La reproduccin digital de este m aterial es para fines de investigacin y docencia de los cursos

acadmicos q u e im p a rte El Colegio de M ic h o a c n (COLMICH), c on fo rm e a lo establecido en:

Lev Federal de Derechos de A u to r, Ttulo VI De las Limitaciones del Derecho de A u to r y de los
Derechos Conexos, C aptulo

II De la Limitacin a los Derechos Patrim oniales, A rtcu lo

148

A p a r t a d o V:
Reproduccin de p artes de la obra, p a ra la crtica e investigacin cientfica, lite ra ria o artstica.

ECONOMIC
ANTHROPOLOGY
R ea d in g s in T h eo ry
an d A n a ly sis
edited by
EDWARD E. Le CLAIR, JR.
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

HAROLD K. SCHNEIDER
LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY

HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON, INC.

NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO
ATLANTA DALLAS MONTREAL
TORONTO LONDON

* section I

ANTHROPOLOGY AND
ECONOMICS

30

A N T H R O P O L O G Y A N D ECO NO M ICS
R ich a rd F. Salisbury

A review of the relations between Anthropology and Economics is made easier1

by the existence of an excellent summary of their relationship, through 1960,
written by Joseph Berliner (1962). Since the state of the two disciplines has
changed considerably from 1960, a stock-taking of these changes is in order.
For the first principles, the reader is referred to Berliners work.
Berliners major analysis showed that all social science data can be visualized
as a matrix with rows representing particular societies and columns standing
for such entities as economy and religion. Anthropology has involved mainly
the comparison of all cells in a column (i.e., cross-cultural studies of single
institutions) or of all cells in a row (i.e., studies of functional relationships
between institutions of a single society). Berliner showed the strength of Eco
nomics, as a discipline, to be the intensity of its study of relationships within the
single cell of Western economies, and called for much more intra-cell studies
of non-Western economies. The attempt to demonstrate that non-Western econo
mies had the same institutions as Western economies had doomed earlier eco
nomic anthropology to sterility; Berliner felt that the suggested intra-cell studies
might bring about a revitalized anthropology.
To anticipate some of the conclusions of this paper, Berliners predictions
would seem to be borne out by the currently healthy state of economic anthro
pology (if economic anthropology was not already more healthy in 1960 than
From Anthropology and the N eighboring Disciplines, edited b y Otto von Mering and
L eo n ard K asdan, C h apter 2, P ittsbu rgh , 1968 P ittsbu rgh University Press. R e p rin ted b y
permission .
1 It would also have been made easier if N ashs textbook (1966) had appeared before
rather than after its writing, as the lines of thought in both are parallel. The reader is
referred to Nash for a fuller documentation of much descriptive material mentioned below;
the present article presents a somewhat more developed stand on the nature of formal
analysis and models than Nash might agree with. The author wishes to acknowledge how
his thinking has developed in the course of discussions, not only with Nash, but with,
am ong others: C. S. Belshaw, R. Crocombe, A. G. Frank, L. Hazelhurst, L. Kasdan, M.
Sahlins and Mrs. G. SankofT.

477

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Berliner knew). Currently the major issue in economic anthropology is not

