Goody, Jack Production and Reproduction New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976 (Chapters 1-5) 

Determination in techn-ecology Overview "Production," "Intercourse," "Determination": Marx on ecology, culture and causality feedback between ecology, technology and social organization  Goody and classical functionalism  The breadth of the institutions affected by "technecology" (my neologism) Analytic difficulties with functionalist causality

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1. The course is organized to take us 
   1. through the evolution of the argument about the relationship between technology (the objects human beings find when they get born or start interacting) and culture (the process through which human beings together make new objects for future interaction and future human beings).  
      1. Note that to talk about evolution here is to talk about the sharpening of the debate, not yet at least, the movement towards a resolution.  
      2. Note also that I am making one side of the argument.
   2. through the major institutions of humanity that are arguably (determined) (constrained) (constituted) as technology evolves:
      1. family, kinship, inheritance, sexuality and other intimate matters
      2. economic systems, political systems, etc.
      3. communication systems
      4. industrial production systems
      5. the military and the medical
          
2. Let's start with the core sentence from a passage I quoted earlier at more length.

   Men begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistance... The form of the intercourse of individuals with one another is again determined by production. (Karl Marx The German Ideology Chapter One, First Premises of materialist Method)

   The three main words are
    

   1. "production" (all practical actions necessary for survival at at particular historical time)
   2. "intercourse" (the organization of the people involved in determination)
   3. "determination" (how people must be organized for production)

   Much of the reaction against Marx has centered around the notion of "determination."  It is enough at this stage to remember that  no production system has been so overwhelmingly powerful that further transformations of the means of production could not actually be performed.

   Almost no one however would dismiss the idea that human beings produce what is NOW (whenever that is) needed for their subsistence ("in the style to which they have become accustomed").  And no one would dismiss the idea that, everywhere, in all societies and cultures, however "simple" or "primitive," the production of subsistence involves the organization of people and of their relationships, thereby forming particular forms of dependencies and mutual interest in what others are doing to the extent that it has in impact on what one is oneself doing.

3. The issue concerns the relationship between modes of production and social organization and the extent of the feedback between the two (or the extent to which one should stress this feedback).  Both Goody and Wittfogel argue in detail:
    
   1. for a strong version of the determination hypothesis (note that this is not simply a "Marxist" hypothesis: much of modern "liberal" economic theory is just as deterministic though they might focus on other technologies such as money). 
   2. for technology and ecology as a mediating factor in the determination of the type of social organization.

   In these ways they bring us back continually to the physically of our anchoring on the earth, and on the diversity of human adaptations (but the fact that such diversity is possible is in fact not confronted directly).

4. Goody's argument is, obviously, an instance of the classical experimental model, searching for independent variable explaining certain kinds of variation.

   Formally, all social sciences have found it all but necessary to operate with the classical function equation

   "y = f(x)"

   where 'y' is a particular set of observations that appear patterned and 'x' is a set of conditions that appear independent of 'y' and where 'f()' is hopefully specifiable. In this case

   family patterns

   =ARE=

   function of (social conditions);

   This can be modified further as follows:

   household structure (i.e. size, membership, authority patterns, etc.) divorce rates, age and conditions of marriage, inheritance patterns, etc.	=ARE= function of	biology	i.e. sexuality, infant maturation
   		technology	i.e. tools
   		social organization	i.e types of people and their interaction
   		[ideology?]	i.e. religion, philosophy, art

   
    
5. One of the most interesting thing about Goody is his insistence that we pay close attention not only simple relationships between any two of the above elements or variable but on the relationship between them. Specifically, "ecology" (mis-)understood as physical geography apart from tools or other technologies, is not purely determinant. However, it might limit the use of certain tools, and thereby either free populations from the constraints attendant from the systematic use of these tools, and equally limit them in various ways.

   Goody investigates the geographical limitations on the use of the plow (particularly soil quality), the production differences whether one uses plows or hoes (particularly as it relates to surplus of land, and ability to accumulate surpluses), leading to further differences in the kinds of social organization allowed or constrained by production system focused on the plow or hoe. He focuses on

   1. inheritance patterns ("diverging devolution");
   2. marriage and divorce patterns;
   3. adoption and fosterage patterns
    

   More information on this work in the context of the literature on comparative family systems.

   All this, eventually, are matters of control of land, people, surpluses, statuses, wealth.

6. Some of the difficulties in thinking causally and the alternatives:
    

   causality	vs.	co-occurence (i.e. determination vs. historicism)
   	vs.	feedback loops (i.e. determination vs. systematicity--Bateson, etc.)
   		negative (homeostasis)
   		positive (contradiction, "change" and/or move towards higher levels of integration) from "mechanical" to "organic" with increase in mutual dependence, specialization diversification
   determinism	vs.	possibilities/constraints (and thereby ideological differentiation-- China/India/Europe within the "plow agriculture" area)