Studies in Economic Anthropology dj52w7296

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ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES

Number 7

PAUL J. BOHANNAN, Editor

Studies In

Economic Anthropology

edited by GEORGE DALTON

Published by the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 1703 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20009 |

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 71-181731

Copyright © 1971 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Contents may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the

publisher. Printed in USA.

Editor’s Note Nine of the twelve essays in this volume are original papers appearing in print for the first time. The essay by M. Godelier is a revised, enlarged, and translated version of the original that appeared in French in L’Homme, 1969. The essay by P. Grierson is reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1959. Excerpts comprising one-third of the essay by C. Wharton appeared in G. Dalton, editor, Economic Development and Social Change, Doubleday, 1971. It is published here at its full length. The Bibliographical Notes are adapted from G. Dalton, Economic Anthropology and Development, Basic Books, 1971. Seven of the contributors to this volume are anthropologists and seven are not. P. Grierson is an historian. I. Adelman, S. Birch, G. Dalton, W. Neale, K. Polanyi (deceased), and C. Wharton, are economists.

“Mr. [I. M. D.] Little thought one of the positive things that we [economists] can and should do is to try to get some of these other disciplines more interested in economic development and really make a start on curing the deep basic ignorance which, it seemed to him, prevails concerning the basic causes of development” [The Teaching of Development Economics, K. Martin and J. Knapp, eds., 1967, p. 169].

“Mr. [Colin] Clark said that on the importance of agriculture in low-income countries he is an absolute and dogmatic physiocrat. Nothing, he thought, could be more important. He felt it to be rather ironical that he has to divide his energies between telling people that they pay far too much attention to agriculture in countries like our own [Great Britain ]

and pay far too little attention to it in the other half of the world. The reference to half the world is almost literally exact. The families who live by subsistence agriculture, whose main efforts have to be devoted just to

producing food for their families, still constitute half the world’s population” [Ibid., p. 176].

“Agriculture is an art and a craft, a science and a business. In... subsistence agriculture the peasant cultivator uses the art and the craft... The introduction of science and business stimulates a major leap forward in increasing his productivity and in organizing the distribution of his produce, which now amounts to more than he consumes but depends on

outside supplies which he does not produce” [W. H. Beckett, ‘‘The Development of Peasant Agriculture,” in Approaches to Community Development, P. Ruopp, ed., 19538, p. 132].

CONTENTS

Introduction .. 2... 0.0... 00. ee eee ee eee ee ee eee ee ee ees George Dalton 1 PART I CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

Chapter 1 Carl Menger’s Two Meanings of ““Economic” .. Karl Polanyi 16 Chapter 2 Monetization, Commercialization, Market Orientation,and Market

Dependence ...................... Walter C. Neale 25

PART II TRADITIONAL ECONOMIES

Chapter 3 The Intensity of Domestic Production in Primitive Societies: Social Inflections of the Chayanov Slope .. Marshall Sahlins 30 Chapter 4 “Salt Currency” and the Circulation of Commodities Among the

Baruya of New Guinea............... Maurice Godelier 52

Chapter 95 Commerce in the Dark Ages: A Critique of the Evidence ...... De ee eee eee ee ee ee ee ee ee eee ee Philip Grierson 7A

Chapter 6 Beggar Moneylenders of Central India ........ Shirley Birch 84 PART III ACCULTURATION, MARKETS, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 7 Reciprocity of Favors in the Urban Middle Class of Chile ......

