The concept of the ‘Mode of Resource Use’

The concept of ‘mode of resource use’ became popular with the publication of This Fissured
Land: An Ecological History of India, a book jointly authored by Ramachandra Guha and
Madhav Gadgil. Ramachandra Guha is an accomplished historian of environmental history,
contemporary history, sports history and a biographer of several personalities. Recently
Madhav Gadgil became more popular with the publication of Madhav Gadgil Report on the
conservation of Western Ghats of India and the debates that it had produced. Mode of
Resource Use was developed in a context when the Marxist concept of ‘mode of production’
faced severe criticism from various academic scholarships. Early generation social scientists
found the Marxist concept of mode of production useful while classifying societies according
to their technologies and relations of production existing/dominant in the respective societies.
However, even the later Marxists themselves criticised this concept and pointed out the
relative lack of emphasis in this scheme on political structures and struggles in the society.
Ramachandra Guha, a non-Marxist, argued that an ecological approach to such questions
suggests that the mode of production is not adequately materialistic in the first place. Guha
pointed out that the Marxist analysis usually begin with the ‘economic infrastructure’—the
so- called relations of production and productive forces—without investigating the ecological
context, i.e. the soil, water, animal, mineral and vegetative bases of society in which the
infrastructure is imbedded. As exemplified by recent political and economic histories of
modern India, the most major lacuna in existing scholarship is an inadequate appreciation of
the ecological infrastructure of human society. And Guha and Gadgil proposed to
complement the concept of modes of production with the concept of modes of resource use.
It must be understood that the concept of modes of resource use extends the realm of
production to include flora, fauna, water and minerals. With respect to relations of
production, it investigates the forms of property, management and control, and of allocation
and distribution, which govern the utilization of natural resources in different societies and
historical periods. And with respect to productive forces, it analyses the varying technologies
of resource exploitation, conversion and transportation that characterize different social
orders. While complementing the mode of production framework, the mode of resource use
scheme incorporates two additional dimensions. First, it examines whether one can identify
characteristic ideologies that govern different modes. More importantly, it identifies the
ecological impact of various modes, and assesses the consequences of these different modes
for the pattern, distribution and availability of natural resources. We can observe three
caveats in operation here. First, the mode of resource use concept is at bottom an ‘ideal type’.
Hence, the identification of distinct modes does not preclude the existence of more than one
mode in any given socio-ecological formation. Still it is usually possible to identify the
dominant mode within a socio-ecological formation. Second, Guha’s treatment is largely
restricted to human uses of living resources—i.e., flora and fauna—both husbanded and in
their natural state. This framework can of course be extended to incorporate other natural
resources, such as water and minerals. Finally, one important respect in which Guha’s
scheme differs from the Marxian mode of production scheme is that the industrial mode of
resource use includes both capitalist and socialist societies. While there are significant
differences between socialist and capitalist paths of development, from an ecological point of
view the similarities in these two developmental paths are more significant than the
differences. For instance, there are structural similarities in the scale and direction of natural
resource flows, the technologies of resource
exploitation, the pattern of energy use, the ideologies of human nature interaction, the
specific resource management practices, and, ultimately, the cumulative impact of all these
on living environment in capitalist and socialist societies. Consequently, it makes sense to
treat industrial socialism and industrial capitalism as being, ecologically speaking, simply two
variants of one industrial mode of resource use. To sum up, the mode of resource was an
active engagement with and a critical departure from the Marxian schema of analysis.
Four Modes of Resource
Use From the long sweep of human history we can discern four distinct modes of resource
use: gathering (including shifting cultivation); nomadic pastoralism; settled cultivation;
industry. Each mode of resource use has its own aspects of technology, economy, social
organization, ideology, and ecological impacts. Aspects of technology include sources of
energy, materials used, and the knowledge base relating to resource use. Aspects of economy
include sources of energy, materials used, and the knowledge base relating to resource use.