whether non-Western Economics have different substantive economic institutions,
for it is now accepted that they do, but to what extent different formal calculuses
of rationality or of economizing can be isolated in non-Western conditions.
Before considering the anthropological work that has led to this point of develop
ment. let us review some of the last decades changes in economic thinking.
T h e E con om ic Side
In 1960, Berliner could still generalize plausibly about main trends in eco
nomic thinking as comprising Marshallian (or classical) theory, Keynesian
theorizing about cyclical changes in national economies, and institutional Eco
nomics and economic history. However, by 1966, the unmentioned infant
economic fields of 1960 seem to have effected a revolution in Economics. NeoKeynesian thinking no longer studies regular cyclical fluctuations but focuses on
how to induce continued expansion and secular change. Development Economics
in 1960 was concerned with transplanting Western Economics to underdeveloped
areas, it now studies and generalizes about the form of developing economies in
their own right, and theorizes about sequences within the developmental process.
Structural transformation is now a respectable term in Economics and not
merely a use of social-anthropological jargon. Even though economists focus on
such readily quantifiable topics as changing patterns of income distribution, and
wage differentials between export and internal sectors, they are closely concerned
with the same problems as anthropologists who study the breakdown of caste
barriers in plural societies. In 1962, Hagen was avant-garde in proposing an
individual psychological explanation of the emergence of entrepreneurship; in
1966, he is more concerned with how entrepreneurial behavior relates to (or
is irrelevant in) the context of economic choice for peasant farmers. Economists,
in short, are emerging from their private Western-economies cell. They are
going up and down columns into different societies and along rows into other
institutions, and they are increasingly concerned with secular change.
Another, not unrelated trend in Economics has been the study of decision
making at the levels of individuals, business firms and nations, and outside the
classical context of supply-price-demand balancing. Von Neumanns invention of
game theory was one initiator of this trend and the use of computers for playing
simulated economic games has been another stimulus. Linear programming
is perhaps the most mathematically advanced branch of this type of study. The
effort is not to disprove the maximizing assumption of classical economic
theory, but to demonstrate how most rationally to maximize specific magnitudes
under various conditions of risk, where differing time spans exist or one decision
is contingent on other peoples decisions. Economics has moved far from the
classical homo oeconomicus position, based on hypothetical Robinson Crusoes,
ridiculed in anthropological literature from Malinowski to Polanyi.
Another closely related and expanding economic field is business administra
tion. For the anthropologist this field is perhaps most accessible through th1

Economic Anthropology: Retrospect and Prospect

479

works of sociologists such as Mason Haire with his studies (1959) on growth
of business organizations. Such works enable economists to conceive of alterna
tive total organizations, and to compare the efficiency of overall structures in
terms of their ability to respond to particular environmental problems and their
eventual outputs. In short, this enables economists to see organization and
managerial skills as factors of production to be measured and considered in
general analysis.
T he A nthropological Side
Ethno-Economics
As economists have escaped from their cell, anthropologists have become
more focused on the internal analysis of single cells. Starting with Bohannans
study of the Tiv (1955), there have been several studies of the economic
categories used in non-Western societies, which are intra-cell studies of single
economic systems. My own study of categories used in relatively affluent tribal
societies (Salisbury 1962) would serve as another example. Fosters (1964)
discussion of the concept of the limited good is a major comparative summary
of a form of conceptualization that would appear to be prevalent in many
societies. This important new sub-field may be labelled ethno-economics
insofar as it aims merely at the description of single economies. As descrip
tion, it undoubtedly benefits from the refined methodology of the new
ethnography. I would maintain, however, that its major theoretical importance
has been the advances it has permitted in the field of formal analysis. I will
return to ethno-economics when I deal with formal analysis.
Substantivism
Achieving greater prominence in the period 1957-1966, the so-called substantivist school generalizes about the channels through which goods flow in
total economies. This school stems largely from Polanyis (1957) seminal
Trade and Markets in the Early Empires which introduced a typology of
societies integrated by reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchanges.
Considering the lack of quantitative studies then available, this was a remarkable
synthesis. Unfortunately, most of the subsequent work of the school has in
volved the application of labels from Polanyis typology, rather than the detailed
investigation of the underlying processes which generate the social types
Polanyi discussed. The major finding of Bohannan and Daltons (1962 ) 800page compilation of studies of African marketplace trade is that societies where
trade is imbedded" in other institutions and which do not use cash differ
from those which form some system of market exchange.
Redistributive. as a label, has been applied to societies such as those in
Polynesia and West African kingdoms. This use seems indiscriminate in the
light of quantitative studies. INadels excellent early study of the Nupe economy
( ] (H2) shows that only a small portion of the total flow of goods and services

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Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis

