Terrace Cultivation

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Terrace cultivation is an agricultural practice that suggests rearranging farmlands or turning hills into farmlands by constructing specific ridge platforms. These platforms are called terraces. The essential and distinguishing feature of terrace agriculture is excavating and moving topsoil to form farmed areas on ridges. The trick is that water flows down to lower platforms when the upper platforms are full. Thus, the amount of water is distributed more or less evenly. 

Farmed areas in agricultural terracing are either level or tilted, depending on the soil infiltration properties. If soil infiltration is sufficient, they are made level. The most popular terrace types in farming are: broad base, narrow base, and grassed back-slope; depending on how steep the hill is. 

• Broad-base terrace farming method is suitable for the gentlest hills, and terrace farming includes all the slopes.
• Grassed back-slope terrace farming is an example of perennial terracing, as the back slope cover is perennial grass. 
• Narrow-base terrace farming is another example of perennial terracing, but in this case, permanent vegetation covers both, the front and back sides. 

This technique of cultivation is credited to the Incas, who developed the farming method of terracing in the Andes. Today, terracing is typical for mountainous rice paddies in Asia. There are various benefits in this method,

• increases land productivity of sloped fields,
• contributes to water conservation; slows down and reduces water runoffs, improves rainwater harvesting,
• prevents soil erosion by decreasing rill formation,
• boosts soil conservation,
• reduces sedimentation and water pollution,
• increases food production by adjusting hilly land for farming,
• adds to ecosystem diversity.

There are some challenges too,

• specific types of machinery required,
• high labor and cost input
• land disturbances that often require additional treatment
• trained people needed to arrange terraces
• preliminary soil testing is required,

Prevention or reduction of soil erosion, as well as soil conservation by terracing, allows using the terraced farmlands in the long run. It attests to the essential role of terracing in sustainable agriculture.

Reference: collected from various sources

Shifting Cultivation

Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system which has been in practice since the Neolithic period. In this system, plots of land are cultivated temporarily, and then abandoned and allowed to revert to their natural vegetation. The period of cultivation is terminated when the soil shows signs of exhaustion, or more commonly when the field is overrun by weeds. The length of time that a field is cultivated is usually shorter than the period over which the land is allowed to regenerate by lying fallow. The duration of the fallow period also depends upon the availability of land with forest vegetation and the size of the group practicing it. 

Shifting cultivation is also known as swidden/slash-and-burn/dry cultivation. The process in brief is as follows:

1. The land is rain-fed and the natural vegetation is slashed, dried, and then burnt. The clear land is known as 'swidden'. The basic technology of shifting cultivation, also known as dry cultivation, is to grow crops without the help of irrigation or external input of fertilizers. 
2. The topsoil is then mixed with the layer of ash that provides the necessary compounds to act as fertilizers. 

   

   Photo by Maksym Ivashchenko on Unsplash
   
   

3. Cultivation of the land after clearing is usually accomplished by hoe and a digging stick and not by a plough. 
4. After the field is cultivated, it is left to fallow till there is sufficient growth of vegetation after the soil regains its fertility - to commence another cycle of cultivation. The fallow period has to be very long, 10-15 years, for the system to be reasonably productive, therefore it is also known as extensive cultivation. 

This technique is adopted by different tribal communities in many parts of the Indian subcontinent. It is known by different names in tribal regions. 

• Jhum - NorthEast India
• Podu / Koman / Bringa - Orissa
• Deppa - Bastar
• Kumari - Western Ghats
• Penda - SouthEast Rajasthan 
• Bewar - Madhya Pradesh

It is also prevalent in other parts of the World.

• Milpa - Central America and Mexico
• Ladang - Indonesia and Malaysia

etc.

An important feature of this agricultural system is that it can be productive even in poor soil conditions, for example on mountains; as it makes its own top soil and doesn't go deep in the earth. However, this method is not suitable in a community with high population density.

Reference: collected from various sources

Rituals of Liminality

This concept was introduced by Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) and elaborated by Victor Turner (1920-1983) and Edmund Leach (1910-1989). 

A 'liminal period' is -- "a betwixt and between" period; where normal life and time stand still or is reversed. Arnold van Gennep analysed the role of life cycle rituals such as birth, puberty, marriage and death, mark stages of transition in an individual's life, where a person makes a transition from one status to another. 

