History assessment help - Origins of Agriculture?

Question

I need to disprove the Social Hypothesis proposed by Babara Bender. Does anyone know anything about it and what are the flaws.

thanks

Answer 1

This is somewhat complicated.  Bender argued that agriculture was dependent on the development of a large and complex social organization and that in societies with more complex forms of political and social organization, those in power created domesticated resource in order to better create food surplus to control people.  In this view domestication was INTENTIONAL and developed as a means of political and economic control.

There are numerous critiques of her theory, most of them fairly complicated themselves.  One basic criticism is that in order for large complex societies to develop, there must already be a stable food source.  Essentially, this argues that she has it backwards - that agriculture developed in numerous places at numerous times, and only where it was very successful did the conditions exist for cities to develop.