Le eee eet ee ee ee ee ee ee ee Larissa Lomnitz 983

Chapter 8 Traditional Economic Institutions and the Acculturation of

Canadian Eskimos ..............Nelson H. H. Graburn 107

Chapter 9 Estimating Market Conditions and Profit Expectations of Fish Sellers at Cape Coast, Ghana ................-..-.

tee ee ee ee eee a. Hugh Gladwin and Christina Gladwin 122 Chapter 10 Security and Risk-taking Among Poor Peasants: A Brazilian Case

Le ee ee ee eee eee eee ee ee es Allen W. Johnson 144

Chapter 11 Risk, Uncertainty, and the Subsistence Farmer: Technological Innovation and Resistance to Change in the Context of Survival

Cc ee ee ee ee ee eee ee ee ee ee Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. 152

Chapter 12 Developing Village India: A Statistical Analysis ............ Dee ee ee ee ee eee drma Adelman and George Dalton 180

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES)... ... ee eee ee eee ee 284

Introduction

; The Subject of Economic Anthropology GEORGE DALTON NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

... What constitutes the field of any ... discipline? How do we demarcate the province of, say chemistry or history: or anthropology? Here it seems

clear that subjects or fields of study are determined by the kind of

| Isaiah Berlin

questions for which they have been invented to provide the answers.

The essays in this volume show that economic anthropology is not a single topic but rather a wide subject containing very different fields of interest, some of which are shared by historians, - economists, and other social scientists, and some of which are studied by anthropologists alone. Economic anthropology too has its economic historians of pre-colonial and colonial economies, its

economic developers of today’s modernizing economies, its social analysts of economic ' organization, and its econometric measurers of output. As in economics, entirely different questions are answered in the several fields of interest we loosely group together as economic anthropology. It could hardly be otherwise considering the many aspects of the enormous set of different economies studied by anthropologists: economic organization and performance at the village or small community level (bands tribes and peasantries); at-the level of chiefdom, state, kingdom, or empire, transactions between villages or tribal segments and political/religious centers; internal economy and external trade; subsistence spheres and prestige spheres; Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and the Middle East; pre-colonial, and post-colonial situations, and so on.

Several points follow from this diversity and complexity: (1) Those of us interested in economic anthropology can learn much that is important from neighboring subjects as well as from the use of statistical techniques. (2) That writings on acculturation, applied anthropology, and (post-colonial) micro-development, analyze change under markedly different historical and therefore economic and social conditions—the three topics raise and answer different questions. (3) Finally, that the “‘substantivist-formalist” controversy is not capable of clear-cut resolution because more than one theoretical framework is required to analyze and measure the very different fields of interest studied in economic anthropology.

| NEIGHBORING SUBJECTS European economic and social history. Slavery, feudalism, peasantry, and modernization (to name only the most obvious) are old topics to the historians of pre-industrial Europe and its transformation from medieval times to the present (Finley 1960, 1965; Bloch 1963, 1966; Slicher Van Bath 1963; Franklin 1969). In economy, technology, and social organization, medieval Europe more closely resembled the anthropologist’s universe of traditional village societies (master-client

relationships, dependent land tenure, petty markets, low productivity agriculture) than the economist’s set of post-industrial national economies. The historical essay by Grierson in this volume describes transactions and situations familiar to economic anthropologists. If we mean by ‘traditional’? economies, those which are neither industrialized nor integrated by economy-wide

2 | STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 market networks for land, labor, and products (through which most people get most of their income in cash), medieval Europe is traditional, and its analysis properly belongs with the Trobriands’ economy of Malinowski’s time and eighteenth century Dahomey (Polanyi 1966). Indeed, wherever machines, applied science, cash, and integrative markets are not importantly

cal framework. |

present—whether Europe or Africa—such economies are usefully analyzed within an anthropologi- ©

there are three characteristics of the modern age which distinguish it from the past—the

hypertrophy of the nation-state ... the application of science to production and the

penetration of money values into every aspect of life [Robinson 1970:60].

