say about the shoot, don't see or the kung sand, for example, or if we go back in the textbook to look at Nicole Bai's description of the Inuit in there, I think she referred to it as if you all remember, their vernacular economy as opposed to market economy. Things would be used, I think, in a very respectful way. So animals would be hunted for the very purpose of consumption for food only and redistribution within the social groups so people could survive and that would be that. And there were sort of, how can I say, cosmological mechanisms put into place, you know, again, oriented and undergirded by culture to understand that if people hunted too much or if they allowed animals to suffer for too long and didn't really need or use these animals in positive ways, that the spirit sort of controlling these forces in the natural world would become very angry and would somehow seek some form of retribution. I would love to get into that aspect. I do in my my indigenous issues in Canada class that I've taught in various forms throughout my time. UW It's very, very enlightening to to learn and understand. But that sort of a respectful. Aversion of consumption, but the consumption is now more. We're getting into the 21st century that late modern capitalism or neoliberalism affords is a whole different kind of consumption. And so I thought, what B.S.? Like the use of material goods for human survival. I mean, the kind of consumption that a lot of us are taking part in is not about survival. Right. It's about these the seemingly endless stream of desires that capitalism instills in us and convinces us and tricks us right into thinking that there's no distinction between a need and a want. Right. And so this is where I can get oh, my gosh, you can really veer off into some complicated territory by reading Freud and French philosophers like Schiele Blues and Felix Guattari about this very notion of of desire. Right. What is it? But it's, oh, how can I say configuration or some would say reconfiguration within and by capitalism makes things very complicated. So I can say the using up of a resource. And even further to that, I mean, when you look at this picture here, it's like, you know, when you think about, oh, gosh, what is it called in November in the US? Black Friday or Cyber Monday? I mean, this is just like one time consumption for the sake of consuming because people have disposable income and want even bigger TVs and so they're throw their old TV out and replace it. And that is sort of, you know, irresponsible consumption. And then really on top of that, my goodness, you've got versions of of consumption that are, you know, really. Socially configured. And, you know, these are modes of using resources or using up resources for the sake of using up a resource in terms of positioning oneself on the spectrum of social status. Right? So I'm pretty sure it was an American sociologist by the last name of Veblen who came up with this understanding of conspicuous consumption, which I'm sure you've all heard of. And I'm not a sociologist, so I'm going to actually double check. But he also had something so conspicuous consumption was buying things in some ways to make others envious. But then he had another idea called invidious consumption, which was really to buy things that you don't need, like super expensive cars, like a Lambo, just to show off like crazy, to

really, as my son would say, to flex. You know, look, I'm a high roller. I've got tons of money. You don't. So checkout me and my Lambo and at the same time you can suck it, right? Which is kind of weird, but that is let me just actually double check that. It was Veblen who said that their land sounds like a Norwegian name in. Videos. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So invidious distinction or consumption is the first term coined by Portnoy to Bornstein Veblen, an economist who explored the reasons people buy the products they do and was endowed with a vocabulary so large that they keep a dictionary. Okay, Thanks, Google. Yeah. So invidious. Blah, blah, blah. Serves to conceptualize personal perceptions of class inequality inflated by vindictive emotions. Interesting. So, yeah. Interesting. Anyway, so. Anthropologists have taken the textbook love these sort of tripartite things, three approaches to account for these patterns. So in terms of consumption, and we'll pull back from, you know, what I was talking about these, you know, invidious distinctions and conspicuous consumption. Now we'll focus on the first of these approaches of trying to understand and theorize consumption. The first was this idea of internal explanation, which I guess the four person of more modern socio cultural anthropology, Bronislaw Nowicki, had developed. And all defined these and talked about them in turn. The second one was an external explanation, which is grounded in cultural ecology. And the third is cultural explanation of consumption. And again, these aren't necessarily always mutually exclusive, but we'll focus the first on Malinauskas internal explanation of what the environment does and what people do with the environment to meet their needs of consumption. So this is Bronislaw Milano's. Now we don't really get into Malinowski ideas here in 100. I do a little bit more. There's a whole class or half a class. Anyways, on his ideas in anthropology two or two when I teach it. But this is this is him in the center here, and he is very well known for writing. One of the first in-depth long term ethnography is called Argonauts of the Pacific, and he spent two years trying to understand, and I'm not going to state to say study because that sounds pretty offensive, but trying to understand the lifeways of these Trowbridge Islanders. Now, what was distressing about Malinowski is after his diaries were published in the not so distant past, he was sort of revealed to be a bit of a racist and a little bit of a dick. So I find it hard. I know a lot of of individuals in anthropology seem to be enamored by him and with him and want to emulate, you know, his his sort of style and approach to doing fieldwork, that being exhaustive and, you know, trying to understand every last aspect, which is obviously what everyone should do. But unfortunately, you know, when you when such things like this are revealed, I can't help but lose all respect, you know. Anyway, so in 44, he wrote one paper called The Scientific Theory of Culture, and it's part of this book here with a collection of essays. And in it. You know, in before this too, he developed this idea of functionalist anthropology, which basically sees. Society's much like a body and bodies need to regulate themselves in terms of negative feedback loops to maintain homeostasis. Right biologically which some. Well, it's not synonymous with health, but it it can afford one health. And so a functionalist anthropology sees societies much like a human body in that various aspects of society, religion, economy, etc., etc., you know, juridical aspects dealing with law and in crime work like a human body to maintain that society and understand that it needs to endure over time. And so if one institution or one aspect of that society is somehow compromised, then everything will be compromised. I don't know why my computer's opening don't stop. And so this is a really outdated approach to anthropology, and I don't think any modern socio cultural anthropology anthropologists understand society is working that way. From a conceptual standpoint, it doesn't really understand. Or respect individuals as individuals, that sees people sort of as, you know, nameless, almost faceless social actors who are part of these systems that comprise the society and allow it to endure over time. But Melanie Whiskey's version of Functionalism understood social practices as they related to fulfilling basic human needs, and each practice fulfilled human needs in a distinctive way. And it was all about, you know, meeting these biological requirements of the body and