According to him, every ritual has 3 stages:

1. A stage of separation - the time period when the individual is removed from normal life, often giving up normal daily activities, surrounded by taboos and often enters a ritual status of sacredness. (e.g. during marriage)
2. Liminal period - the time period when a person is kept away from society, sometimes physically hidden away, therefore, they are in the society but not a part of it. This is the "betwixt and between" situation when one is suspended as it were in social space and time. (e.g. bride does not leave the house before marriage and does not take part in usual daily activities)
3. A final stage of incorporation - after the transition is made, the individual comes out of the liminal period and back to normal life. (e.g. new bride asked to cook a dish at her in-law's house)

Edmund Leach used the concept of liminality to describe what he calls - the marking of structural time/intervals; where important social events mark the oscillations of time, from one period to another. (e.g. Harvest rituals mark the interval between one agricultural cycle and another. The sowing-reaping-sowing cycle is marked at each phase my a ritual.) Leach called this oscillating time as against the concepts of lineal time. There is a sense of reversal, where ordinary life is reversed/stopped. (e.g. during a festival in India called Holi, social norms get reversed. Normal social distances get abandoned; young people take over, hostilities and inequalities are ignored and also in some cases, injustice suffered in regular life acted in reverse, women beat husbands with brooms.)

Functional study of Rituals

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

In his book, 'Elementary forms of religious life' (1912), set the stage for functional analysis from the earlier emphasis on evolution. Durkheim showed how the Totemic rituals establish within the participants;

• sense of oneness
• sense of solidarity
• sense of commitment
• sense of morality

He also showed how the Totemic rituals led to a harmonious relationship between nature and humans. Every time the Totemic rituals were performed, all the values become reemphasized and reaffirmed. The repetitive nature of rituals was to recreate the collective sentiments of the people - a process necessary for survival. 

A. R. Radcliffe Brown (1881-1955)

Followed Durkheim to give a structural-functional analysis of collective rituals. He introduced the terms 'ritual value' and 'ritual status' to describe the symbolic significance of collective rituals. He showed the significance of taboos/prescriptions and prohibitions in creating a ritual status and thereby giving a ritual value to an object. (Ritual values are social values necessary for maintaining necessary sentiments essential for social reproduction and solidarity.) 

His hypothesis - rituals, by their restrictions on action, create anxiety that is just right to make a person realize the importance of a relationship. In this analysis, importance is given to the function of rituals for social structure.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

His hypothesis - explains rituals as relieving anxiety rather than creating anxiety. In this analysis, importance is given to the function of rituals for individuals.

All human beings have certain amount of rational knowledge about the tasks we do. In spite, a certain degree of uncertainty prevails. The role of rituals is to take care of this 'grey area' which no amount of skill or knowledge can cover. The more dangerous the result of failure, greater the anxiety, more elaborate the rituals. For example, in his study of the Trobrianders, a seafaring community of Pacific Islands, Malinowski showed that when they are fishing in backwaters or otherwise safe zones, the fishermen perform little rituals, but they always perform elaborate rituals when they are venturing out in the deep sea or any long distance voyage where the risk factor is high.

The performance of rituals can be rationalized by the positive mindset/confidence it builds in an individual, who feels satisfied at having done all that could be, including those that are beyond human control and only the supernatural can take care of. 

In his book, 'The Coral gardens and their Magic' (1935), he showed how rituals performed by magicians help to regulate agricultural work and imposes rational time schedule that actually helps in scientific management of productive activities. Once activities are projected as a sacred duty, there is greater compliance and less chance of people defaulting. 

Reference: IGNOU Study Materials

A note on Rituals

A performance, to be socially meaningful, must have a public content. 

Even if, a person is performing a ritual individually, he/she follows a pattern that is publicly recognized and followed. For example, a Hindu woman blowing a conch shell and lighting a lamp under the Tulsi tree in the evening. Every culture prescribes a format for the performance of rituals that must be followed by everyone, whether or not the ritual is actually performed publicly. 

Photo by Naveen Kumar on Unsplash

Religion and Anthropology

The anthropological approach of studying human societies as integrated wholes consider religion as a part of culture. Anthropologists try to find out the relevance of religion in human societies, whether primitive or technologically advanced, and the significance of religion in human societies. Notable is the fact that there is no society known so far without any religious idea, it is a cultural universal. They made attempts to search for earlier forms of religion and religious thoughts and the courses of change therein. Some intellectuals thought that religion will have no place where science and technology flourish - but the reality is to the contrary. 

Anthropologists defined religion in different ways, but none of them adequately cover all aspects of religion practised by all human societies. 

Edward Burnett Tylor : "Belief in spiritual things"

Emile Durkheim : …"a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them."

Clifford Geertz : "A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."

for more - Various Definitions of Religion

Typical dictionary definition of religion : "belief in, or the worship of, God or Gods."

References: IGNOU Study Materials