3 Chapter 3: Pursuit of Food
“My father is Awa. He is a great warrior, he defended the Waorani territory with spears. Now I must defend our territory and the forest with documents and law, speaking Spanish, and traveling far away like the harpy eagle”.
—Baihua, Waorani man of Ecuador (Korn 2018)
In 2018, I was in the Ecuadorian Amazon near the Napo River, traveling as a tourist. We were in a canoe headed towards an indigenous Kichwa community situated along the river. The last tour group to visit the community was offered live grubs. As an anthropologist that covers insect eating in my class, I knew I’d have to eat one of those live grubs as a point of honor. Palm larvae are large, plump white grubs with a dark head, and are eaten by many Amazonian peoples. On the long canoe trip to the village, I was going back and forth between visualizing eating a live palm larva and shutting it out of my mind completely. Finally, the moment came. We were seated in a communal hut, and the smiling Kichwa women passed around a basket of wiggling white grubs. But to my relief, they decided to cook them over a fire on sticks! They only vaguely resembled grubs once they were grilled and that made all the difference. It was no problem to scarf down a palm larva or two, and as it turned out, they tasted vaguely like bacon.
Every organism needs to get energy from its environment, which ultimately comes from the sun. Those ancient people who built monuments to the sun, at Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, were on to something. Gorillas get their energy almost entirely from plant leaves, with with an occasional insect here and there. Humans, being omnivores, can and do eat just about anything. Deciding what to eat has been called the “omnivore’s dilemma”, a term popularized by writer Michael Pollan. Today, about half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and buys food rather than produces food. Pollan illuminates just how W.E.I.R.D. our relationship with food is, by pointing out that we need investigative journalists to track down where it comes from and what’s in it. Pollan calls these “industrial foods.” Today during the age of coronavirus, more people are turning to urban foraging eating things like pigeons, wild fruits, and even the mustard weeds that can be seen all over Albuquerque. One concern is that these foods might be contaminated with pesticides or other chemicals. For some, urban foraging is more than a food source. It’s a way to spiritually connect with nature. Gabrielle Ceberville posts regular foraging videos on TikTok and has a following of more than 800,000. Ceberville (2021) explains, “Foraging is a way to make the natural world feel real and valuable to people. When you’re foraging for food or even just for fun, you’re recognizing that there is an entire ecosystem growing around you, and you start to take part in a carbon exchange with the natural world. I think it’s important to treat nature like a neighbor. Foraging is an important first step.” Another foraging sensation is Alexis Nikole Nelson, also known as the Black Forager, a Columbus-based social media influencer, who has over 800,000 followers on Instagram and 1.7 million followers on TikTok.
For most of human history, humans have been foragers. For millennia, societies foraged for food or produced their food and continue to do so. Anthropologists use the term subsistence to refer to how we go about getting food. Societies that produce or forage for their food are called subsistence economies.
Anthropologists use a classification system of different modes of subsistence. These include:
- Foraging (also known as hunting and gathering): reliance on wild resources
- Pastoralism: reliance on herding animals
- Horticulture: gardening using mostly human power and simple tools
- Intensive Agriculture: farming with the use of animal labor, plow, fertilizers, irrigation, or terracing
- Industrialized Food Production and Wage Labor: work for wages to buy food from others
These subsistence modes can overlap. For example, people can practice horticulture much of the year but supplement with hunted and gathered foods at other times. Or foragers can exchange foods with neighboring agriculturalists. Or people who work for wages can have a garden. While these categories are not mutually exclusive, they are useful to anthropologists because subsistence predicts other aspects of culture, including things like mobility, population size, how labor is organized, and social and political systems. Also of interest to anthropologists are how subsistence is changing and the consequences of those changes.
Foraging
Foraging or hunting and gathering simply means reliance on wild food resources. Foragers rely on human power to get energy from their environments and foraging is the oldest form of human subsistence. Foraging has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, whereas other modes of subsistence like pastoralism, horticulture, and intensive agriculture have only been around a few thousand years. Reliance on fossil fuels (petroleum, oil, and natural gas) as a source of energy is only a few hundred years old. Psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists believe this deep history of hunting and gathering has shaped our species both physically and psychologically. Historian Yuval Harari argues that we are foragers in body and mind, but industrialists in practice, which he blames for many of our modern problems. For that reason, the study of foragers has always been a cornerstone of anthropology. Of course, foragers are not living fossils stuck in the stone age, but modern humans living as complex dynamic lives as we do.
Foraging has continued into the 20th century, especially in those areas ill-suited or difficult to exploit for farming. Most foragers live in Arctic regions, deserts, and tropical rainforests. Today, however, very few people subsist by foraging alone. In The Foraging Spectrum, archaeologist Robert Kelly points out that nearly all forager societies today rely at least in part on non-forager economies such as agriculturalists, pastoralists, and industrialized nations. In short, foraging is a way of life that is dying. Traditional foragers or forager/gardeners of today and the recent past include the “forest people” (formerly called pygmies) of Uganda and the Congo, the Inuit of the Arctic (the Eskimo), the Hadza of Tanzania, the Huaorani of Ecuador, the Batek of Malaysia, and aboriginals of Australia to name a few.
A few groups of people remain virtually uncontacted by modern societies and resist encroachment by outsiders. To the south of the Amazon, the Ayoreo people of Paraguay avoid contact with outsiders but are pushed out by encroaching settlers. In remote areas of the Amazon Basin, foragers are being pushed out of their traditional lands by illegal logging, mining, agribusiness, and other industrialized operations. Some Waorani foragers of Ecuador have moved deeper into the Amazon and avoid contact with outsiders. Some fight oil companies with lawyers and legal documents. But with a shrinking land base, the Waorani find it more difficult to avoid each other, and violent clashes are thought by some Waorani to be inevitable. Though the rights of people to practice traditional ways are protected in Ecuador’s Constitution, other clauses stipulate that oil and mining operations cannot be obstructed. In addition, the fierce egalitarianism among the Waorani make it difficult for them to name people as their representatives under a unified tribal entity (Korn 2018).
The Sentinelese, who live on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Islands located in the Bay of Bengal are some of the most isolated people in the world. The island is officially administered by India in 1996. Because of previous deadly encounters and because the Sentinelese could be devastated by mainland diseases, all attempts at contact are now illegal. Recently, an American man who intended to bring Christianity to the islanders was killed by bows and arrows (Schultz et al. 2018). Following the devastating tsunami of 2004 in the region, there was concern that the Sentinelese were wiped out. When a reconnaissance helicopter expedition flew over the island, a Sentinelese man emerged from the woods and aimed a bow and arrow at the helicopter. Though the Sentinelese had managed to survive the tsunami, their numbers remain uncertain.
Foragers often have certain features in common. For example, except those who live along the coast, foragers tend to be highly mobile; that is, they tend to move often to where they can find food. This is called an extensive use of land. That is, foragers tend to need a large area in which to forage. Because a lot of land is needed, mobile forager band size is rather small. Depending on the environment and season, mobile foragers might stay just a few weeks at a camp and houses tend to be temporary structures.
Mobile foraging societies also tend to be more egalitarian than societies associated with other modes of subsistence. There are not different classes or full-time political leaders. The term egalitarian means that a society has relatively few differences in status, wealth, and power between people. Lying in stark contrast to foragers are industrialized societies like the United States. The top one percent of people in the U.S., for example, control forty percent of the wealth. In The Last of the Cuiva, colonial settlers view the Cuiva (now called the Hiwi) foragers as wild animals because they wear no clothes and hunt and gather food. The Hiwi whose society is based on sharing, view the settlers as uncivilized because they refuse to share their food! Because there are no clear chiefs in forager societies it can be difficult to deal with governments and companies who are interested in buying or using their resources. And there is no centralized control over other members of the group. Typically when a person does something that counters the values of a forager society they are ostracized, a devastating punishment for a forager (Everett 2009). Even in industrialized societies not based on sharing, being cancelled or socially excluded can have devasting effects on a person.
Sometimes people in industrialized nations feel sorry for foragers, not so much because of their dwindling land problem, but because they’re not consumers–they don’t have much in the way of clothes, cars, phones, money, and so forth. And yet all their work goes directly to meet their needs or is shared with friends and family. In wage economies, as Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez write in Your Money or Your Life, you trade your life energy for money. Happiness and satisfaction tend to be very high among foragers (if they have their original lands), while anxiety, drug addiction, and depression are common problems in societies where people trade their lives for money. When foragers become part of wage economies, often against their will, the resulting depression and alcohol addiction are disastrous. The Baka of Cameroon, displaced from their forest, are regularly paid in banana alcohol, and fetal alcohol syndrome is widespread. Alcohol poisoning is now a leading cause of death among the Baka (Gibbons 2018). Indeed, foragers worldwide are often paid by outsiders in alcohol. In his 2009 book Don’t Sleep There are Snakes, Daniel Everett tells of a Brazilian trader who wanted the Piraha foragers to work collecting Brazil nuts. Instead of paying them in goods, his plan was to pay them in cachaça, alcohol distilled from sugar cane juice, a practice that is illegal in Brazil.