is channeled through the king, and even where guilds nominally operate as
agents for the king, the degree to which they organize production in terms of
private customers is mainly determined by the size of the private market.
Village self-sufficiency, trade partnerships, and open market trading are more
common. What substantivists have done is to seize upon some rare, but distinc
tive, features a court, guilds, tribute payments, and negotiated foreign trade
between the court and foreignersand to use a label based on these features to
characterize the total economy.
Polanyis own posthumous work on Dahomey (1966) does indeed get away
from the rigidity of regarding reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange
as mutually exclusive and as characterizing entire economies or integrating
entire societies. He sees all three principles as operating together, each in a
different domain within the single society. Yet, at the same time, he sees the
main achievements of the book as the classification of institutions as primi
tive (i.e., found in reciprocative societies), archaic (i.e., characteristic of
redistributive societies), or market. Thus, Polanyi goes to great lengths (pp.
141-169) to unravel the difficulties Europeans had in balancing their book
keeping in the 17th and 18th century slave trade, resulting from empirically
fluctuating and varied, but nominally fixed, units used in different areas and
times in West Africa. He concludes that West Africa had archaic money,
incompatible with a modern monetary system. Polanyi then isolates the charac
teristics of archaic money in terms of its status-building function in the
emergence of state systems (p. 192). To an audience that accepts the fact of
trade in equivalencies, mere classification appears sterile. The identification
of what caused the changes in exchange ratessuch as differences of power
balance, numbers of slaves, or availability of manufacturesbecomes the
interesting problem.
In short, redistribution or archaic economy may be useful labels for
summarizing the way emergent national polities centralize certain services and
organize taxation and the production of specialized commodities by infant
industries by providing stability in market, raw materials, and labor. But such
concepts would appear equally useful for analyzing the actions of newly inde
pendent, but fully monetized, nation states. They are not terms that characterize
entire economies or modes of integration, nor are they terms which fit
economies into a unilineal progression from primitive to archaic to
market.
The same is true of the concept reciprocity. Analyses of the actual working
of societies crudely labelled as reciprocative (Salisbury 1960, Sahlins 1963,
1965) have shown that inter-individual transactions are always unbalanced and
involve a continual struggle to obtain as much advantage over an opponent
as possible, short of breaking off the relationship and establishing new rela
tionships with another partner. Each relationship between a pair implies a
series of other relationships by each of them, and the terms of trade between
one pair can be understood only against a background of their other relation

Economic Anthropology : Retrospect and Prospect

481

ships. The same generalization could be made about exchanges between

partners in a monetary economy. The differences between reciprocal and
market exchanges are not sufficiently clarified by attempts to characterize
total systems of which they are parts. Rather, they are better understood through
closer analysis of the specific situations, in both monetary and tribal societies,
where it is mutually advantageous to use recurrent rather than isolated ex
changes, or where imbalances in volumes tendered can be, or must be, tolerated
for long periods. Such studies consider markets as general economic
phenomena, not as the peculiar institution of localized marketplaces ; the
recent proliferation of such studies indicates the decline of the anti-market
mentality (Cook 1966).
Specific Institutional Studies
In practice, most descriptive anthropological work has been more specific
in its aim. An impressive literature has been emerging regarding the types of
exchange and marketing behavior found under different conditions of risk,
volume of the total market, relative numbers of buyers and sellers, knowledge
of the market, and the power positions of parties to the exchanges. This has
been extensively summarized elsewhere (e.g., Belshaw 1965, Salisbury NDa), and
further review of the findings is not needed here. It will suffice to mention, as
outstanding examples, Deweys (1963) full length discussion of Peasant Mar
keting in Java, and of Nashs (1961) analyses of the calculations involved in
the marketing of pottery in Chiapas. In terms of the trends in Economics there
has been a convergence of interest here, with both disciplines focusing more
precisely on how the context of economic choice can influence the nature of the
choices actually made.
Spheres of activity other than marketing have not received such close
scrutiny. Ethnobotanists and geographers have encouraged anthropologists to
record how far considerations of plant varieties, soil types, or micro-climatic
variation enter into the calculations of bushfallow agriculturalists (Conklin
1961). Agricultural economists too have often done studies that could be
considered anthropological in the same way. Edwards (1962) study of why
Jamaican small farmers often rejected agricultural officers advice led him to
ask for their evaluations of land types and crop species. Returning later to the
area, he found that peasant evaluations, initially at variance with agronomists
orthodoxy, had often become orthodox after research led agronomists to
change their minds.
A relatively small number of anthropologists have collected labor input
figures for different crops or techniques of cultivation and have investigated the
extent to which agriculturalists make choices on this basis. But those few
studiesfor example, Pospisil (1963b) comparing labor inputs and yields for
field and mound cultivation of sweet potatoes in New Guinea, and Nash (1965)
comparing them for various crops and techniques in Burma indicate the
value of investigating this variable. Such studies also need to be linked to a

