Self-organization in Indigenous Cultures

And what that can teach us about self-organization in high-tech societies

Both Dutch colonists and later anthropologists assumed that this complex irrigation system must be organized top-down.

Lansing shows it is not: farmers meet at water temples and cooperatively agree upon irrigation schedule.

Why don’t we see the control hierarchy predicted by Marx and others?

Similar question: how is Open Source possible?

The potential for a control hierarchy is clear in cases like this.

The subaks at bottom (Kliki and Klutug) only get water in dry months if released from Bukian. Bukian only gets it if released from Bresela, etc.

Why doesn’t Taro demand “tribute” or taxes or exert some other form of control?

Mutual positive feedback in Indigenous Cultures

• Deity of the Weir requires offerings from farmers who benefit from water flowing through it

• Farmers come and go, but social unit defined by weir waters persists

• Thus you avoid feeling like the dupe in prisoner’s dilemma: your debt is to weir deity, not people

Mutual positive feedback in Indigenous Cultures

• Deity of the Weir requires offerings from farmers who benefit from water flowing through it

• Farmers come and go, but social unit defined by weir waters persists

• Thus you avoid feeling like the dupe in prisoner’s dilemma: your debt is to weir deity, not people

Mutual positive feedback in Open Source

• Community Sharing and Improvement: Public access to remove bugs, tailor code to other purposes, and find problems.

• Group recognition: When credit accrues to group, individuals feel rewarded.

• The rediscovery of creativity, lost in the mass production of commercial software products.

What about physical

systems?

1) Money appears to be a self-generating source of value 2) In fact, money disguises the true source of value: self-generating capacity of labor and nature 3) In a barter economy, we tend to see very little class difference. Money allows the disguise by "condensing" the labor. 4) People who do not own a means of production must compete to sell their labor: typically, large labor pool = small income. 5) Exchange Value - Labor value = Surplus Value (the value that has been extracted from labor). 6) Corporations raise profits by "externalizing" costs of reproducing labor and reproducing nature.

Indigenous Cultures as models for Industrial Ecology

Indigenous Cultures as models for Industrial Ecology

Note that the valuable egalitarian structure of indigenous cultures is largely lost.

How can we return value to labor in the same way we are returning value to physical systems in these ecologies?