Even though mobile foragers tend to be egalitarian, this does not mean that they are somehow naturally or biologically more generous than other groups of people. The English poet John Dryden (1631–1670) thought of hunter-gatherers as “noble savages,” a term he coined. A century later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) saw hunter-gatherers as being in harmony with nature, unsullied by civilization. The noble savage idea is still with us today, but it fails to acknowledge the humanity and complexity of foraging people. A closer look at forager societies shows that they are not “naturally” egalitarian nor are they always generous. Foraging societies are based on egalitarianism and reciprocity, and have been known to work hard to ensure that no person gets too much power. Anthropologist Richard Lee learned that among the !Kung of the Kalahari (now called the Ju/hoansi), there is a practice called “insulting the meat.” As a Ju/hoansi man explained in the ethnography The Dobe !Kung:
When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this.  So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way, we cool his heart and make him gentle.
Likewise, Robert Kelly (1995) explains that foragers ensure food is shared through accusations of stinginess, verbal abuse, and demanding a share of food. Among the Hadza foragers of Tanzania, men who make a claim to be chief are similarly mocked and humiliated. Rather than being inherently and nobly generous, Kelly describes foragers as “aggressively egalitarian.” Foragers will also avoid appearing stingy. In her classic work The Harmless People, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas writes, “A Bushman will go to any lengths to avoid making other Bushmen jealous of him, and for this reason, the possessions that Bushmen have are constantly circling among the members of their groups.” Other non-state societies stress sharing in part to keep social tensions down. Children’s games in Western societies often result in a single winner. As Lightning McQueen states, “One winner. Forty-two losers.  Jane Goodale describes a very different game among the Kaulong of New Britain in the book To Sing with Pigs is Human (1995:119). Children are each given a banana. Instead of one child working to get the most bananas, the children each divide their banana in half, and then give it to another child. Then the half-banana is divided again, and half given to another child. The process is repeated until children are passing around tiny portions of a banana. The important thing in the game is not to get the most bananas but to form as many friendly relationships as possible.
One incentive to sharing is called tolerated theft. Tolerated theft occurs when the cost of defending a resource, like meat, is more than the benefit of keeping it. An example illustrates this simple concept. In a recent crime in Santa Fe, a man danced around another man who was eating a green chile cheeseburger (Resisen 2017). The dancing man then slapped the burger out of the other man’s hands and ran off with it. In that situation, the cost of defending the half-eaten burger, by running after the strange man, was greater than the value of the burger itself. One student in this class brilliantly explained tolerated theft at the Dollar Store:
The concept of tolerated theft can be seen in the modern world in the Dollar Store’s loss prevention measures. Unlike retailers like Walmart or Target, the Dollar Store does not invest in loss prevention measures like security guards or cameras, because the cost of defending their low-price items is not worth the price of defending them from shoplifters.
In forager societies, it is not easy to defend access to food or other resources. If someone tries to claim more than others, the group can ostracize the person, physically abuse him, or refuse to share later. Anthropologist Lorna Marshall suggested that !Kung women intentionally restrict their foraging to avoid being subjected to an onslaught of demands. Similarly, the Hiwi of Colombia will hide their belongings when another group visits, so as not to appear stingy (Last of the Cuiva 1970). While freeloading in mainstream American culture is frowned upon, among foragers being stingy is worse.
Another reason for sharing among foragers is reciprocity. Reciprocity entails the equal exchange of resources like food. In this type of exchange, there is an expectation of future sharing. This type of reciprocal food sharing often occurs when large game is brought in on a sporadic basis. Sharing then is not a benevolent gesture on the part of the hunter, but a strategy to offset his future shortfalls in food and also to form cooperative bonds with other people. Cultural anthropologist Bruce Knauft describes the importance of reciprocity among the Gebusi people of Papua New Guinea. The Gebusi have “exchange names” such that a person is referred to as “my bird egg,” “my fishing line,” or “your salt” depending on the item given or received. In this way, a person is constantly reminded of their reciprocal relationships and their social identity is tightly bound to reciprocity. Likewise, among the Napo Runa of Ecuador, the complex web of relationships is likened to a net bag or shigra, where everyone is connected in some way to someone else (Uzendoski 2005:5).
Television programs that feature one or two people trying to make it in the wild, don’t capture the essence of being a forager, because foraging is a group effort. When one person experiences a shortfall, he can count on others to share, and later reciprocate in kind. Reciprocity is not just a forager thing, but of course, is found in many traditional (non-industrialized) and industrialized societies. In this cultural anthropology course “The Art of Being Human”, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch explains how gift giving in Papua New Guinea creates a web of relationships that bind people to each other. People feel a strong sense of interdependence through sharing and story-telling. In the United States, we simply pay someone for our coffee or cable installation, and the relationship is over. Trying to pay for a service in Papua New Guinea, where reciprocity and human relationships form the foundation of society, is offensive. As Wesch explains, it “ends a relationship.”
A third reason for sharing is that men who share meat (men are more likely to hunt large game, though there are many exceptions) stand to gain prestige. Even when the meat is “insulted”—when the hunter’s success is minimized— everyone is still aware of who the best hunters are (Kelly 1995). Good hunters tend to have higher status than others. This type of status is called achieved status because it derives from a person’s accomplishments during his or her lifetime. Achieved status provides one with influence rather than control. This contrasts with ascribed status in which status is inherited. Most Americans also have achieved status, unless you are a Kennedy or a Kardashian. Foragers are not able to accumulate much wealth, and thus inheritance of wealth and status is limited.
Forager Diet
Every culture has deep-seated notions about what is food and what is not food. Humans are omnivores capable of eating a wide range of plant and animal foods. Foragers eat a variety of foods and have remarkable knowledge of how to find food in even the most meager of environments. People living in industrialized nations often have no idea where their food comes from beyond the grocery store. Foragers, on the other hand, are food experts. A wonderful example of this ingenuity is how Australian aboriginals track a striped honey ant back to its nest.  In Australia, large moth larvae called a witchetty grub is eaten both raw and cooked and is a good source of protein. In the Amazon Basin, palm larvae are eaten both cooked and raw. In the American, Southwest people have traditionally eaten cicadas (Davis 1915:191). In places like Colombia and Ecuador leaf-cutter ant queens (hormigas colunas) are collected during their nuptial flight, and deep-fried. Westerners are often repulsed by insect-eating, but as one bee-keeping student succinctly put it, “honey is basically bee barf.”
Foragers have discovered ingenious methods of getting food. The blowpipe, used by foragers in the Amazon Basin and the forests of Southeast Asia, is especially good for hunting animals high in the forest canopy, like monkeys. Poison is obtained from trees, like curare of the Amazon, and poison dart frogs tip the darts and immobilize prey. Foragers of the Kalahari also use poison derived from a beetle to tip their arrows.
Anthropologists have pointed out that our forager forebears have shaped our preferences for food today. It makes energetic sense to go for calorie-dense foods like fatty meat, roots and tubers, and even sugar rather than leafy greens, even though they are good for use. That is, we have been shaped by our past to not want to eat salad unless it is covered in salad dressing, cheese, and nuts. Foragers also consider processing and handling time. If it takes more energy to crack a nut than the nut itself provides, it’s better to go for something else. Likewise, if it takes more energy to chase down a rabbit, skin it, butcher it and cook it, then it just isn’t worth it to hunt rabbits. We make these same decisions all the time as well, and is part of the reason fast food, with no handling or processing time and lots of fat and calories, is so hard to pass up.
Division of Labor
Forager society is often divided up not by class, but by age and sex.  Hunting with weapons like arrows or spears is often a man’s task, though there are many exceptions. Agta women of the Philippines, for example, traditionally hunted large game like deer with bows and arrows, sometimes while carrying infants on their backs. Anthropologists Michael Gurven and Kim Hill explain in their article “Why Do Men Hunt?” that Agta women of the Philippines would traditionally hunt with dogs and target areas where men did not hunt, closer to their village. More commonly, women in forager societies tend to gather food, watch children, prepare meals, construct shelters and clothes, get fuel and water, transport items between camps, and hunt smaller game. Women’s gathered food resources often tend to be more predictable, while men’s hunting often provides more food, but on a less predictable basis. However, there is quite a bit of variation in the availability and importance of different food items among foragers.
Mothers and Others
A look at forager childcare is enlightening. Children in the Kalahari do little to no work, do not forage for food in any significant sense, and are treated gently. Children are a distraction on foraging trips, and there are few foods available for children to forage easily. In addition, the high temperatures of the Kalahari and the need for water make taking children on longer forays inefficient. Mothers and fathers supply children with most of their food well into their teens. In other forager cultures, children contribute more. For instance, anthropologists Kristin Hawkes, James O’Connell, and Nicholas Blurton-Jones have found that among the Hadza of Tanzania, older children can forage more effectively.