On two topics of great interest to anthropologists, modernization and peasantry, European history is especially illuminating (see Dalton 1971b). One learns, for example, that’ what distinguishes the modernization of England and Western Europe from today’s transformations in the Third World (particularly Africa and New Guinea), is some five hundred years of preparation _ for economic development and cultural modernization, between the decline of feudalism in the

thirteenth century and the coming of the machine in the eighteenth. oo

developing countries are seeking rapid economic growth in a wholly different total environment

from that in which the main thrust of growth took place in the West ... Even as far back as 1600, we find that Europe was in many respects well ahead of some developing countries today. England, for example, with a population of less than 5 million in 1600, was already far

more differentiated in occupation and skills, in the range of mining, manufacture, shipbuilding, internal and external trade, than most of the countries of Tropical Africa and some of those in Asia when they gained Independence [ Hunter 1969: ix, 6]. Finally, studying the peasantries of Western Europe in historical sequence can teach us about the peasantries of Latin American and Asia today. West European peasantries of long settlement have been changed in the course of national development from very traditional to very modern,

from serf to post-peasant. .

Agricultural economics. The essays by Johnson and Wharton in this volume show the complementary nature of the economic anthropologist’s interest in peasantry and the economist’s interest in agricultural development. The crucial need to assure material survival in circumstances of subsistence production and abject poverty, makes innovation peculiarly risky. In many peasant. (and tribal) economies, deciding whether or not to employ new agricultural techniques is not a question of deciding between two alternatives one of which may yield more profit than the other; but rather between alternatives one of which may yield more hunger. The choice is simply not the

same as that facing an American stockholder deciding between buying shares in U.S. Steel or AT&T. Indeed, the less developed an economy, the fewer the alternative sources of income available, the greater the dependence for livelihood on traditional production, and therefore the

greater the riskiness in departing from traditional agricultural practices.

An important development lesson follows from an appreciation of the riskiness of innovation under conditions of traditional subsistence production—the threat to material survival if the innovation fails. Development policy and development progress can reduce the risks of agricultural innovation by supplying credit, expertise, and alternative sources of income, and by accompanying innovations with subsistence guarantees. The better are agricultural extension services, the more technically suitable will be innovations of improved seed, new crops, irrigation, etc., and failure therefore less likely. The more dynamic is regional development—lower transport costs due to new

: roads, expanding regional demand for foodstuffs due to new dams and factories—the more economically profitable will the agricultural innovations be; regional development, moreover, reduces the risk of agricultural innovation also by providing the innovating farmers with new income alternatives outside of farming should the innovation fail.

Statistical analysis. Three of the essays in this volume, (Sahlins, H. and C. Gladwin, and Adelman and Dalton) use statistical techniques to draw analytical conclusions about traditional

and modernizing economies. Statistical techniques are not anthropological, economic, or sociological, but, like mathematics and computers, generally useful provided that the specific

Dalton ] INTRODUCTION . 3 conditions implicit in their design are met. There are two technical conditions necessary: that

comparable data are available, data capable of being quantified (or ranked); and that the quantified data relate to real world processes (functional relationships) that are structured (and hopefully, interesting, that is, worth investigating).' In the economic analysis of developed, industrial capitalism, both conditions are frequently met: prices, incomes, exports, investment, and other transactional flows are quantifiable, structured (and important), and so statistical techniques and mathematical expression are highly developed in economics. In theology, the data are not quantifiable and neither is the “‘real world”’ of its subject structured in the sense that land

tenure, markets, exports, or kinship are structured; and so, statistical techniques are not usable to | address the matters of importance to theology. In psychiatry, the real-world processes studied are

most certainly important and structured (although structured in extraordinarily complicated fashion; the models are more like the complex double helix of DNA than the simple supply and demand forces of price determination); but, unfortunately, the data are not readily quantifiable; and so, statistical techniques are not an important method of research and analysis in psychiatry.

