"Each of these cases pf bottom-up management that I (Diamond)
have
just mentioned involves a small society holding exclusive rights
to
all economic activities on its lands. Interesting or more complex
cases exist (or traditionally existed) on the Indian subcontinent,
where the caste system instead operates to permit dozens of
economically specialized sub-societies to share the same geographic
area by carrying out different economic activities. Castes trade
extensively with each other and often live in the same village
but are
endogamous-i.e., people generally marry within their caste. Castes
coexist by exploiting different environmental resources and
lifestyles, such as by fishing, farming, herding, and
hunting/gathering. There is even finer specialization, e.g., with
multiple caste of fishermen fishing by different methods in different
types of waters. As in the case of the Tikopians and of the Tokugawa
Japanese, members of the specialized Indian castes know that they
can
count on only a circumscribed resource base to maintain themselves,
but they expect to pass those resources on to their children.
Those
conditions have fostered the acceptance of very detailed societal
norms which members of a given caste ensure that they are exploiting
their resources sustainably (Diamond 2005, p. 307).
Diamond, Jared (2005), Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail
or
Succeed, New York: Viking (Penguin Group).