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having these, you know, I guess, processes and social customs that allowed these biological needs to be met. And then at a broader scale, you know, this would allow society much like a biological entity, to maintain homeostasis by maintaining harmony between these social processes. So for Mellon now, each culture, each social group would respond to their basic needs through a corresponding social institution that will allow them to meet those needs. And he demonstrated that supposedly strange or odd customs or processes or traditions make sense because really, ultimately the. Provide A, very basic B, fulfill basic human needs. Right. But what the internal explanation and I don't really like the title of that, but what the internal explanation doesn't do is it doesn't explain the why. So this is where it's not really about individuals and people themselves. It's about the social and social processes. But this internal explanation, as for the textbook anyways, doesn't explain why people devise or come up with these interesting different patterns of production, distribution and consumption. It says that they're there and it explains what they do, but it's not meaning centered. It's really just about a sort of cold, a harsh explanation of what they do, what purpose they serve, but not necessarily why. And in order to really understand that question, you would need to talk to people and treat them as individuals and not as generalized actors in these sort of almost impersonal social processes. So in turn. Cultural ecologists explain that those patterns of human consumption in any given society are based on what the environment provides. Right. So there based on what is available in terms of resources that are usable in right, where people are able to transform them in a particular habitat. And so what the conditioning sort of element here is the environment provides certain things in that conditions how people are, how they meet their biological needs and how those needs are met. So zipping through this, you know, according to the cultural explanation of consumption. People are always, again borrowing the sentiment from Marx, actively transforming and constructing their own places in a particular environment, in a particular context, using cultural inventions or ideas, rather than just submitting to the constraints of the environment. So the cultural explanation of consumption is a little bit of a critique saying, you know, it's not just about what the environment provides and all of its limits. People are actually cultural beings and they're always using ideas, traditions. You know, cosmological orientations within the universe to really understand the environment, make it meaningful and then act on it. So it's not as base or basic as just, you know, there are only certain foodstuffs available. Um, you know, it's limited through certain times of year. So that's really going to limit how we consume things. No, people, people do have ideas and they have culture and this really symbolically transforms things. Um, and so the sentiment here is that humans experience the world on a symbolic level. Um, so experience is meaningful in determining those patterns of consumption which are culturally rooted and not just environmentally rooted, if that makes sense. And this sort of the cultural explanation of consumption is also a little bit more of a critique to, of Malinowski idea, because it's not just about meeting these base level biological needs. Culture sometimes gets in the way and can really transform things. Okay. Now, the last section of our chapter is really about food. And, you know, as another facet of consumption, it can get quite fascinating. And I know my colleague Adrian Lo teaches a class on the anthropology of food, which some of you might find very interesting. But historically, biological anthropologists have done a lot of research on nutrition in growth, you know, across time or through time temporally, like Alexis's research, but also cross-culturally too. And in the past, lots of cultural anthropologist have documented local food habits. And I know in this textbook we've got a little section on food production in meaning in Tuscany, in Italy. But the anthropology of food, which is sort of a sub subfield of socio cultural anthropology, seeks to address how late modern capitalism or neoliberal capitalism has sort of altered food markets and how they work at the local level configured as they are at the global level. Right. And this approach. Usually from the textbooks perspective anyways, takes a political economic approach. But what's