Anthropology lies somewhere between economics and psychiatry. It deals with structured, | real-world processes of importance, some of whose data are quantifiable and some not. Indeed, the

range of matters and the number of societies that interest anthropologists are both so large, it is . certain, I think, that traditional fieldwork techniques together with verbal description and analysis

will remain basic to anthropology. . 7 Anthropologists are interested in comparing village-level economies and in making analytical statements of varying generality about structure, process, institutions, and underlying regularities. In this volume Sahlins is able to use a statistical procedure to answer the question, What governs the intensity of production in several traditional economies for which comparable data exist? And Irma Adelman and I use a statistical technique to get at other underlying regularities: given the availability of comparable quantified (and ranked) data on 21 aspects of 108 villages in India, what is systematically true for villages with high incomes compared to those with low incomes; villages close to towns and transport compared to isolated villages; villages selling more than half of what they produce compared to those selling less than one-fourth, and so on.” ACCULTURATION, APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY, AND MICRO-DEVELOPMENT

Anthropologists sometimes perceive the processes of economic development and cultural modernization presently underway in the Third World (what I shall call micro-development) through their professional familiarity with two earlier situations of change they call acculturation and applied anthropology. I have portrayed each of the three in Diagram 1 as an overlapping circle representing a specific field of interest, and have indicated the principal question each field tries to answer. The fields intersect for two reasons: (1) “Acculturation,” and “‘applied anthropology,” are each used to mean not a single kind of change or a single situation of change, but several processes

and -situations. What one anthropologist calls “‘applied anthropology” another might call “development” (or, indeed, ‘‘culture change,” ‘“‘cultural dynamics,” or “‘modernization”).°> Such

varying usage does not mean that anthropologists are casual with terms; rather (aside from inadequate theory), it reflects the diversity and complexity of the processes of change and the wide range of historical situations of change that they are interested in. (2) The fields overlap also because all three processes of change (as defined by the principal question each is addressed to) are

to be found somewhere in the world today, and so all three are of interest to anthropologists

today, but not, I think, of equal interest. |

Acculturation. The term is used to signify a general situation of face-to-face culture contact between differing groups, regardless of when it takes place and in which part of the world, and regardless of which group dominates the specific contact situation. Here is an early formulation by .

a prominent committee: |

Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the

1936:149].

original cultural patterns of either or both groups [Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits

4. STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 1. Overlapping fields of interest; all three relating to change at the village level. But each beinga specific situation with special economic, cultural, and historical conditions.

- Applied )

Acculturation Anthropology

under early under late

colonial colonial

. colonia! conditions.a conditions v4 conditions . Micro-Development under post-

2. Typical questions asked in each: Accu/turation: How did North, Central, and South American Indians, under the early colonial domination of U.S. and Spanish overseers in direct control of them, react to coerced innovations (e.g., Catholicism), and coerced deprivation of traditional. indigenous activities and cultural practices? Applied Anthropology: How does the visiting foreign expert, in temporary residence, usually under late colonial conditions of isolation from a regional economy which is not developing, enlist the cooperation of hinterland villagers in their adoption of one or two specific agricultural or health innovations? Micro-Development: Mainly under post-colonial conditions of regional and national policies of economic development and cultural modernization, how do village communities over successive generations (a) become an integrated part of regional and national economy and society? (b) How do traditional economy, culture, and social relationships change in the process?

Diagram 1. Acculturation, applied anthropology, and micro-development.

In 1954, eighteen years later—note, that except for India, colonialism is still intact—another committee of anthropologists still defines acculturation in very general terms; that is, colonial control is not mentioned, nor are other aspects of the institutionalized inferiority of the ethnic

groups who are the subjects of most acculturation studies. |

acculturation may be defined as culture change that is initiated by the conjunction of two or more autonomous cultural systems. Acculturative change may be the consequence of direct

cultural transmission; it may be derived from noncultural causes, such as ecological or demographic modifications induced by an impinging culture; it may be delayed, as with internal

