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domestic economy: land, labor, and wealth in a San Blas community
Author(s) -
STIER FRANCES
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1982.9.3.02a00050
Subject(s) - subsistence agriculture , panama , agriculture , land use , subsistence economy , index (typography) , geography , agricultural economics , economics , archaeology , computer science , statistics , ecology , mathematics , world wide web , biology
This paper discusses household organization and subsistence agriculture in a Cuna community of the Comarca de San Blas, Panama. Sahlins's adaptations of models from Chayanov are commonly used to analyze the relationship between household demographic characteristics, land use, and the labor intensity of agriculture. Several technical difficulties arise in this analysis, however, and it fails explicitly to incorporate information on the social organization of the community. A multiple regression approach is offered that eliminates the technical difficulties, shows a way to incorporate additional information, and introduces a path model of the relationship between household composition, economic status, and farming strategy. [subsistence agriculture, Chayanov, San Blas Cuna, Panama, demographic change]