Childcare is not a solitary endeavor among foragers. In all known hunter-gatherer societies, mothers let others hold their babies, not so different from Westernized childcare. Alloparenting means that someone other than the mother provides help in caring for infants. Human foragers and industrialized nations lie in stark contrast to chimpanzees who diligently guard their babies against others. “Hadza mothers,” writes Frank Marlowe (2005), “are quite willing to hand their children off to anyone willing to take them.” Hadza grandmothers and fathers provide a considerable amount of childcare. Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy argues that in a species with high child mortality and offspring that are extremely costly to raise, namely Homo sapiens, this kind of cooperation makes sense. She goes on to argue that alloparenting in our human past shaped our emotional lives, honing our ability to read emotions and see motivations in others. This need for alloparenting may have contributed to us being such a highly social and cooperative species. Indeed, babysitting likely played a significant role in making us human.
Nasty, Brutish, and Short?
The political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) in contrast to Rousseau, famously wrote that foragers represented primeval life in the state of nature and was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” It was once widely held that hunter-gatherers just didn’t have any spare time to elaborate their culture because they were so busy searching for food all the time. Agriculture, it was thought, released people from these time-consuming subsistence efforts and freed up time for other, more leisurely, artistic pursuits. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have known that some hunter-gatherers don’t put in the same long work days that agriculturalists or even industrialists do. African G/we hunters, for example, will hunt for about 5 hours a day, and some days people don’t forage at all. This apparent forager free time led anthropologist Marshall Sahlins to describe hunter-gatherers as “the original affluent society.” The calculation of work and leisure in any society is quite complicated, however, because abundance varies seasonally and other problems make work and leisure difficult to quantify. Also, different foragers live in different environments with different productive potential, and many have been pushed into areas where food is more scarce. Despite these difficulties, it is nonetheless clear that forager life isn’t always just about searching for food.
Another misconception about foragers is that they die young, rarely living past 40. This misconception is based on a misleading statistic called the average age at death, or average life expectancy at birth. The average age at death is exactly what it sounds like: you record all the deaths in a population over a period of time and take the average age at death. This statistic will be heavily influenced by infant and childhood deaths—these early deaths push the average age at death down into early middle age, even though many or most people are living into their 60s and 70s. This is especially true of populations living before the medical advances made in the 20th century. Among hunter-gatherers and, for that matter, all pre-20th century populations, the period between birth and 5 years of age is particularly fraught with risk. Among the pre-contact forest Aché foragers of Paraguay, former UNM anthropologists Kim Hill and Magdalena Hurtado estimated that 25 percent of the population died by age 5, while anthropologist Nancy Howell found that 33 percent of Dobe !Kung (Ju/’hoansi) children died by their fifth year. In some societies, early life is so precarious that infants are not even named until they are a year old or more.
The average modal age at death—that is the age at which most people in a given population die tells a different story. In 2007, UNM anthropologists Michael Gurven and Hillard “Hilly” Kaplan carried out a survey of 50 hunter-gatherer populations from around the world for which there was detailed census data collected. They found that the average modal age of death for these forager populations was 72, plus or minus about six years (ranging from about 66 to 78). These results suggest that foragers that survive the precarious time of childhood live to a fairly ripe old age.
Foragers in a Modern World
In a case famously described by Theodora Kroeber in her book Ishi in Two Worlds, an emaciated man stumbled out of the woods in northern California. His village was massacred by California settlers in 1865, he and his family survived by hiding in the woods for more than 40 years. When he finally emerged in 1911, he was nearly dead. Ishi, as he is known, was taken in by University of Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. He was the last of the Yahi people and spoke a dialect of the Yana, an extinct native language of northern California. Ishi lived at the university, providing arrowhead-making demonstrations until his death from tuberculosis in 1916. Astonishingly, this process of removing foragers from their traditional lands continues today in the face of settlers, oil drilling, logging, mining, and building of hydroelectric dams. Foragers find themselves between two worlds as they try to maintain their traditional ways and advocate for their rights.
Mobile foragers require large areas of land to meet their subsistence needs—extensive use of land. Loss of land due to colonization, mining, logging, and the establishment of game preserves have all but eliminated the forager way of life. In 1961 Botswana, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve was created to protect wildlife, and the forager San people (Bushmen) were relocated to an area within the reserve. After time, the Botswana government said it wanted to integrate the San into a more developed life and stopped government support, plugged wells, and banned hunting and gathering, forcing the San out of the Reserve into settlement camps. The Botswana government said the San presence in the Reserve was inconsistent with the mission, but others suspected the government wanted to clear the area for diamond mining. Later in 2014, diamond mining began in the reserve. In 2006 the evictions were ruled unconstitutional, but only a limited number of foragers were allowed to return.
In a similar narrative, the former forest dwellers such as the Batwa of Uganda have been displaced by the encroachment of farmers and the establishment of Mgahinga Gorilla National Park and the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The Ugandan government held that the Batwa had no claim to land because they never settled permanently, overlooking the fact that mobile foragers do not establish permanent settlements. The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park became a World Heritage Site for the protection of endangered mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei). Gorilla tourism brings in money for the government of Uganda, but the Batwa have suffered as a result. The Batwa are not permitted to forage in the park, are not employed by the park, and cannot teach their children their traditional subsistence practices. Today the Batwa live on the margins of their ancestral lands or in slums as “conservation refugees”. Conservation refugees are people who have been removed from their traditional lands in the process of creating parks and refugees for animals and plants.
In another case, where animal conservation and foragers collide is the case of the Makah of Neah Bay, Washington. The Makah have an 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay with the United States that ceded some of their land but permitted the right to whale in “common with all citizens of the United States.” The Makah ceased whaling in the 1920s when the numbers of gray whales dwindled due to over-hunting by the whaling industry. More recently, the gray whale was removed from the endangered species list and in 1999 the Makah were allowed to hunt a gray whale. The hunt was denounced by some conservation groups. Since the hunt was not conducted for subsistence purposes, but rather for cultural reasons, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society claimed the hunt an invalid and dangerous exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
A case where an indigenous people have successfully combined cultural and biological conservation is the Cofán of Ecuador. The Cofán are traditional forager-gardeners of the Ecuadorian Amazon. In the 1970s, Cofán territory was devastated by oil drilling, and some Cofán responded by establishing a new settlement and defending themselves against the illegal encroachment of oil companies. Instrumental in this process is American-Ecuadorian Randy Borman, the “gringo-chief” of the Cofán. Borman was born to American missionaries in Ecuador, is fluent in A’Ingae ,and is married to a Cofán woman. Borman has been able to both live the traditional life of a Cofan person and argue the case of the Cofan with governmental agencies, oil companies, and non-profit organizations. Borman and other Cofán created the FSC (Foundation for the Survival of the Cofán People) which helped to triple the size of Cofán territory, conduct scientific and conservation projects, and educate future leaders (Cepek 2012: 103). Today Cofán people manage and protect the biologically diverse Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve. The Cofan also provide community-based ecotours in which Cofán people act as ecological guides.
Foragers have also been faced with protecting their intellectual property. Foragers have a vast understanding of the plants and animals in their environments and have identified plant medicines, pesticides, preservatives, perfumes, sweeteners, and of course new foods. Intellectual property rights extend to indigenous knowledge of plants. And yet, “gene hunters” are subcontracted by large firms to acquire this knowledge from traditional societies to patent the gene or chemical and make a profit (Vishnu Dev 2016).
In Brazil, indigenous Kapaó leader Raoni Metuktire has fought for decades for the preservation of the rainforest, threatened by dams, logging, and cultivation. Although he and his people only became acquainted with Western culture in the mid-1950s, Metuktire has met with international leaders and has become a symbol of the effort to preserve the Amazon.  What you are doing will change the whole world and will destroy our home – and it will destroy your home too.” In 2019 Metuktire was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Raoni holding his international petition against the Belo Monte Dam in Paris.” by Gert Peter-Bruch is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Food Production
In contrast to the foraging lifestyle are the food producers. Food production, which relies on domesticated plants and animals, began around 10,000 years ago. Today, most people in the world rely on some form of domesticated food, a stark departure from our forager ancestors. Anthropologists divide up food producers into categories of pastoralism, horticulture, and intensive agriculture.
Pastoralism
Pastoralism means herding and raising animals. Pastoralists have domesticated herbivores including cattle, horses, reindeer, sheep, and goats, depending on the region. Traditional pastoralists include the Masai, Dinka, and Nuer of Africa, the reindeer herders of far northern Scandinavia (Sami) and Siberia (Eveny), and nomadic pastoralists of Tibet. Mobility varies with different animals and in different environments. Pastoral nomads move with herds from sources of water and food and lead a highly mobile existence. Transhumance pastoralists move animals between seasonal camps and often supplement with crops. Pastoralism often occurs in open semi-arid region where farming is difficult.