adjustments following upon the acceptance of alien traits or patterns; or it may be a reactive adaptation of traditional modes of life. Its dynamics can be seen as the selective adaptation of value systems, the processes of integration and differentiation, the generation of developmental sequences, and the operation of role determinants and personality factors [Broom, Siegel, Vogt, and Watson 1954:974 |. All this generality is misleading. When one turns to empirical works of acculturation, one finds, overwhelmingly, they deal either with the response of institutionalized inferiors who are not white to direct colonial control—North and South American Indians—or, less frequently, non-white immigrants (Japanese, Chinese) or Negroes in the United States in recent times (Siegel 1955; Foster 1960; Spindler and Goldschmidt 1970). The kinds of change studied under the label “acculturation” are very special (and different from those studied in applied anthropology and micro-development). The special situation of colonial control (as with American Indians)* and the special situations of American Negroes and Japanese immigrants (and their descendants) consist in their living as minority groups under

varying conditions of de jure and de facto discrimination in already industrialized, white,

developed America. |

Dalton ] | INTRODUCTION . 5 Acculturation studies, then, did not study change in general or the modernization of economies, but change entailed in the assimilation of immigrants or change in colonial situations (which are now over). Balandier usefully summarizes the main features of colonial situations:

To these collective circumstances we have given the name colonial situation ... (1) the domination imposed by a foreign minority ... acting in the name of a racial (or ethnic) and

cultural superiority dogmatically affirmed, and imposing itself on an indigenous population constituting a numerical majority but inferior to the dominant group from a material point of view; (2) this domination linking radically different civilizations into some form of relationship;

(3) a mechanized, industrialized society with a powerful economy, a fast tempo of life, anda Christian background, imposing on a nonindustrialized, ‘“‘backward’’ society... (4) the

fundamentally antagonistic character of the relationship between these two societies resulting from the subservient role to which the colonial people are subjected as “‘instruments of the colonial power’’; (5) the need, in maintaining this domination, not only to resort to ‘“‘force,”’

but also to a system of pseudo-justifications [legitimation] and stereotyped behaviors

[1966:54]. In this volume, the essay by Graburn is on the economic acculturation of Eskimos, that is, the sequential changes in their economy (and therefore their culture, social relationships, and values) following continuous contact, first with white commercial traders in residence among the Eskimos, and then with a benign Canadian Government and its very civil servants in residence. Applied anthropology. As with acculturation, several kinds of change in differing situations are

called applied anthropology. But the most frequent situation the applied anthropologist studies and himself implements in the field, may be specified as follows: (1) A visiting expert (or team) usually foreign, (2) in temporary residence, (3) visits a hinterland community in the Third World (4) to introduce one or a few specific innovations. As with studies of acculturation, much of the _ theory and case studies of applied anthropology were written in the 1940’s and 1950’s (e.g., Spicer

1952), which means (5) that frequently the hinterland village visited was in a region not _ undergoing rapid and diverse economic and technological modernization (roads, dams, electricity, factories, schools, new opportunities to earn income outside the village community). The literature of applied anthropology continually stresses the need for the visiting expert (if he is to avoid blunders) to understand the culture and social organization of the group to whom he is

to transmit the innovation(s); the visiting expert must acquire sociological insight to allay the villagers’ suspicion of outsiders, and enlist the cooperation of the villagers (patients) in doing what

is good for them (innovate).° ,

. The extension worker and the public health nurse both attempt to alter traditional ways by demonstrating the advantages of the new. As a result they consciously and unconsciously direct changes in people’s customs and beliefs. They are, moreover (and this is a fundamental point for understanding the essential nature of their problems), working across certain barriers. These barriers are differing language, belief, and custom. Coming out of the world of the highly literate, the technologist has a way of talking, acting, and thinking which is ordinarily sharply different from that of the people among whom his work is cast. It is this throwing together of

. two different cultural backgrounds that gives rise to the special group of problems that confront workers in these fields [Spicer 1952:15].