Aspects of economy include the spatial scale of resource flows and the mode of resource
acquisition. Aspects of social organization include the size of social group, division of labour,
and mechanisms of control over access to resources. Aspects of ideology include broad
perceptions of the man- nature relationship, as well as specific practices promoting resource
conservation or destruction. Ecological impacts include the nature of ecological impacts.
Hunting -Gathering
The largest period of human history has been spent in the gathering mode of resource use,
during which the hunting of wild animals and gathering of vegetable matter were the
mainstay of subsistence. Gathering continues to be significant during the phase of shifting
cultivation as well, and we may also include societies that practice shifting agriculture under
this rubric. In the gathering mode, societies depend almost exclusively on human muscle
power and wood fuel as sources of energy, and on naturally available plants, animals and
stones to fulfil their material requirements. Their knowledge base is fairly limited, and nature
is viewed as almost totally capricious, as something not subject to human control. The ability
to store food and other materials is also very limited, as is the ability to transport materials
over long distances.
The economy within this mode of resource use is based on resources which are acquired
within a small area of a few hundred square kilometres. Only a small range of resources, such
as shells, peacock feathers and flint tools, may be transported over larger distances. Societies
which pursue the gathering mode of resource use are highly susceptible to variations within
the resource availability through space and time. They respond to such variations by fine-
tuned adaptations to local conditions. In the harsher and more variable environments, the
people comprising these societies subsist as nomadic bands; in the more productive and
stable environments they exist as tribal groups confined to relatively small territories.
The size of the social groups among hunter gatherer-shifting cultivators is small: kin groups
of the order of a few hundred perhaps, largely in face-to-face communication with each other.
There is hardly any transaction outside such social groups. The division of labour within
these groups is minimal; what exists is primarily based on age and sex, and to some extent
upon knowledge and relationship abilities. The women will principally be found involved in
gathering plant foods and small animals, while the men will be found hunting the larger
animals. Men play a greater role in organizing information and taking decisions relating to
resource use on behalf of the group as a whole.
In the gathering mode there is little variation among members of a group in terms of access to
resources, and notions of private property are extremely poorly developed among them.
Within a group, no individual was in a position to dominate and coerce others to any
significant degree. The economy of the hunter-gatherers is a natural economy as it draws all
its resources directly from nature. Here the flows of resources are largely closed on spatial
scales of a few hundred or a few thousand square kilometres, over which each endogamous
social group of gatherers might range.
Gatherers typically regarded humans as merely a part of a community of beings that includes
other living creatures, as well as elements of the landscape such as streams and rocks.
Especially where gatherers are attached to particular localities, as in productive and stable
environments like tropical humid forests, they attribute sacred qualities to individual trees,
ponds or mountain peaks, or to all members of a plant or animal species, such as Ficus trees.
They often treat plants, animals or elements of the landscape as kin, or as being in
relationships of either mutualism or antagonism. Thus, the rivers may be considered as
mothers, and totemic animals as brethren; specific trees may be seen as inhabited by demons
who need to be placated. Gatherers therefore enter into a whole range of frequently positive
relationships with these other ‘beings’ of their own locality.
Gatherer societies, with their low population densities, low per capita resource demands,
cycles of materials closed on limited spatial scales, and a number of practices that promote
sustainable resource use, necessarily have low level of impact upon the environment. It is
indisputable that the ecological impact of this mode of resource use is minimal.
Nomadic pastoralism
The long period of history when human beings were exclusively gatherers began to come to
close with the domestication of plants and animals. This coincided with the withdrawal of
glaciers, then thousands years ago. It is possible that climatic and changes in vegetation
promoted human populations to intensify resource use, and to initiate agriculture and animal
husbandry. These processes began in parallel, and have often gone hand-in-hand. While the
cultivation of plants has been of greater importance in tracts of moderate-to-high rainfall and
moderate-to-temperatures, animal husbandry has held pride of place in tracts or low rainfall,
and at the higher altitudes and latitudes where temperatures are too low to support agriculture.