Typically, pastoralists do not kill their animals very often for food, but rather rely on their milk and blood. In one practice, animals are “bled” without killing them and the blood is mixed with milk. When an animal is killed, it is often shared during a feast usually accompanied by a ritual. As with foragers, sharing among pastoralists confers prestige as well as sets up reciprocal obligations.
Horticulture
Horticulture is farming with the use of simple hand tools and human labor on temporary farm plots. Horticulture first began more than 10,000 years ago around the end of the last ice age. In addition to simple farming, horticulturalists often supplement their diet with some hunting, raising domesticated animals, and selling goods. Horticulturalists move their semi-permanent farm plots to another area as soil fertility in the original plot decreases. This practice is called shifting cultivation, or swidden, and allows farmland to rejuvenate over time. To improve the soil, horticulturalists will often practice slash and burn, clearing and burning vegetation except for the largest trees before farming a plot of land. In general, areas that are conducive to slash and burn horticulture are ill-suited for long-term use of farm plots, which require large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides to sustain the soil. Because they produce more food in a given area, horticulturalists use the land more intensively than foragers. As a result, horticulturalists tend to live in more dense communities than foragers, whose populations tend to be small.
Horticulture has recently been practiced in the Amazon Basin, Papua New Guinea, central Africa, Samoa, and Southeast Asia. Farmers in the American Southwest practiced horticulture as well, relying on floodplain water for their fields. Because horticulturalists maintain fields for several years before moving to a new plot, architecture tends to be more permanent than mobile foragers. Horticulturalists often use techniques like multi-cropping and planting certain crops together to boost productivity and minimize erosion and soil depletion.
Intensive agriculture
Early intensive agriculture began in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), Egypt, India, and China. Intensive agriculture differs from horticulture in that it continues to use the same plot of land rather than periodically shifting plots. Intensive agriculture produces more food per unit of land than does horticulture. It accomplishes this by people working harder, adding animal labor, and applying farming innovations to keep up soil fertility. Innovations to improve soil productivity include fertilizers, plows, irrigation, and terracing (creating steps out of a hillside for gardens). All these inputs require a great deal of time and energy to build and maintain. Fields must be weeded and pests like mice, rabbits, and grasshoppers driven out. Domesticated animals must be fed, housed, bred, and cared for. Irrigation ditches and terraces must be engineered, excavated, and maintained. Fertilizers must be collected and spread on the fields and farming equipment must be made and maintained. The plow is an important innovation, allowing farmers to reach nutrients below the topsoil. Rather than moving periodically to rejuvenate the soil, efforts are increased to ensure soil productivity over the long run.
What’s more, intensive agriculturalists tend to grow storable grains. Storage units have to be created, maintained, and kept free from vermin. In addition, the grains must be processed on a grinding stone to get the most food value from them. This can entail grinding grains for many hours a day. That said, it is clear that agriculture did not free people from heavy labor, quite the contrary. In Homo Deus, Yuval Harari likens the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden to work “by the sweat of your brow”—forever leaving behind a forager lifestyle. In this light, agriculture hardly liberated people from the hard labor of farming, allowing them more leisure time to pursue their passions and develop the arts and sciences. Quite the contrary, people were working harder than ever, investing more time and energy as intensive agriculturalists compared with foragers and horticulturalists. On the other hand, more people could be supported per unit of land, and food could be more easily stored and defended, providing some food security during shortfalls and lean seasons.
Consequences of Intensive Agriculture
There are consequences of intensifying production, even before the introduction of fossil fuels, pesticides, and monocropping. Because intensive agriculturalists do not move, investment in architecture tends to increase and more permanent settlements emerge. Staying in one place is called sedentism. Instead of the movable tents or simple brush structures, mobile foragers have, intensive agriculturalists often build houses from clay bricks, stones, or other more permanent materials. This can be seen very clearly in the archaeological record. When maize began to be relied upon in the American Southwest, people started building more permanent structures living in and storing food that we call pueblos. Differences in wealth and power also emerge with intensive agriculturalists in contrast to the egalitarian pattern of foragers.
Populations tend to increase with the onset of pre-industrialized intensive agriculture as well. Not only can more people be supported per unit of land, but anthropologist Karen Kramer argues that children of intensive agriculturalists can do many tasks that offset the costs of raising children. Girls in agricultural societies process grain, fetch water and fuel, care for children, cook, wash clothes, and other tasks. In her book Maya Girls, Kramers shows that around age 13, Maya girls begin to produce more than they consume. When electricity came to a Maya village, grinding maize, a task that girls performed for hours a day, became mechanized. As a result, the age of menstruation, which is a direct result of food intake and energy expenditure, dropped by 1.5 years. This drop reveals the considerable amount of energy that Maya girls were spending on household tasks. Kramer argues that Maya girls were underwriting the cost of their parents having more children, resulting in population growth.
Forager children in contrast typically do not contribute to the household economy until relatively late in life. For instance, Ache boys of Paraguay don’t produce more than they consume until around the age of 17. Ache women and girls never produce more food than they consume. In essence, Kramer argues that intensive agriculturalists can afford more children than foragers. This idea remains the subject of some debate because Hadza hunter-gatherer children have been shown to forage for a considerable amount of their daily intake and so environment likely plays a key role in children’s production in both forager and agricultural societies. While there is a tendency for mobile forager children to do little work and for children of agriculturalists to do a lot of work, different environments will affect the nature of children’s labor.
Zoonotic Diseases
Intensive agriculturalists often use animal labor in addition to human labor, coming into contact with animal meat, blood, and feces. These close quarters with animals have the consequence of increasing the occurrence of zoonotic diseases. Zoonotic diseases are those that can be transferred between humans and animals. The diseases typically start in animal populations but shift when a genetic mutation allows them to jump to humans. Zoonotic diseases are very common and can be disastrous for human populations. The infecting agents can be parasites, fungi, and viruses.  Related, the build-up of garbage is a problem for pre-industrial intensive agriculturalists and urban dwellers alike. Garbage dumps called middens can be found in the archaeological record, the physical remains of the past, adjacent to settlements. Middens are a treasure trove of information for archaeologists. For people living near these dumps, however, they can become vectors of disease, containing animal and human waste and attracting vermin like cockroaches, rats, and mice. Cats, who prey on these vermin, began living in human settlements 9,500 years ago, around the time that humans began farming and storing food (Ault 2015).
Today, with more than 7 billion people on the planet, we live in more densely packed urban centers than ever and are connected globally. When epidemics start, like the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that killed more people than World War I, the results can be difficult to contain. Given the unprecedented connection between people today, there is a call for a global system of response to deal with potential epidemics. Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University calls for a system of global readiness and response, which includes funding for the production and distribution of vaccines.
Other Effects of Agriculture
As agriculture intensified, people began to store foods, especially grains. Populations grew denser, and people could defend those resources from outsiders. Note this contrasts with the tolerated theft of foragers who can’t easily defend their hunted foods. Differences in wealth and status begin to emerge (as evidenced by the archaeological record) as some people had better land and higher production than others. Craft specialists including scribes, soldiers, priests, and bureaucrats emerge; these people do not produce food for themselves, but rather produce a service or product in exchange. Ruling, merchant, and peasant classes eventually arise along with the concept of personal property. For the ruling class, status and prestige become at least partially ascribed, inherited at birth.
Unilineal Evolution
As European nations came into contact with and began to colonize North and South America, Africa, and India, they encountered people who were physically and culturally unlike themselves. This led to the question, why do people in different parts of the world look and behave differently? The concept of unilineal evolution developed out of this question. Unilineal evolution is based on the late 17th and 18th century Enlightenment idea of progressivism—that humans are advancing toward intellectual and moral perfection. One version of this framework was that humans progressed through different stages from “savagery” to “barbarism” to “civilization,” with civilized society at the top of the pinnacle. In this ranking system, the more you controlled nature, the more civilized you were, and the more you represented a model of social and moral perfection.
The idea of unilineal evolution was espoused by anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan and others in the late 1800s, in part based on archaeological discoveries of a progression from stone tools to metal ones in Europe. Not surprisingly, the adherents of this idea considered themselves members of the most intellectually and morally advanced group—the civilized sort. Under this mindset, early anthropologists decided that foragers of their day were still languishing in the stone age with all the supposed mental and moral deficits that went with it. Unilineal evolution bears no resemblance to Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) ideas about evolution through natural selection. Quite the contrary, Darwin, who encountered many different peoples on his travels aboard the Beagle, pointed out the remarkable similarities in humans that he encountered.
Unilineal evolution was not just an ivory tower idea but had real-world consequences. In the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis Missouri, there was an exhibition of living cultures which including Apaches from the Southwest, the Tlingit of southeast Alaska, and a man named Ota Benga a Mbuti native (formally called “pygmies” for their short stature) of the African Congo. Ota Benga was a personable man with a set of sharpened pointed teeth, a result of a coming-of-age rite of passage among the Mbuti. More than 19 million people attended the event. Geronimo was also part of the Exposition, and it is said that he liked Ota Benga so much that he gave him one of his arrowheads.