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Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis

treatment of how variations in labor demand correlate with different patterns

of choice in production of how, for example, different labor demands affect
deep-sea and inshore fishing.
The use of capital, and its accumulation in peasant societies, has been the
focus of less analysis than would appear from the publication of Firth and
Yameys (1964) Capital, Savings and Credit in Peasant Society. Most of the
authors in this volume were social anthropologists who proudly vaunted their
ignorance of economic analysis and merely described how different social
groupings accumulated cash in particular societies. Little attention was devoted
to the use made of such accumulations or to the nature of capital. Among
the exceptions to this general criticism of the 1964 volume was Barths analysis
of the capital needs and flows among South Persian nomads, and of the ways
in which needs are related to the arrangements for meeting them. And Firths
own classic study of Malay Fishermen (1946) still stands out as an examination
of the relation of credit to production.
Again, agricultural economists have contributed to this sub-field of study.
Besides Edwards previously cited study, Polly Hills (1956, 1963) discussion
of how Ghanaian cocoa farmers accumulated capital and land, and how differ
ent organizational forms were used to facilitate investment at different stages in
the growth of the cocoa industry, is outstanding. Many anthropologists in the
South Pacific have similar interests. Belshaws study (1964) of Fiji, studies by
the Australian National Universitys New Guinea Research Unit (e.g., Crocombe
and Hogbin, 1964), and my own study of the New Britain Tolai (NDb) could
be cited. The focus in all these is the forms of organization used in capital
holding groups.
Entrepreneurship is another aspect of economic process that has been studied.
Many descriptive studies of social change have listed the forms of cash-earning
businesses that have emerged in formerly subsistence agricultural societies, and
have classed all such businessmen as entrepreneurs. Relatively few (e.g.,
Hazelhurst, 1966) have gone back to theoretical treatments of entrepreneurship,
notably to Schumpeter, to consider the various roles focal to the concept. These
roles include risk-taking, the middleman bringing together production factors,
and the organizational innovator who exploits technological innovations made
by others by bringing together new groupings. Yet the study of such roles
would seem to be of primary interest to classical anthropological theory. It would
seem that consideration of the nature of organizational innovation would be a
major area, where new developments within Economics could parallel and
fructify developments in formal organization theory and in economic anthro
pology.
Organization theory regarding both entrepreneurship and capital use consti
tutes a common thread to the studies above. Organization of production, gen
erally, needs to be given greater consideration. Udy, in 1959, surveyed crosscultural anthropological evidence on production organization, comparing such
activities as hunting, fishing, collection, animal husbandry, construction, and

Economic Anthropology: Retrospect and Prospect

483

manufacturing. His conclusion, that technological demands were highly sig

nificant up to a certain level of social complexity with a widely varying range of
organizational types thereafter, demands closer analysis to explain the residual
variance in organizational forms. The ethnographers laboratory of variant
forms and variant social and physical environments should be exploited to
provide information on the relative efficiency of particular forms. On the one
hand, existing ethnographic descriptions need comparison and analysis in
terms of a consistent theoretical viewpointBarth (1963) has analyzed a series
of field studies in Norway in this way and Sankoff (1965) has begun such
work using published sources. On the other hand, more ethnographic studies are
needed in which investigators trained in organization theory can ask appropriate
questions about organizational efficiency in both traditional and cash activities.
Such studies, like Erasmus (1956) early study of the advantages and disad
vantages of work bees and hired labor in Meso-America, should give much
greater insight into the process of economic development than do analyses
couched in terms of all-or-none value changes.
Model Building
Anthropological economic studies have not been confined entirely to specific
institutions and increasingly detailed studies of relationships between even
smaller segments of social and economic activity. Just as input-output econo
mists have interested themselves in constructing models of total economies,
seeing the total system as the outcome of the flows and transactions between
sectors, so some anthropologists have also begun to visualize entire economies
as the resultant effects of flows between particular sectors. Development econo
mists have proposed models of economic change which involve phase sequences.
For example, infrastructure development at one phase leads to increased
profitability of later industrial investments, and so to mass marketing. So
anthropologists (and ethnohistorians) have proposed models of local economic
development in terms of phase sequences and have looked for the causative
relationship between phases.
The differences between economists and anthropologists models has largely
been the different range of included phenomena. Economists tend to include
such factors as demography, technology, organizational techniques or political
controls only as boundary conditions for their models, making such simplistic
assumptions as they remain constant, or they increase at steady rates. These
assumptions are often disguised. A simple statement that it is assumed that
the marginal product of labor is positive or that it may be assumed that in
a period of growth there is some organizational slack, implies questionable
assumptions about the nature of technology or organization. However, making
such assumptions, the economist can clarify the logic of his model and can
proceed immediately to quantification.
The anthropologist is more concerned with building relationships between
technology, organization or politics, and the economic activities into his models.