Over large tracts where agriculture is not feasible, it was also difficult to maintain herds of
domestic animals within a single locality. Animal husbandry is therefore based on moving
herds from place to place often over several hundred kilometres. This requires taking
advantage of the seasonal abundance of grazing resources in different parts of a region.
Nomadic pastoralism thus evolved as a distinctive mode of resource use, a mode that held
sway for several centuries over large regions, particularly in Central Asia and North and
Central Africa.
Pastoralists have access to animal muscle power, an important additional source of energy,
especially for transport. The animals also served as a source of food which can be tapped as
required, thus greatly increasing flexibility in the use of different habitats. They moved over
large distances, and with their access to animal energy, have been critical in creating flows of
resources over distance scaled that are vastly greater than those which prevail in gatherer
societies. The resources they moved have been both high-bulk commodities like salt, and
highvalue, low bulk luxury items like precious stones and musk. Consequently, the pastorals
not only continued some hunting-gathering while on the move, and produced meat, milk, hide
and wool from their animals, but also acquired resources, especially from settled agricultural
societies, in exchange for material and information.
The social groups of nomadic pastoralists remain limited to kin groups of a few thousand;
nevertheless, they come in contact with large numbers of other groups over an extensive
terrain. Within the social groups of pastorals, the division of labour is fairly limited. It was
based on age, sex, and leadership qualities which emerged during inter-group conflict.
Women might be more involved in feeding, milking, and tending animals, men in deciding
on migration routes and herding animals while in the move.
In the pastoral mode, elements of private property begin to emerge. However, while herds are
usually owned by separate households, pastures are invariably common property with
individual herdsmen possessing rights of access and usufruct. By surviving successfully in
harsh and variable environments, and with little attachment to particular locality, nomadic
pastorals were perhaps the first societies to perceive human communities as separate from
nature, and therefore in a position to dominate it. The ritual life of nomads is quite meagre:
no pantheon of gods, as in peasant societies, no system of totemism, as in gatherer societies.
Ritual importance may be placed on livestock, but almost never on natural locations or
specific fields. In comparison with peasants and gatherers, nomadic pastorals had little need
to pacify or placate nature; in the event of resource shortage they remove themselves to more
resource abundant areas.
It is possible that nomadic pastorals contributed to a gradual overgrazing, and to the
expansion of arid regions at their margins, all through their history. They have also
contributed to ecological degradation through the organization of trade and the diffusion of
technology over large distances and perhaps most importantly by disseminating the belief in
man’s mastery over nature.
Settled Agriculture
Human societies learnt to cultivate plants and domesticate animals around the same time,
beginning some 10,000 years ago in the Neolithic period. Settled agriculture is otherwise
known as ‘neolithic revolution’. In some regions the two developed hand in hand, with the
traction power of animals and the manorial value of their dung being vital to agricultural
operations. Cultivation involves an intensified production of certain species of plants, and the
removal of plant materials from a relatively restricted area of land. Through most of its
history, settled cultivation has depended on human muscle power, supplemented in some
regions by animal muscle power. In the industrialized world, it has come to depend
increasingly on fossil- fuel energy. However, pre-industrial agriculture depended primarily on
plant and animal-based materials, along with some control of natural flowing water for
irrigation. Consequently, preindustrial agricultural societies have a fairly substantial
knowledge base in relation to husbanded plants and animals; they also view nature as being
subject to human control to a very significant extent. In peasant societies, cereal grains can be
stored and moved around, especially on the backs of animals or in carts, over long distances.