In short, the visiting expert must have two kinds of expertise: technical expertise in the innovation(s) he is to introduce (agriculture, public health), and anthropological expertise in the sense of cultural sensitivity to the hinterland group’s values and traditions, if he is to enlist their cooperation in their acceptance of his technical innovation(s). As with acculturation, so too with applied anthropology: anthropologists phrase their analysis in the most general terms possible, despite the fact that, overwhelmingly, they are concerned with the special situation of visiting foreign experts transmitting simple innovations piecemeal, to hinterland villagers in economically static regions in the Third World (and, for the most part, under

late colonial conditions). | :

The situation in which such workers find themselves has been called “cross-cultural” ... Europeans from modern industrialized Belgium who work with Africans in the agricultural Congo and try to raise the native standard of living. The term [cross-cultural] emphasizes the strongly contrasting backgrounds of the two peoples and the fact that ideas and techniques are

transferred across from one to the other of these different cultures. But the term

‘“‘eross-cultural’’ is equally applicable [nota bene]. to the efforts of a public health worker in

6 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 Illinois, for example, who is engaged in persuading people in a rural neighborhood to screen their houses against flies. While the language barrier, although present, is less forimidable in Illinois than in the Congo, there is still a cultural gulf between the highly trained, urbanized health worker and the rural farm people. The viewpoint of this casebook is that such apparently widely different situations have many fundamental features in common and that the problems

which arise in them yield to basically similar treatment [Spicer 1952:15-16]. Micro-development. There are three post-colonial conditions which mark off the situations of micro-development from the typical situation of applied anthropology. (1) Most of the economic and technological changes that economists call ‘“‘development’’ and other social scientists call ‘“‘modernization” (literacy, improved diet and health practices) are being adopted by Third World peoples without the entrepreneurial presence of visiting experts (see, e.g., Epstein 1962). That portion of the literature of applied anthropology, therefore, concerned with sensitivity training for visiting experts, is not relevant to these change situations. (2) These innovative practices and - activities are the result of new opportunities created impersonally by new capital facilities (roads,

dams), and new institutions (banks, cooperatives) initiated as part of national and regional _ development programs with the ending of colonialism. (3) All the social sciences now study processes of modernization.

In the situation of micro-development, the focus of analytical interest is the long-run integration of villages into the developing regional and national economy. Economists perceive micro-development as hinterland villages responding to new economic and _ technological opportunities that generate continual income growth, economic diversification, and labor mobility.

: Anthropologists are likely to be concerned with how and why traditional culture and social relationships change as the villagers engage in the new economic activities (as, again, in Epstein 1962). The processes and situations called acculturation and applied anthropology are so special as to

make them of interest to anthropologists alone. Micro-development, however, is a subject of interest to the several social sciences concerned with modernization, each of-which can learn from the others because each brings complementary skills to the same set of processes. For example, the history of Western Europe from the twelfth century onward (and of Japan from the seventeenth century) provides us with a valuable record of micro-development (see the articles by Sorokin and Smith in Dalton 1971a). The agricultural economists teach us about the technical components of productivity growth in developing areas (see Mellor 1968; also, Wharton in this volume). The — sociologically-inclined economists (e.g., Myrdal 1957; Hagen 1962; Adelman and Morris 1967), and the economically-inclined sociologists (e.g., Smelser 19638) provide us. with fundamental insights into processes of micro-development (see their essays and the editor’s Introduction in Dalton 1971a). Once micro-development is perceived as an interaction process between village,

region, and nation which takes place over generations of time, then much of the writing of development economists—who have been busily working for a generation now-—sheds light on _ village-level transformations.° THE RELEVANCE OF ECONOMICS TO ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY

The essays by Polanyi and Neale in this volume clarify some of the issues in the debate between

| ‘‘formalists’ and “‘substantivists’’ on the relevance of economics to economic anthropology. (See the Bibliographical Notes at the end of this volume for a listing of the writings of the two groups.)

I should like to suggest some further points of clarification.

The dispute cannot end in clear-cut victory for either side for two reasons. The first is the large number of topics relating to the enormous number of village economies throughout the Third World during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. The subject matter of economic anthropology is extraordinarily diverse. No single set of theoretical concepts (neither Polanyi’s nor those. of conventional price theory) is sufficient to analyze and measure such diversity. Indeed, the dozen essays in this volume alone use a wide variety of analytical and measurement concepts because they are addressed to different questions.