After the Exposition, Ota Benga went to the Bronx Zoo where he did odd jobs. Unfortunately, Ota Benga was harassed by tourists and had taken to targeting bullying children with tiny arrows shot from a miniature bow he had made. As a result, Ota Benga ended up as an exhibit in the “Monkey House” at the Bronx zoo as part of a publicity stunt. One editorial in the New York Times called to mind unilineal evolution by stating that “The pygmies … are very low in the human scale” (The Guardian 2015). According to the New York Times, an African-American clergyman wrote in protest, “We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls”. Following public protest, Ota Benga was released and went to live with a family in Virginia. By that time, he wanted to return to Africa, but travel became impossible once World War I broke out. Distraught, Ota Benga removed the caps that had been put on his pointed teeth, built a fire, and shot himself. No one knows where his remains are today.
 Boas had worked with Inuit and Northwest Coast societies and wrote descriptions of those cultures called ethnographies. He appreciated their intricate worldviews and histories, comprehensive knowledge of their environments, and complex social and political systems. In short, he knew people were people and could not objectively be ranked on scales of intelligence or morality, and that traditional societies weren’t somehow less than human.
Through his first-hand experiences, Boas created the term “cultural relativism.” Cultural relativism is the idea that cultures need to be understood within the context of that culture. The flip-side of cultural relativism is ethnocentrism, passing moral judgment on a culture based on one’s own culture. Cultural relativism is not about passing moral judgment or giving cultural practices the unexamined stamp of approval but rather is intended as a tool to understand why people do what they do. Franz Boas’ insistence that human cultures be understood on their own terms earned him the title “father of American anthropology.” Boas also championed what was called salvage anthropology, working to record cultural practices that were quickly disappearing in North America and elsewhere with European colonization, removal of people from aboriginal lands, language decline, the decimation of populations by infectious diseases, and in some cases, outright genocide.
While the idea of unilineal evolution may seem like a relic of the past, the notion continues today. Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brasil stated in 2020 that “The Indian has changed, he is evolving and becoming more and more, a human being like us.” Bolsonaro believes the land allotment of the indigenous people in Brazil is too large and hopes to open it up to mining logging, and other industrial ventures.
The Anthropocene
The Industrial Revolution truly revolutionized how we get food.  Increasing human labor, animal domestication, and technological innovations like the plow increased production per unit of land and allowed populations to grow. Today, reliance of fossil fuels to power machinery to clear land, and produce food has changed our lives entirely. What’s more, industrialization is changing the face of the planet in unprecedented ways. Most dramatically, humans have altered the ratio of animal species to favor our lifestyle and dietary habits. Worldwide there are 780 million pigs, approaching a billion cattle, and 21 billion chickens making them the most common bird in the world. The wild ancestor of domesticated cattle, the auroch, went extinct in the forests of Poland in 1627. The wild ancestors of camel, sheep and house cat are on the brink of extinction (Francis 2015). Animals that we enjoy as companions far outnumber their wild counterparts. For instance, in recent years there have been about 95 million cats in the United States alone. Globally, there are around 200,000 wild wolves, but 400,000,000 domesticated dogs. Humans themselves numbered around 1.6 billion in 1900, but number around 7 billion today.
Other species that do not contribute as immediately to human appetites, like Sumatran tigers (~500, Panthera tigris sumatrae), mountain gorillas (1000 Gorilla beringei beringei), and northern white rhinos (3 in captivity, Ceratotherium simum cottoni) are on the brink of extinction. Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii, 250 in the wild), the only horse that has never been domesticated and is strikingly similar to horses in early European cave paintings, is also close to extinction. In a recent article in the Atlantic, science writer Peter Brannen (2017) points out, “today wildlife accounts for only 3 percent of earth’s land animals; human beings, our livestock, and our pets take up the remaining 97 percent of the biomass.” Human populations are expected to reach 9 or 10 billion by 2050, increasing the pressure on non-domesticated animals through encroaching settlements, mining, logging, poaching, the illegal pet trade, and other pressures, creating further homogenization of biological life. For more information on threatened species see the IUCN’s (International Union for Conservation of Nature) redlist.
Other changes are taking place as a result of human intelligence and cooperation like the rise of cities, massive dams, huge mining operations, irrigated farms, ocean acidification, surface temperature increases, ocean dead zones, deforestation, the composition of the atmosphere, and ozone depletion. Ice cores from Antarctica indicate higher levels of greenhouse gases today than in the last 500,000 years. If we reach an increase of 4 degrees Celsius, the use of the planet will change dramatically resulting in extinctions, crop failures, starvation, and huge migrations of people would also follow. It is not just scientists who worry about the human impact on the earth’s systems, but foragers as well. As Henry Rosas a Mastigenka (hunter-gardeners) man of the Peruvian Amazon puts it, “We ourselves have to realize that it is we human beings ourselves that are poisoning everything or else we will ourselves. We will kill ourselves unless we wake up” (Proyecto EBA Amazonía 2016).
Humans have become the most important agent of ecological and climatological change (Harari 2017). We may be a speck in the galactic sense, but we have transformed our speck. Geologists divide time into epochs based on changes in rock layers (also called strata) that correspond to changes in climate and environment. Technically speaking, we live in the Holocene. Yet observing how we have transformed our planet, scientists are now proposing that we are living in a new age called the Anthropocene— the age of humans. Never before has a single species been responsible for altering its ecosystem on such as massive scale. We have become a geophysical force on par with volcanoes and asteroid impacts.
Geologists use fossils and chemical signatures to identify different geological periods. What might be the signs that future geologists will use to define the Anthropocene—the future fossils? Three contenders include fossilized chicken bones, increased radiation levels, and possibly plastics. The Working Group on the Anthropocene is currently debating which signatures will likely prevail. This is a difficult prospect since our lifetimes are so minuscule compared to geologic time. The start date of the Anthropocene is also currently being debated. Some suggest that European contact with the Americas and the resulting exchange of agricultural products and death of an estimated 50 million people from disease should mark the official start. Others think the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1710 is more appropriate. Still, others think 1950 is a solid starting date with the onset of nuclear testing, increased use of plastics, fertilizers, and concrete, along with deforestation, rising carbon dioxide emissions, and increases in domesticated animals like chickens. Wherever you place the starting point, it is clear that humans have had an outsized impact on the planet.


13.3 Energy Carried by Electromagnetic Waves
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Express the time-averaged energy density of electromagnetic waves in terms of their electric and magnetic field amplitudes
- Calculate the Poynting vector and the energy intensity of electromagnetic waves
- Explain how the energy of an electromagnetic wave depends on its amplitude, whereas the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency
Anyone who has used a microwave oven knows there is energy in electromagnetic waves. Sometimes this energy is obvious, such as in the warmth of the summer Sun. Other times, it is subtle, such as the unfelt energy of gamma rays, which can destroy living cells.
Electromagnetic waves bring energy into a system by virtue of their electric and magnetic fields. These fields can exert forces and move charges in the system and, thus, do work on them. However, there is energy in an electromagnetic wave itself, whether it is absorbed or not. Once created, the fields carry energy away from a source. If some energy is later absorbed, the field strengths are diminished and anything left travels on.
Clearly, the larger the strength of the electric and magnetic fields, the more work they can do and the greater the energy the electromagnetic wave carries. In electromagnetic waves, the amplitude is the maximum field strength of the electric and magnetic fields (Figure 13.3.1). The wave energy is determined by the wave amplitude.
(Figure 13.3.1)
For a plane wave traveling in the direction of the positive x-axis with the phase of the wave chosen so that the wave maximum is at the origin at the electric and magnetic fields obey the equations
The energy in any part of the electromagnetic wave is the sum of the energies of the electric and magnetic fields. This energy per unit volume, or energy density is the sum of the energy density from the electric field and the energy density from the magnetic field. Expressions for both field energy densities were discussed earlier ( in Capacitance and in Inductance). Combining these the contributions, we obtain
The expression then shows that the magnetic energy density and electric energy density are equal, despite the fact that changing electric fields generally produce only small magnetic fields. The equality of the electric and magnetic energy densities leads to
(13.3.1)
The energy density moves with the electric and magnetic fields in a similar manner to the waves themselves.