Resources can here flow over much larger distances than in gatherer societies, enabling the
concentration in towns of human populations not directly involved in gathering or the
production of food. Of course, a
majority of the agrarian population consumes natural resources largely on subsistence—e.g.
for food, clothing, shelter, implements, fodder and manure. However, a small by powerful
segment of the population is involved in the large -scale consumption and use of materials
not directly related to subsistence—both luxury items such as silk and wine, and instruments
of coercion such as the horse and the elephant, metal swords and shields. There are large
scale exports of materials out of intensively cultivated patches of lands, both to nearby
villages and to more distant urban centres. These outflows from agricultural land are balanced
by inflows from surrounding noncultivated lands.
Cultivation requires intensive outputs of human energy in relatively restricted areas of land—
a few hectares per person in the pre-industrial stage. Therefore, small kin group rather than a
large band can most effectively organize such inputs; hence the family becomes the basic unit
of an agrarian society. Family groups need to cooperate with each other in a variety of ways,
including defence against the usurpation of their production. Several families thus banded
together in a village, which becomes a social group of a few hundred to a few thousand
individuals. Sex based division of labour is quite pronounced in the peasant mode. Typically,
men confined themselves to operations such as ploughing, which require higher power
output.
Women take on the burden of more tedious work, such as weeding and transplanting, and,
outside cultivation, the collection of fuel, fodder and water. While cultivated plots are usually
controlled by individual households, forests, grazing grounds and water are normally held in
common by the village. Within the larger social group of an agricultural society there is a
great deal of division of labour, made possible by the fact that only a fraction of the
population needs to engage directly in the gathering and production of food. Those not
directly involved in the production of food take on other occupations. These are—the
processing of materials (e.g. textiles, oil seeds), transportation, the interpretation and
dissemination of natural and cultural knowledge (by priests) and coercion (by specialized
warrior groups).
In comparison with the gatherer mode, the peasant mode shows a sharp separation between
cultivated and non-cultivated lands. This separation is significant in directing resource flows,
and equally so with regard to differing forms of property and control. At the lowest spatial
scale agricultural land may be controlled by a family. Such control may be subject to
regulation by village community, which could reassign plots of land and treat land as
community resource, perhaps for grazing purposes, outside the cropping season. The non-
cultivated land within village boundaries, typically a few square kilometres in extent, serves
to supply fuel, grazing, manure, etc. for the community as a whole. These large chunks of
land, different portion of which may be used at different seasons, may be most effectively
controlled as community, rather than family property.
In comparison with hunter gatherer societies, agricultural societies have established
substantial control over natural processes; nevertheless, they are still very subject to nature’s
caprices in the form of droughts, floods, frost, and plagues of locusts. Agricultural societies
continue to perceive man as one among a community of beings. The agricultural societies in
the process of encountering an expanding resource base—either through new technologies or,
especially, while colonizing land earlier held by gatherers—are much more likely to view
humans as separate from nature and with a right to exploit resources as he wishes. All these
practices depended on a high degree of co-operation between the members of a village
community. One should say that, in peasant mode, custom and tradition provided the
overarching framework within which human-nature interactions are carried out.
The ecological impact of the peasant mode may be characterised as intermediate. With the
march of agriculture, a significant proportion of land began to be converted into artificial
grasslands or crop fields, which replace forests, marshes or natural grasslands. Fire, stone
axes and metal axes aid in this process of conversion. The cultivation also imposed increasing
demands on natural vegetation and a greater removal of forest produce, to be used as fuel,
fodder, manure, building timber and implements. The discovery of iron—which in many
areas led to the colonization of the forests by the agriculturists—also facilitated the continued
felling of trees in a forest. The cumulative impact of these interventions is a striking change
in the landscape, which very likely became heterogeneous, manifesting a variety of
successive stages within a mosaic. It could also have led to the local extinction short run—
transforming the landscape, exterminating certain species and depleting others, introducing
weedy species, and so on. Industrial Phase of some species of plants and animals. Of course,
the agricultural societies have had a dramatic ecological impact eve in theshort run—
transforming the landscape, exterminating certain species and depleting others, introducing
weedy species, and so on.