interesting about the textbook is it doesn't really define what a political economic approach is like. It kind of gives a sentence and it doesn't really explain what political economy is. So I thought I would do that here. It's so political economy. And this is a term that you might hear, too, in sociology, maybe in history as well. But it means taken seriously, as you would expect here in a class like this, in the material we're reading, it seeks to take really seriously cultural processes and arrangements that are historically situated, historically conditioned and rooted in economic, political and social power structures. So it's that sort of influence between politics and political processes and how that affects the economy, but then also how the economy can also affect political processes as well. It's also a way of understanding culture at a very broad level that takes into understanding. And again, this is kind of putting in another way the influence of politics, economic structures, but also social hierarchies in everyday life. And so. The way the anthropology of food takes on a political economic approach is that it looks at the impact of political forces on. Here we go again with these terms. The production, distribution and consumption of food around the world. And we're actually seeing it. If we take a political economic approach to food right now, we can see that the conflict in Ukraine. And I'm I'm always very skeptical, skeptical here. I don't know whether we've got dynamics of, you know, profiteering in price gouging going on here. But apparently wheat production in Ukraine obviously has has come to a standstill. And I don't know the exact percentage in terms of global contribution that Ukraine makes, but also Russia as well. But they've been sort of pulled out of this equation in terms of where this relationship, I guess, in terms of the production of wheat, which is causing a lot of prices, food prices to just skyrocket. And it's interesting today because we went to we went to the pet store because Atticus, our goldendoodle, has run out of poo bags. And so here comes an interesting story. Went to the pet store here in Laurelwood and there was a guy in front of us in line who bought sort of like a medium bag of dog food. And he was kind of he seemed kind of pissed. He was complaining and he turned around to us and was like, Oh, I can't believe this. Like, everything is going up in terms of food. And then I said, Oh, really? And he said, Yeah, like this bag of dog food that I usually buy for my dogs has gone up 40 bucks in the last three weeks. And then it was like, Oh, how much is it? It's like it's $118. Like, Holy crap, we don't really get a lecture. We don't get I think it's $118 bags of medium bags of dog food. That's that's a lot. But, you know, it turns out that a lot of the I don't want to call it a filler, but. Part of the the food is it's grain based. And here we are in terms of that political, economic dynamic. There's a war going on in Ukraine. Things are brought to a standstill. There are many sanctions put on Russia. Many, many countries are not wanting to import and make use of Russian oil and possibly other foodstuffs as well, which is causing prices to to jump, which is going to pinch a lot of people in terms of trying to get by. And that's why when you go on to CBC dossier, you'll see. News story after news story about how Canadians are trying to alter their food purchasing habits at the grocery store. They're changing what they eat because of soaring food prices. And this is all because of a political megalomaniac named Vladimir Putin who wants to. Take Ukraine for himself to quell and really suppress their democratic activities because he doesn't want to see Russia being influenced by that very again. Political economy. Right. This is really interesting and in a real world context, super applicable. But nonetheless quite distressing really, for all of us because it affects all of us. Yeah. So I think that that is a very pressing example here. So I think everyone, you know, in our two part lecture for today, this really wrap things up like I think they're not really. Leaving anything out here. Yeah. And so I think what we'll do is we'll wrap up our approach to economics and economics. Yeah. Economic. Oh, my gosh. Economics and economic relations. And what we'll do is next Monday, Wolff will jump into sexes and genders and sexualities. And we'll really get into that. And I think, you know, the textbook chapter I think does a fairly okay job. I wanted to say in my Anthro 202 class, I really I also devote a whole lecture to this. But the lecture wasn't based on the textbook which I've done for this

class. I had actually taken the initiative to consult the gay and trans community at Waterloo, and we sort of co-created that lecture for that class to make it more sort of applicable, I think, in well, well, as well-rounded as it can be. I mean, you know, even when it comes to many of the terms and conceptualizations and understandings of genders and but also sexualities like trying to find agreement, sometimes it's very difficult. But anyways, we'll get through this next week in that that.

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