Culture and Resources. Determining the Value of a Resource

Studies of sequent occupance are often useful in showing how a particular physical environment can serve different cultures in different ways. In particular, cultures differ in their recognition of potentially useful environmental substances and. once recognized, in how these substances can be converted into artifacts.

Substances that can be transformed into artifacts are called resources. A substance becomes a resource only if human beings find a use for it. Moreover, only some of the many available resources within any environment are sufficiently valuable to justify the cost and effort required to extract and produce useful objects from them. Those resources that can be extracted and used profitably are called reserves. Resources that are not reserves are known as subeconomic resources.

Subeconomic resources are not worth the cost of extracting them. Geologists have discovered large quantities of petroleum underneath the ice cap of Antarctica. Little attention is paid to Antarctic oil because the cost of drilling through the Antarctic ice cap and transporting the petroleum to markets in the Northern Hemisphere far exceeds the value of the oil itself.

Currently, our demands for petroleum are satisfied by supplies produced in the United States, the North Sea. Southwest Asia, and other more accessible places. Unless demands for petroleum increase sharply, or unless we can develop the technology to extract and transport oil from the Antarctic to North America more cheaply, it is unlikely that any sustained effort will be put into obtaining the mineral resources of Antarctica.

Determining the Value of a Resource. Whether a substance is a reserve, a subeconomic resource, or a worthless substance depends on its value to human beings. The value of the substance, in turn, depends on price, technology, and culture.

The price of a natural resource fluctuates in accordance with changes in supply and demand. When demands increase or supplies dwindle, resources become more expensive. The price of petroleum on the world market rose rapidly during the 1970s in response to the decision of members of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reduce oil production (Figure 2-9).

Figure 2-9. The "Energy Crisis" of the 1970s. As a result of the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. American motorists had difficulty obtaining fuel. Service stations were allotted small quantities, which ran out quickly. Long lines at the gas pumps like this one in Denver were commonplace

People in modern commercial societies respond to increases in resource prices in several ways. These include efforts to increase production, efforts to conserve existing resources, and attempts to develop substitutes. Price increases often stimulate efforts to increase production. Increased production encourages the development of new technology, which can turn subeconomic resources into reserves. The Western industrial countries undertook concerted efforts to identify and develop new sources of petroleum in response to increases in the world market price of oil.

Conservation represents another response to increases in the price of natural resources. Conservation programs enable existing supplies of resources to be used more efficiently, dampening demand and reducing the impacts of price changes on resource-dependent economies. Many Americans responded to the fuel crisis of the 1970s by purchasing smaller, fuel-efficient automobiles. The success of Japanese corporations in penetrating the American automobile market at that time can be traced to a quick and flexible response by the Japanese to changes in demands for automobiles by American consumers.

Price increases also stimulate efforts to find substitutes for resources. Many natural resources can be substituted for one another. As the price of one resource rises, consumers refuse to buy it and purchase an alternative resource instead. Again using the petroleum crisis of the 1970s as an example, a boom in the coal industry was stimulated as electrical supplies began to substitute coal for petroleum. Efforts to promote the use of solar and nuclear energy were also promulgated by the U.S. government. Once the price of petroleum began to decline, the government backed away from efforts to promote substitute sources of energy.

Technology also plays a major role in the value of resources. When the price of a resource increases because of decreasing supply or increasing demand, efforts to develop new technologies are often expanded. Considerable effort has been devoted to the development of new technologies that enable useful resources to be extracted and processed more cheaply and efficiently. Such technological improvements often become cultural innovations in and of themselves. Computers, telecommunications and many other recent technological developments have revolutionized cultures throughout the world.

Ultimately, however, the value of a resource is dependent on culture. The laws of supply and demand can determine the price of a resource only when there is general agreement as to what that resource is actually worth. In fact, some substances are valued as resources far more by some cultures than by others. Throughout history, many important conflicts between cultures have arisen because of fundamental differences between them concerning the value of particular resources.

The Incas, who lived in present-day Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia prior to the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century, found abundant supplies of gold and silver to which the Incas gave little real value. Gold and silver were used in making toys, ornaments, and other artifacts, but possession of these objects was not indicative of one's economic status among the Incas. The Spaniards, on the other hand, valued gold and silver much more highly. Fundamental to sixteenth-century Spanish culture was the belief that a person's wealth was measured by how much gold and silver he or she owned. In taking over possession of the Incas' gold and silver supplies, the Spanish essentially destroyed the Inca culture.

In general, the imposition of Western cultural values on non-Western societies throughout the world has been a major characteristic of recent world history. The process of colonialism imposed the European-centered money economy on non-Western cultures whose concepts of wealth and social status were fundamentally distinct. For example, most Native American cultures in North America did not regard land as a resource that was subject to individual ownership. The Native Americans who sold Manhattan Island to the Dutch for twenty-four

dollars did so because their culture did not recognize land as private property. Only after the Dutch evicted them from the island did the clash of cultural values become clear.