Industrial Phase
The latest mode of resource use to appear in human history, large-scale industry, has been
with us for just about two hundred years. Its ecological impact has been profound, far
surpassing all that preceded this revolution. The main reason for this is the quantum jump in
the use of energy, with heavy demands on non-renewable sources (coal, oil), coupled with the
use on entirely novel sources such as nuclear energy.
If the pattern of energy use in the hunter gatherer mode may be characterised as passive
(relying only on human muscle and wood-fuel power) and that of the agricultural mode as
active (augmenting human power with animal power, wood-fuel and water power), in the
industrial mode energy use follows an extractive path, wherein natural resources are both
harnessed (hydro-power) and mined (fossil fuels) for human consumption. The industrial
mode has also brought into use a whole new range of man-made materials; e.g. metals,
plastics, silicon chips and synthetic pesticides. These newly fashioned materials can now be
preserved to be used for long periods, and transported for consumption elsewhere. Great
improvements in transportation within the industrial mode mean that even bulky, heavy
goods—e.g. timber or rocks can be transported with ease over large distances. These abilities
vis-à-vis materials processing, storage and transport have revolutionized flows of resources,
these having now become truly global.
Over the last three centuries, industrial societies have steadily expanded their resource base.
This has been achieved by a growing knowledge about the working of nature—through the
hypothetico-deductive method of modern science and by the links established between
scientific discovery and practical application—in order to tap additional sources of energy,
process materials, and transport goods faster, more economically, and over ever-longer
distances. This process of the intensification of resource use has led to the continual overuse
and exhaustion of many resources.
The greatly enhanced scale of resource flows in industrial society goes together with a
substantial increase in the number of humans involved in this network. Face-to-face contact is
obviously impossible among such large numbers, and they tend to interact through the
medium of formally codified transactions. Within such large social groups there is a rather
elaborate
division of labour. In these societies too, men have tended to monopolize the more skilled
and prestigious jobs, leaving the bulk of the unskilled and tedious work to women. Such
discrimination has persisted despite the rhetoric of equality and the development of
technologies which tend to discount the advantages of greater physical strength.
In industrial societies, the impersonal criteria of structural location vis-à-vis the means of
production define the ways in which individuals come together for collective action. These
corporate groups, based on the division of labour, are extremely fluid, the membership being
in great flux. Again, the continual expansion of resource base, both in terms of new extractive
techniques and new territories to draw upon, has enhanced the fluidity of social groupings.
There is therefore a much greater stress on pursuit of individual interest in these greatly
atomized societies.
The rise of individualism is also accompanied by a tremendous expansion in the role of the
state in regulating individual transactions. In most spheres of social life, the personalised and
flexible systems of customary law—typical of agricultural societies—are replaced by
impersonal and relatively rigid system of codified law. While safeguarding private property
over land and in the work place, and taking over the ownership of what was hitherto common
property, the modern industrial state completely delegitimizes community-based systems of
access and control.
The ideological underpinnings of industrial society involve the total rejection of the gatherer
view of man as part of a community of beings, or even of the agriculturist view of man as a
steward of nature. Instead, it is emphatically asserted that man is separate from nature, with
every right to exploit natural resources to further his own well-being. Nature is now
desacralized. What has come to be venerated instead is the market place; the market is
supposed to rationally allocate the use of resources so efficiently that all individuals are as
well off as they could possibly be.
If one looks at the overall picture, it is obvious that the enormous resource demands and
waste production of industrial nations and of the industrial segments have the most profound
impact of the world’s environment. This impact includes radical modification of landscape, a
gradual depletion of forests, drastic reductions in, or extinctions of, populations, a wholesale
poisoning of the biosphere, a modification of bio-geochemical cycles (as with the increased
production of carbon dioxide), and perhaps a long-term adverse modification of the climate
as well.
REFERENCE
Guha, R., & Gadgil, M. This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. Oxford
University Press.