Dalton | INTRODUCTION 7 The second reason why the formalist/substantivist controversy is incapable of clear-cut resolution is due to ingrained semantic difficulties: the impossibility of attaching unambiguous : meaning to concepts such as “economic behavior,” “maximizing,” “scarcity,” ‘‘economic rationality,” “choice,” ‘‘decision-making,” “applying economic theory,” and ‘‘universal theory.” As long as these complicated terms are used by writers who,do not clearly illustrate what they mean by them, disagreement will persist on the basic issues that generated the controversy. Do persons in primitive economies “‘maximize’’? Do they make economic “‘decisions”’ in a “‘rational’’

way? Is “scarcity” universal? If ‘‘scarcity’? is universal, does this mean that economic theory—which shows the conditions for maximizing in market choice situations—is ‘“‘applicable’’? (See Cohen 1967, for an illuminating explanation of the tautological use of terms like“rational.’’)

- Specifically, are the Brazilian peasants described in Johnson’s essay being ‘rational’? or “irrational” in preferring to safeguard material security when confronted by risky innovations,

which, if successful, would bring them higher income? Is paying bridewealth ‘economic behavior’? Why isn’t there a single “‘universal theory’”’ in conventional economics, but rather a welter of price, income, growth, development, and monetary theories? Is there material ‘“‘scarcity”’

in a monastery whose members are devoted to prayer and self-flagellation? What am I “maximizing” when I choose to relinquish a day’s pay to go to my grandmother’s funeral? How can one prove that I am maximizing anything? Am I being “economically rational” in giving up a day’s pay to fulfill a kinship obligation?

To equate ‘rational’ with profit-maximizing or materially-gainful, and then to look for “rationality” in non-market sectors of tribal and peasant economies, is both dubious and tautological. To define terms in such a way is to force oneself to say (as does Firth in the

' begin with. |

. quotation immediately to follow), that the traditional Tikopian sort of economy is not rational in the short-run, but is in the long-run, because social considerations which themselves are rational, loom large in the short-run. But surely it is better not to use such a loaded word as rational, to

In the economic sphere in particular it [rational behavior] has been interpreted, as by Max Weber, to mean the deliberate systematic adjustment of economic means to attain the objective

of pecuniary profit. It will be clear from discussion earlier in this chapter that many of the

economic actions of primitive peoples, including their feasts and other large-scale consumption efforts, appear to lack an immediate rationality. But they do in the long run meet the ends of

material gain. Even where this is not so, [nota béne]| rational conceptions have not been

abandoned. Their scope has only been extended to embrace the social system and not merely the economic system. The economic system has no intrinsic meaning for an individual. It derives ; its evaluations ultimately from his interpretation of social concepts [Firth 1951:153].

What Firth is saying here is that no matter what “primitive peoples” do, their actions are rational if we understand their social system, because social goals are important and because institutions like feasts obligate guests to. reciprocate, which is a kind of material security or insurance for hosts. But, on Firth’s definition, since it is impossible for actions to be irrational, why bring in rationality at all? Why not just say what they do and give their reasons for what they do?

Recent writings in economic anthropology undoubtedly have clarified these semantic difficulties which, in significant measure, permeate the formalist/substantivist controversy. Unhappily, the semantic difficulties, being ingrained into our very modes of thought, persist. For example, what is one to make of the more recent statement by Firth, who, sixteen years later, tells us in the same breath that ‘‘the logic of scarcity” is universally present in all real-world economies (a formalist position), but that it is “‘not highly relevant’ (not important?)—a Polanyi/substantivist position—in “this abstract form” in which the formalists assert its universality? What do these

words mean? a

the contributors [to Themes in Economic Anthropology | in general imply an acceptance of the view that the logic of scarcity is operative over the whole range of economic phenomena, and

that, however deep and complex may be the influence of social factors, the notions of

economy and of economizing are not basically separate. As Percy Cohen indicates .. . however,

1967:4]. .

the general viewpoint is that the issue in this abstract form is not highly relevant [Firth

8 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 CONCLUSION

The theoretical portion of economic anthropology is only at the beginning of systematic formulation. I should like to suggest some guidelines that I find useful.