We can find the rate of transport of energy by considering a small time interval As shown in Figure 13.3.2, the energy contained in a cylinder of length and cross-sectional area passes through the cross-sectional plane in the interval
(Figure 13.3.2)
The energy passing through area in time is
The energy per unit area per unit time passing through a plane perpendicular to the wave, called the energy flux and denoted by can be calculated by dividing the energy by the area and the time interval
More generally, the flux of energy through any surface also depends on the orientation of the surface. To take the direction into account, we introduce a vector , called the Poynting vector, with the following definition:
The cross-product of and points in the direction perpendicular to both vectors. To confirm that the direction of is that of wave propagation, and not its negative, return to Figure 13.2.2. Note that Lenz’s and Faraday’s laws imply that when the magnetic field shown is increasing in time, the electric field is greater at than at The electric field is decreasing with increasing at the given time and location. The proportionality between electric and magnetic fields requires the electric field to increase in time along with the magnetic field. This is possible only if the wave is propagating to the right in the diagram, in which case, the relative orientations show that is specifically in the direction of propagation of the electromagnetic wave.
The energy flux at any place also varies in time, as can be seen by substituting from Equation 13.2.11 into Equation 13.3.1.
(13.3.3)
Because the frequency of visible light is very high, of the order of the energy flux for visible light through any area is an extremely rapidly varying quantity. Most measuring devices, including our eyes, detect only an average over many cycles. The time average of the energy flux is the intensity of the electromagnetic wave and is the power per unit area. It can be expressed by averaging the cosine function in Equation 13.3.3 over one complete cycle, which is the same as time-averaging over many cycles (here, is one period):
(13.3.4)
We can either evaluate the integral, or else note that because the sine and cosine differ merely in phase, the average over a complete cycle for is the same as for to obtain
where the angle brackets stand for the time-averaging operation. The intensity of light moving at speed in vacuum is then found to be
in terms of the maximum electric field strength which is also the electric field amplitude. Algebraic manipulation produces the relationship
where is the magnetic field amplitude, which is the same as the maximum magnetic field strength. One more expression for in terms of both electric and magnetic field strengths is useful. Substituting the fact that the previous expression becomes
We can use whichever of the three preceding equations is most convenient, because the three equations are really just different versions of the same result: The energy in a wave is related to amplitude squared. Furthermore, because these equations are based on the assumption that the electromagnetic waves are sinusoidal, the peak intensity is twice the average intensity; that is,
EXAMPLE 13.3.1
A Laser Beam
The beam from a small laboratory laser typically has an intensity of about Assuming that the beam is composed of plane waves, calculate the amplitudes of the electric and magnetic fields in the beam.
Strategy
Use the equation expressing intensity in terms of electric field to calculate the electric field from the intensity.
Solution
From Equation 13.3.5, the intensity of the laser beam is
The amplitude of the electric field is therefore
The amplitude of the magnetic field can be obtained from Equation 13.2.8:
EXAMPLE 13.3.2
Light Bulb Fields
A light bulb emits of power as visible light. What are the average electric and magnetic fields from the light at a distance of ?
Strategy
Assume the bulb’s power output is distributed uniformly over a sphere of radius to calculate the intensity, and from it, the electric field.
Solution
The power radiated as visible light is then
Significance
The intensity falls off as the distance squared if the radiation is dispersed uniformly in all directions.
EXAMPLE 13.3.3
Radio Range
A radio transmitter on Earth sends its signal to a satellite away (Figure 13.3.3). At what distance in the same direction would the signal have the same maximum field strength if the transmitter’s output power were increased to ?
(Figure 13.3.3)
Strategy
The area over which the power in a particular direction is dispersed increases as distance squared, as illustrated in the figure. Change the power output by a factor of () and change the area by the same factor to keep the same. Then use the proportion of area in the diagram to distance squared to find the distance that produces the calculated change in area.
Solution
Using the proportionality of the areas to the squares of the distances, and solving, we obtain from the diagram
Significance
The range of a radio signal is the maximum distance between the transmitter and receiver that allows for normal operation. In the absence of complications such as reflections from obstacles, the intensity follows an inverse square law, and doubling the range would require multiplying the power by four.
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1. WHAT IS TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION?
1.5 Writing Processes
Suzan Last
Just as we use design processes to creatively solve complex problems, we use writing processes to create complex documents. In both cases, there are steps or stages, but we don’t always proceed directly from one step to next in a chronological manner. These processes are often iterative, meaning we might return to previous stages in the process from time to time. The more complex the task, the more iteration might be needed. Examine the Design Process (Figure 1.5.1) and Writing Process (Figure 1.5.2) diagrams below. What similarities and differences can you see in these two processes?
You may have come across a “writing process” before, and it may or may not have worked well for you. There is no single process that works for everyone in every situation. The key is to recognize the various steps in a typical writing process and figure out how to use or adapt them most effectively for your situation.
For example, you may have come across the 40-20-40 writing process, which suggests that you should break up the amount of time you spend on the writing task into three distinct stages of planning, drafting and revising, and give each one a specific percentage of the time you have available.
40-20-40 Writing Process
Stage 1 – Planning: spend 40% of your time planning your document (task analysis, thinking, discussing, free-writing, researching, brainstorming, concept mapping, focusing ideas, outlining, etc.)
Stage 2 – Drafting: spend 20% of your time writing a rough draft (quickly getting all your ideas down in print, in more or less complete sentences and paragraphs, in more or less the right order, without agonizing over style or grammar choices)
Stage 3 – Revising: spend 40% of your time revising, editing, and proofreading (polishing your draft, making sure the content is complete and well supported, ideas flow logically, formatting meets expectations, expression is grammatically correct and has the appropriate tone and vocabulary).
These percentages are a helpful guideline, as they emphasize the need to allot significant time for revision, but don’t always work for all people in all situations (think of a final exam situation!). It also does not clearly account for the need to iterate; sometimes while revising your draft (stage 3), you may have to go back to the planning stage (stage 1) to do additional research, adjust your focus, or reorganize ideas to create a more logical flow. Writing, like any kind of design work, demands an organic and dynamic process.
As with the design process, the writing process must begin with an understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. In an educational context, this means understanding the assignment you’ve been given, the specifications of that assignment, the objectives you are meant to achieve, and the constraints you must work within (due dates, word limits, research requirements, etc.). This is often referred to as “Task Analysis.” In professional contexts, you must also consider who your intended reader(s) will be, why they will be reading this document, and what their needs are, as well as deadlines and documentation requirements.
EXERCISE 1.5
Consider an upcoming writing assignment or task you must complete. To avoid putting it off until the last minute (and possibly doing a poor job), try planning a writing process for this task, and build in milestones. Anticipate how long various sub-tasks and stages might take. Make sure to include time for “task and audience analysis” to fully understand what’s involved before you start. Consider the following:
- What is the purpose of the document? What are the specific requirements? Who will read it and why?
- How much planning is needed? What will this entail? Will you need to do research? Do you need to come up with a topic or focus, or has one been assigned to you?
- How complicated will the document be? Will it have several sections? Graphics? How much revision will be needed to perfect your document? Will you have time for a peer/tutor review?
Now try using the Assignment Calculator to see if it offers something similar to your planned writing process.
Image descriptions
Figure 1.5.1 image description:
A design process flow chart that encourages you to revisit previous steps as needed.
- Define the problem. This involves a needs assessment, problem statement, designing criteria and goals and background research.
- Generate possible solutions. Brainstorming using the idea trigger method, thumbnail sketching, and creative thinking. At this point, you may need to revisit your problem definition. Once you have a number of possible solutions, move on to the next step.
- Evaluate possible solutions. Do ideas meet design criteria? List the advantages and disadvantages. Select the best design alternatives. Use a decision matrix to evaluation. At this point, you may need to revisit your problem definition or brainstorm some more. Once you have evaluated possible solutions, move on to the next step.
- Make and test a model. Create detailed technical drawings, prototype or scale model, mathematical and computer models, Conduct performance and user tests. At this point, you made need to go back to brainstorming solutions or evaluating possible solutions. Once you have a model you are happy with, move on to the next step.
- Modify and improve design. Fix problems, improve design, do more testing if needed. In the worse case, scrap the design. You may need to go back to evaluating possible solutions to making and testing the model. Once you have a design you are happy with, move on to the next step.
- Communicate final design. Create final technical drawings, and technical manuals for assembly, operation, and maintenance.
Figure 1.5.2 image description:
A writing process diagram that encourages constantly revisiting previous stages.
- Prewriting. This stage is for generating ideas, understanding the ideas of others, and collecting information (note taking, free-writing, brainstorming, looping).
- Planning. Here, you are organizing and focusing ideas. This may involve mind mapping, clustering, listing, and creating outlines.
- Drafting. In the drafting stage you are writing initial drafts of a text focusing mainly on the development, organization, and elaboration of ideas.
- Reflection. In the reflection stage, you can let the work sit and come back to it at a later point. You may cycle back between drafting a reflection a number of times before moving on.
- Peer/tutor review. Now you can get feedback from others. This may require you to return to the drafting and reflecting stages.
- Revision. Here you are further developing and clarifying ideas and the structure of the text. This may require you to return to the drafting and reflecting stages. If the work requires additional research or idea generation, return to the planning stage.
- Editing and proofreading. Here the focus is on surface-level features of the text.