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Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis

Thus, Geertz (1963) model involves technology as a major variable in the

interactions of labor-intensive monocrop agriculture in Java with foreign
exchange-earning, cash-cropping and multicrop bush-fallow agriculture in outer
Indonesia. The model shows the long-term prospect of impoverishing and
peasantizing the outer islands. In my own model (1962, NDb) organization is
the major variable. It shows how in New Guinea surpluses are created by
technological change funneled into the creation of more complex political
organizations and how such political change permits the organizational change
for the establishment of new types of productive activity.
It could be argued such models represent a return to many of the funda
mental concerns of anthropologythe problems of social evolution and cultural
change. Leslie White pioneered the return to interest in these problems, but his
unidimensional scheme relating social development to the availability of energy
sources was too simplistic. It may now be hoped that general models of a
Leslie White type may become increasingly available. In such models tech
nology levels, communication technology levels, and organizational variables
may be given quantitative forms, visualized as forms of entropy (Adams 1960)
in order to consider types of society in terms of evolutionary dimensions.
Formal Analysis
Such a Utopian idea would see anthropologists returning closer to the tradi
tional interests of their own discipline. But then, where does the future for a
relationship between anthropology and Economics lie? Here I would return
to my earlier analysis of substantivism and of current trends in economic
anthropology. As I see it, where the substantivists attempted to classify total
economies and came up with static models, more recent workers have tried to
see the low level relationships which generate the eventual form of total econo
mies. The models they build inevitably include a dynamic element. Yet to arrive
at the relationships occurring at low levels, they have used the tool of economic
analysis which substantivists scorned that is, formal analysis. The formal
approach of economists have involved seeing economic magnitudes as the
primary data, and by comparing magnitudes, has demonstrated inductively
the relationships among numbers of variables, each of them impinging, at a low
level, on vast numbers of economic choices. Only when the formal analyses
have been 'undertaken and the variables isolated, have dynamic models of the
interplay of multiple variables been constructed.
Ethnoeconomists may take a short cut. Instead of isolating variables by the
mathematical analysis of quantitative data, they may consider the economic
concepts given them by informants as close approximations to the operating
variables. But they then should consider deductively how the systematic use
in the society of such concepts would give rise to overall patterns. They should
construct models based on ethnoeconomic concepts. While it may be untrue to
say that goods are absolutely limited in peasant society, it may be useful to
consider what would happen if all (or many) members of a society believed that

Economic Anthropology : Retrospect and Prospect

485

life were a zero-sum game. Game theory (or formal economic theory) could
then be used to make predictions about such matters as the size of coalitions
found, or the degree of tolerance of income inequalities. Anthropologists have
been generally averse to such as if deductive theorizing, preferring to stick
to the facts. Exposure to economists and their methods could be invaluable
in correcting this bias and in making deductive model-building familiar.
At the same time as ethno-economic description of the principles of choice
verbalized by informants is leading to the formulation of ideal or hypothetical
models, behavioral analysis must also be progressing. It must determine prin
ciples of choice from a consideration of transactions actually occurring and
test the fit of hypothetical models against quantitative reality. Here, too, anthro
pologists have much to learn from working with economists and their tools.
In the 1950s, Gluckman argued (1964) that it is better to Veniajn rfaiye'j about
other disciplines, even when intruding on fields which they cover. I do not
feel that this is true for anthropology and Economics in the 1960s. Anthropolo
gists should study Economics and vice versa. I do agree with Gluckman that
this should be done not to make the anthropologist an economist, but a better
anthropologist. Given economic tools, he will improve anthropology. Give an
economist the anthropological tools of sensitivity to what people say and of
readiness to try to see order in different conceptual systems, and he may
improve economics.