CAT 2023 Slot 1 · VARC · RC passage 2: Sahlins's Original Affluent Society

The full passage and all 4 questions (Q5–Q8) from CAT 2023 Slot 1, with answers and solutions.

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

[Fifty] years after its publication in English [in 1972], and just a year since [Marshall] Sahlins himself died—we may ask: why did [his essay] “Original Affluent Society” have such an impact, and how has it fared since? . . . Sahlins’s principal argument was simple but counterintuitive: before being driven into marginal environments by colonial powers, hunter-gatherers, or foragers, were not engaged in a desperate struggle for meager survival. Quite the contrary, they satisfied their needs with far less work than people in agricultural and industrial societies, leaving them more time to use as they wished. Hunters, he quipped, keep bankers’ hours. Refusing to maximize, many were “more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game.” . . . The so-called Neolithic Revolution, rather than improving life, imposed a harsher work regime and set in motion the long history of growing inequality . . .

Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . . .

But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data—the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic—but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.

With its title’s nod toward The Affluent Society (1958), economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s famously skeptical portrait of America’s postwar prosperity and inequality, and dripping with New Left contempt for consumerism, “The Original Affluent Society” brought this critical perspective to bear on the contemporary world. It did so through the classic anthropological move of showing that radical alternatives to the readers’ lives really exist. If the capitalist world seeks wealth through ever greater material production to meet infinitely expansive desires, foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but by wanting less. If it seems that foragers have been left behind by “progress,” this is due only to the ethnocentric self-congratulation of the West. Rather than accumulate material goods, these societies are guided by other values: leisure, mobility, and above all, freedom. . . .

Viewed in today’s context, of course, not every aspect of the essay has aged well. While acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism, and dispossession, it does not thematize them as heavily as we might today. Rebuking evolutionary anthropologists for treating present-day foragers as “left behind” by progress, it too can succumb to the temptation to use them as proxies for the Paleolithic. Yet these characteristics should not distract us from appreciating Sahlins’s effort to show that if we want to conjure new possibilities, we need to learn about actually inhabitable worlds.

Question 5 · RC Main Idea and Central Theme

We can infer that Sahlins's main goal in writing his essay was to:

  1. A

    put forth the view that, despite egalitarian origins, economic progress brings greater inequality and social hierarchies.

  2. B

    highlight the fact that while we started off as a fairly contented egalitarian people, we have progressively degenerated into materialism.

  3. C

    hold a mirror to an acquisitive society, with examples of other communities that have chosen successfully to be non-materialistic.

  4. D

    counter Galbraith’s pessimistic view of the inevitability of a capitalist trajectory for economic growth.

Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option C

The passage says the essay's real point was not the data about foragers but 'its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism'. It used 'the classic anthropological move of showing that radical alternatives to the readers' lives really exist' – foragers who follow 'the Zen road to affluence: not by getting more, but by wanting less'.

Option 3 – holding a mirror to an acquisitive society, with examples of communities that chose to be non-materialistic – captures this.

Option 1 focuses on inequality after the Neolithic Revolution, which is one claim in the essay, not its main goal.

Option 2 describes a story of decline into materialism; the essay's aim was to show that alternatives exist, not to trace degeneration.

Option 4 says Sahlins countered Galbraith. The passage says his title nodded to Galbraith and shared his sceptical perspective.

Shortcut: when a passage says 'the point is not so much X but rather Y', the main-goal answer is Y.

Hence, the answer is option 3.

Question 6 · RC - Questions

The author mentions Tanzania’s Hadza community to illustrate:
  1. A
    that hunter-gatherer communities’ subsistence-level techniques equipped them to survive well into contemporary times.
  2. B
    how pre-agrarian societies did not hamper the emergence of more advanced agrarian practices in contiguous communities.
  3. C
    that forager communities’ lifestyles derived not from ignorance about alternatives, but from their own choice.
  4. D
    how two vastly different ways of living and working were able to coexist in proximity for centuries.
Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option C

The Hadza 'had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them'. To Sahlins, 'this showed that foragers... demonstrated that societies make real choices'.

Option 3 – their lifestyle came from choice, not ignorance of alternatives – is exactly this.

Option 1 is about survival techniques, which the example does not discuss.

Option 2 is about not hampering neighbouring agriculture, which is not the point.

Option 4 describes coexistence; the example is about rejecting an option, not merely living side by side.

Shortcut: look for the sentence that interprets the example ('To Sahlins, this showed...'). The answer paraphrases it.

Hence, the answer is option 3.

Question 7 · RC - Questions

The author of the passage mentions Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society” to:
  1. A
    show how Galbraith’s theories refute Sahlins’s thesis on the contentment of pre-hunter-gatherer communities.
  2. B
    contrast the materialist nature of contemporary growth paths with the pacifist content ways of living among the foragers.
  3. C
    document the influence of Galbraith’s cynical views on modern consumerism on Sahlins’s analysis of pre-historic societies.
  4. D
    show how Sahlins’s views complemented Galbraith’s criticism of the consumerism and inequality of contemporary society.
Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option D

The essay's title nods to Galbraith's 'famously skeptical portrait of America's postwar prosperity and inequality', and the essay 'brought this critical perspective to bear on the contemporary world'. Sahlins added to Galbraith's critique by showing that alternatives to consumerism exist.

Option 4 – Sahlins's views complemented Galbraith's criticism of consumerism and inequality – fits.

Option 1 says Galbraith's theories refute Sahlins; the passage shows them aligned.

Option 2 makes the mention a contrast between materialism and foragers. That contrast is Sahlins's, not the reason Galbraith is mentioned, and 'pacifist' is not in the passage.

Option 3 says Galbraith influenced Sahlins's analysis of prehistoric societies; the passage links the two only through the critique of contemporary society.

Shortcut: 'nod toward' signals agreement or homage. Prefer an option that shows the two works on the same side.

Hence, the answer is option 4.

Question 8 · RC Detail and Fact Based Questions

The author of the passage criticises Sahlins’s essay for its:
  1. A
    cursory treatment of the effects of racism and colonialism on societies.
  2. B
    outdated values regarding present-day foragers versus ancient foraging communities.
  3. C
    critique of anthropologists who disparage the choices of foragers in today’s society.
  4. D
    failure to supplement its thesis with robust empirical data.
Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option A

The criticism comes in the last paragraph: 'not every aspect of the essay has aged well. While acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism, and dispossession, it does not thematize them as heavily as we might today.'

Option 1, cursory treatment of racism and colonialism, matches.

Option 2 garbles the second criticism. The author says the essay 'can succumb to the temptation to use [present-day foragers] as proxies for the Paleolithic' – not that it holds outdated values.

Option 3 describes something the essay did (rebuke evolutionary anthropologists), but the author does not criticise it for that.

Option 4 – lack of empirical data – is set aside by the author: 'the point is not so much the empirical validity of the data'.

Shortcut: look for 'not aged well', 'however' or 'yet' for an author's criticism, and match the option to the exact wording.

Hence, the answer is option 1.

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