5 Semiotics and Communication Processes
mediatexthack
At this point, it is worth thinking about the two fundamental views of communication, the transmission and the ritual view, and consider how ideas of the sign play out in each.
The transmission view, which was about the functional exchange of information from sender to receiver across space, can utilize signs as a vessel for the exchange of such information. The panoply of signs that surround us are all signifiers, and thus can be seen to at least be attempting to communicate or convey information.
In a ritual view of communication, which is about the idea of culture being developed over time, ideas are seen to be circulating a culture, and again through the use of signs to facilitate the exchange of meaning. What a sign ‘means’ is often determined and refined by culture, even for indexical signs. What meanings are dominant, what symbols correlate to what ideas, is constructed by culture. Again, think of the word ‘cool’ as an example of this in action.
This brings us to the concept of codes. In all the communication you have participated and been exposed to, we have had to ‘read’ and deconstruct the signs presented in context. We all bring to bear on the act of meaning-making our understanding of that context, and prior experiences with those signs to help make sense of the message being transmitted. To continue the example of this Instant Kiwi lottery advertisement, we read that ad referring back to our own personal experiences of exam situations, as well as other media texts that have presented similiar or parallel narratives.
Signs are not presented in isolation, one at a time. We can try and isolate them to study them, but we cannot fully make sense of them without taking into account the context. Signs, how they operate and how they relate signifier to signified, take place within systems that we call codes.
Discussion Questions
- Take this New Zealand PSA commercial as an example, and think about the codes — the prior texts and experiences and meanings — you as the reader need to bring to bear to understand the message it intends to convey.


An Exercise in Compression
RK Taylor
Like many creative writing educators, I teach (and think in) the components of craft. These components serve as heuristics for writers to develop their own work, and they provide teachers with a framework for designing lesson plans. Still, approaching the pedagogy of creative writing with a specific set of terms can, from the point of view of the student, yield an educational experience that lacks nuance and intellectual rigor.
Before college, students are trained to memorize and identify certain literary terms. Some students assume this set of terminology will continue to exist in their college classroom, predicting the words the professor will use in a craft-based conversation. Though these terms are the building blocks for a sophisticated understanding of language, students may become less engaged with seemingly redundant material. The issue presents, not because the components of craft are inherently problematic, but because educators prioritize certain elements and fail to reach beyond the accepted norms.
The literary community has incidentally created three tiers of craft terminology. The most common terms are those that all students know: character, setting, plot, conflict, etc. In the second tier, there are those that students recall after the requisite querying: figurative language, detail, voice, etc. The third tier comprises elements like chronology, irony, syntax—elements that are seldom, if ever, mentioned by students without blatant prompting. Though the latter terms are important to one’s understanding of craft, teachers rarely dedicate an entire lesson to developing a more thorough understanding of their role.
Of the often neglected components of craft, I find compression is among the most important.
Fiction and creative nonfiction have grown shorter by popular demand. A combination of shortened attention spans and time constraints has developed a body of short, short literature with a plethora of different brandings. Micro, hint, flash, sudden. All are linked by two threads. First, each is constrained by an arbitrary word limit. Second, and much more important, they all demonstrate the beauty of compression.
By compression I am referring to the art of creating a full experience in a limited piece. There are several buzzwords and phrases that help to give rise to a well-compressed piece: minimalism, specificity, attention to detail, subtext. Although each of these can be impressively demonstrated, their union is not a complete rendering of compression. Fundamentally, compression requires the writer to confront the elegance in constrained creativity.
This isn’t to say that longer stories lack compression. When writing long-form, whether a novel or a memoir, compression is still vital. Considering compression helps the writer to focus on important scenes by having them attend to the aspects of narrative that most matter in a given situation. Perhaps when the writer considers whether it is more important to build character or advance plot, they find—after a consideration of compression—that it is possible to do both simultaneously.
Although compression can be a topic-worthy conversation for any story, it is especially important in shorter works, which often attempt to stir up the reader’s emotions in a few meager paragraphs.
Compression has long been overlooked in the pedagogy of creative writing. With this new wave of short, short pieces, it is of the utmost importance that we begin to discuss effective compression techniques in craft classrooms.
The purpose of this assignment is threefold. First, it should encourage students to consider the care that goes into crafting a short piece and the focus that compression should take. Second, it will provide students with a practical tool to ground them in compression—a trick when they get stuck. Finally, it provides students with an opportunity to workshop early drafts with their peers, to help them understand both sides (reading and writing) of compressed flash prose.
Students will first construct a timeline of a twenty-four-hour period, creating one unique entry per hour. Nonfiction students can choose a day in their lives; fiction students can choose a day in the life of a fictional character they’ve previously created, an imagined day of a family member, or a mayfly (which requires that they consider the animal’s whole life span). Students will then choose five nonconsecutive points from their timeline and build a story based on these events. This will challenge students to think about the most essential or interesting moments in an already-constrained time period, and expound upon what has already struck their interests.
Students will read these aloud in small groups. They will listen to descriptive, empirical comments from their peers. Restricting comments to the descriptive and empirical gives writers space to hear what stands out without normative judgments from their peers.
The students will then create a new timeline of a longer time period. Nonfiction students may opt to write a timeline of their lives; fiction students may choose the life of a character, or the imagined life of a friend or family member. Students will then workshop in the same groups, this time providing comments that are evaluative and critical.
By first hearing descriptive comments, and then hearing judgments, writers are able to understand their work in two dimensions. Since they will also function as both noncritical and critical readers, the students will continue to strengthen their understanding of the successful and unsuccessful facets of compression, as well as learning of their personal strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. Since students fulfill the function of writer and reader, their understanding of compression will begin to demystify.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Ask students to create a timeline of a twenty-four-hour period with one unique marking for each hour.
- Have students choose five nonconsecutive points from their timeline.
- Prompt students to draft a piece of flash that incorporates each of their chosen points.
- Break students into groups of four.
- Ask that someone from each group reads their piece to the other members of the group. While they are reading, group members should write down descriptive, empirical comments about the story.
- Have students read these comments aloud to their groups.
- When the comments have been exhausted, the next member of the group will read their story.
- Repeat steps 5 through 7 until all group members have read and provided feedback.
- Have students make another timeline—this time, encompassing a longer period of time.
- Ask students to select five, nonconsecutive entries.
- Prompt students to draft a piece of flash based on their chosen points.
- Have students repeat steps 5 through 8 in their same groups. This time, however, their comments should be evaluative and critical.
- Ask that students type and revise one of their two pieces. A final draft should be handed in at the start of the next class.
Biography
RK Taylor, an MFA candidate at Chatham University, relocated to Pittsburgh from upstate New York. He serves as a roving editor for The Fourth River and teaches creative writing at the Allegheny County Jail through Chatham’s Words Without Walls program. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The Metaworker, Oragami Poems Project, and Flash Fiction Magazine. His debut short story, featured in Scribble, has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Pushcart Prize. He has an unparalleled passion for whiteboards.


Chapter 12: Musculoskeletal System
Mackenzie Wiebe
Background
Musculoskeletal diseases, from injuries to chronic pain to arthritis, lead to decreased functionality and debility for many patients (Bond et al., 2022). For example, low back pain is the number one condition that creates physical disability around the world (Bond et al., 2022). People of all races and ethnicities experience most musculoskeletal diseases at roughly the same rate, depending on the disorder (Bond et al., 2022). However, racialized groups like Black, Indigenous, Brown, Asian, and Pacific Islander people have far more burden, disability, and worse outcomes than White people with the same conditions (Bond et al., 2022; Thompson et al., 2019).
The research by Bond et al., (2022) states that racialized patients have a higher chance of experiencing negative results such as:
- major lower extremity (leg) amputation;
- subpar anesthesia and analgesia being provided during total joint replacement surgeries;
- fewer patients with rheumatoid arthritis getting the prescriptions they need for anti-rheumatic drugs; and
- fewer patients being properly diagnosed with spinal disc injury and having the surgery they need.
Social Determinant Considerations and Culturally Responsive Practice Points for Health Care Providers:
Health inequities that racialized groups of people experience are due to the social determinants of health and the power structures in our society (Umaefulam et al., 2021). For example, the health of Indigenous peoples in Canada is still greatly affected by colonization (Umaefulam et al., 2021). As Umaefulam et al. (2021) have noted, “Health care providers either consciously (through disregard for cultural values) or unconsciously (by failing to provide culturally relevant care) disempower patients” (p. 194). Indigenous patients report unsafe situations in health care, experiences of racism, and not being understood by health care professionals (O’Brien et al., 2021). This impacts if and how patients access health care. It also decreases the continuity of care and discourages patients’ well-being and ability to manage their diseases (Ulaefulam et al., 2021).
Thompson et al. (2019) have argued that “[s]ocioeconomic status (SES) is a multifactorial construct encompassing knowledge, prestige, power, wealth, social connectedness, and various other resources available to an individual” (pp. 1140–1141). More research needs to be done on how race and SES intersect to decrease MSK health outcomes (Vaughn et al., 2019).
Physical Assessments
Pain is a very common symptom of musculoskeletal diseases. Because of their prior experiences of racial discrimination in health care, many racialized patients do not try to access care for their pain. They try to “tough it out” instead (Bond et al., 2022). For these reasons, it is especially important that nurses provide culturally responsive care to racialized patients and appropriately assess pain [link to pain assessment chapter] as part of a musculoskeletal assessment.
Most parts of the physical musculoskeletal assessment are the same for patients with dark skin as they are for patients with light skin. The main differences are the changes in skin color that may accompany musculoskeletal injury or inflammation. In dark-skinned patients, erythema may be difficult to see, but may show up looking purple (Jarvis, 2019). Palpation will be very important in these situations, since erythematous areas may also feel warm to touch with hardened tissues underneath and taut, shiny skin (Jarvis, 2019). Bruising from musculoskeletal injury will appear deep, dark purple, and will not blanch (Jarvis, 2019).
Osteoarthritis (OA)
- Lower socioeconomic status is a predictor of increased OA risk and poor OA outcomes, including higher levels of pain and disability (Vaughn et al., 2019). This is due to factors such as limited access to medical care, higher environmental and psychosocial stress, food insecurity, and limited access to exercise facilities faced by people with low socioeconomic status (Vaughn et al., 2019). Socioeconomic status is also predictive of outcomes after total joint replacement surgery, the cause of which is frequently OA. Patients with high socioeconomic have lower pain, higher functionality, greater likelihood of receiving total joint replacement, and better postoperative outcomes than patients with low socioeconomic status (Thompson et al., 2019).
- Race and socioeconomic status are closely tied through intersectionality when it comes to OA. Racialized people living in poverty experience more pain and disability due to OA than either racialized people with higher socioeconomic status or White people living in poverty (Callahan et al, 2021; Thompson et al., 2019; Vaughn et al., 2019). These groups of OA sufferers do not have significant differences in the OA severity found in their knees, but experience different pain and functionality as a result of oppression and lack of social power (Callahan et al., 2021; Thompson et al., 2019).
 Black patients with OA have a disproportionate burden of knee OA-related pain symptoms and poor physical function compared to White patients (Thompson et al., 2019; Callahan et al., 2021; Vaughn et al., 2019). Black patients are also less likely to get joint replacement surgery or analgesics for their OA (Vaughn et al., 2019; Kowitt et al., 2019). There are racial differences in the OA disease process. Black Americans “have more severe tibiofemoral OA, tricompartmental OA, and lateral joint space narrowing, and well as a higher prevalence and severity of osteophytes and higher frequency of sclerosis than [White people]. . . . [They are] more likely to have a valgus thrust during walking, which could increase the risk of lateral knee OA and [are] more likely to have joint space narrowing, osteophytes, and cysts compared with [White people]” (Vaughn et al., 2019, p. 636).
- According to Umaefulam et al. (2021), “[Indigenous peoples] have increased prevalence, severity, and undertreatment of arthritis” (p. 194). Indigenous patients with OA also have a greater burden of the disease, including pain, stiffness, and impaired mobility (O’Brien et al., 2020; O’Brien et al., 2021). Access to care for OA is substantially lower for Indigenous people than non-Indigenous people (O’Brien et al., 2021). Indigenous people in Canada consult orthopedic specialist services and have total joint replacements at substantially lower rates than non-Indigenous people (O’Brien et al., 2020). A study by Bond et al. (2022) found that Indigenous people with OA were less likely to seek medical care for their arthritis because they thought they would be racially discriminated against. Indigenous peoples have faced significant increases in chronic conditions like OA, a disadvantage that is caused by the legacy of colonization and marginalization of Indigenous peoples in Canada (O’Brien et al., 2020).
- Psychosocial stress has a negative effect on patient outcomes for OA. The psychosocial stress caused by living in poverty is significant, and poverty experienced by marginalized people tends to be worse than by white people (intersectionality). Thompson et al. (2019) found that “[c]ompared to [White] adults, [Black] adults receive less income at the same education levels, have markedly less wealth at equivalent income levels, and have less purchasing power due to the higher costs of goods and services in the residential environments where they are disproportionately located … When [Black] and [White] adults climb the socioeconomic ladder, discriminatory organizational structures often prevent [Black] adults from making similar gains to [White] adults despite comparable effort” (p. 1140).
- Something that does help racialized people access and navigate the health care system to treat their OA is having health care providers who support them, educate them, and advocate for them (Umaefulam et al., 2021).
Osteoporosis (OP) and Hip Fracture
- Osteoporosis is highly underdiagnosed and untreated in racialized women (Ruiz-Esteves et al., 2021).
- Black women are much less likely to be referred for a bone mineral density test, be screened for OP, or be prescribed medications to manage osteoporosis than White women (Benes et al., 2022; Ruiz-Esteves et al., 2021). Black women with more risk factors such as advanced age, lower health literacy levels regarding OP, lower socioeconomic status, history of smoking or alcohol use are screened for OP even less (Benes et al., 2022). Even when Black women are diagnosed with OP, they are less likely to be treated for the disease compared to White women (Wright et al., 2019).
- Indigenous peoples in Canada have a higher incidence of hip fracture than non-Indigenous Canadians (Brennan-Olsen et al., 2017). Specifically, Indigenous people are 200%–300% more likely to experience a fracture due to OP (Brennan-Olsen et al., 2017). In the US, Indigenous people have the highest incidence of hip fracture compared to all other racial groups (Amir et al, 2019). Determinants such as low socioeconomic status, substance use, comorbidities, fall history, and geographic location are risk factors for OP fracture, while current hormone treatments are protective against OP fractures (Brennan-Olsen et al., 2017; Amir et al., 2019).
- Physiological stress response is often activated by social discrimination such as racism. What follows is dysregulated release of hormones like cortisol that promotes bone remodelling and decreases bone mineral density (Follis et al., 2021). Social strain, including negative social interactions and relationships, is associated with increased risk of hip fractures, especially for Indigenous and Latinx women (Follis et al., 2021).
- Fractures due to OP cause disability and mortality, which disproportionately affect Black and Latinx women in the US (Follis et al., 2021). After fracturing a hip, Black patients are significantly more likely to receive a non-surgical intervention than White patients. Non-surgical treatment of hip fracture generally leads to pain, decreased function, and increased immobility (Amen et al., 2022; Rudasill et al., 2019). Black, Latinx, and AAPI patients wait longer for surgery to treat their hip fractures compared to White patients (Amen et al., 2019). When Black patients do receive hip surgery, they have increased rates of postoperative complications and longer hospital stays (Amen et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2022; Naver et al., 2020). Overall, mortality 1 year following hip fracture is higher among Black patients than White patients (Amen et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2022; Naver et al., 2020; Rudasill et al., 2019).
- Rudasill et al. (2019) noted, “Among all [racialized] patients, research has shown less preventative screening and treatment of OP, increased delays to surgical care, and increased difficulty accessing postoperative care, readmission risk, and overall mortality” (p. 4).
- To mitigate OP racial health inequities, health care professionals must address their biases, develop culturally safe, trusting relationships with patients, and provide much better screening and education around OP causes and treatments (Amen et al., 2022; Wright et al., 2019).
- In their study, Lee at al. stated, “[B]roader social determinants at the community level, such as education, poverty reduction, social and welfare services, affordable housing, job creation, labor market opportunities, and transportation may reduce differences in mortality from hip fractures” (549).
Back Injuries
- One American study found much higher incidence of low back pain among older Black and Latina adults than among older White adults in an underserved community (Bazargan et al., 2021).
- For racialized older adults (compared to White older adults), low back pain is a higher risk factor for emergency department use, dissatisfaction with medical care, depression, decreased quality of life, sleep disorders, and falls (Bazargan et al., 2021).
- Research has shown that nurses, physicians, and other health care professionals believe that Black patients experience less severe pain than White patients, and treat them with less empathy and fewer analgesics accordingly (Licciardone et al., 2022).
- When presenting to emergency departments for low back pain, racialized patients were less likely to receive analgesia and more likely to have long wait times for opiates compared to White patients (Bazargan et al., 2021). Racialized patients were also less likely to receive advanced imaging tests to help diagnose their low back pain in emergency departments (Bazargan et al., 2021).
- Data on chronic low back pain and its prevalence, effects, and outcomes in Indigenous peoples in Canada is insufficient. More research is needed (Health Canada, 2020).
- Treatment of low back pain in racialized people should be approached with equity-oriented responses since it is a social justice issue (Bazargan et al., 2021). According to Bazargan et al. (2021), “Improving access and satisfaction with medical care among [racialized] older adults with pain is the first step toward mitigating some of the racial/ethnic disparities observed” (p. 10).
References
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