Theory is a word we use for whatever it is that gives us insights of importance into. the complexities of the real world. The real-world economies (societies, and cultures) studied by anthropologists are extraordinarily diverse, in three senses: (i) They are located in all parts of the world, primarily Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Oceania, but also some in Europe and North America. (ii) Economic anthropologists are interested in the organization and performance of millions of village economies around the world during all historical time periods. The historical array is as staggering as the geographical. For those that were colonized, a simple historical trichotomy is pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial. For those that were not colonized

in modern times (e.g., Japan, Europe), another is traditional, early modernization, and late modernization (see Dalton 1971b). (iii) Diversity and complexity also characterize the wide range ©

of specific topics anthropologists study in these economies and societies. |

Despite this geographical, historical, and analytical diversity, a tradition exists in anthropology to seek “‘universal theory,” one set of terms, ideas, and generalizations equally applicable to all the

questions asked about all economies during all time periods. a

What is required from economic anthropology is the analysis of material in such a way that it will be directly comparable with the material of modern economics, matching assumption with assumption and so allowing generalizations to be ultimately framed which will subsume the phenomena of both price and non-price communities into a body of principles about human behavior which will be truly universal [ Firth 1966:14 ]. This ingrained quest for universal theory—do universal theories exist in any social science?—has

been a costly impediment to the formulation of theory in economic anthropology. The contentious issues on formal versus substantive economics, primitive money, and bridewealth versus brideprice are between those who use terms from conventional economics—maximizing, rational—because they want to find similarities between all economies, and those (like myself) who use Polanyi’s socio-economic terms for specific institutions and transactions because we want to

relate economy to social organization.

There is a deep-seated yearning in social science to discover one general approach, one general

law valid for all time and.all climes. But these primitive attitudes must be outgrown © [| Gerschenkron 1954:256].

In mentioning these matters here, I do not hope to resolve them, but only to bring them up for

explicit consideration. One demonstrates the superiority of a theoretical approach not by exhortation but only by using it to analyze real-world economies in such a way as to draw

analytical conclusions which fit the facts better. :

a good theory ... makes possible generalizations that bring together and explain empirical observations not previously seen to be related to one another [Fortes 1953:114]. In this Introduction I have suggested that acculturation, applied anthropology, and microdevelopment are not three aspects of a universal process called culture change, but that each is about special circumstances of a special historical situation; that the questions about change each

. raises are different, and that the theoretical concepts we use to answer them must be different. Elsewhere, I have done exactly the same for peasant economies (Dalton 1971b) and for primitive , money (Dalton 1965a, 1966, 1971c). , It has long been understood in economics that theory is often created in direct response to contemporary events (see Mitchell 1970). Marx and Keynes are vivid examples of theorists who were addressing real-world structures and problems of their times. So too for anthropology. Surely it is true that the differences between the theoretical approaches of British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology are in large part attributable to the differences in the condition of the real-world societies each initially set out to analyze. The British had functioning societies intact in their colonies, so Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard studied them as living social systems. But the

Dalton ] INTRODUCTION 9 North American Indians had been radically changed by the time Boas arrived and so he studied

language and other aspects of their cultures. | Precisely the same is true for socio-economic change. Theoretical ideas that we now find very useful to analyze economic development and cultural modernization (e.g., Myrdal 1957; Smelser 1963; Lewis 1954) were not conceivable in the colonial period of European control and slow, piecemeal change. Without nations there could not be national economic integration and national

colonialism.

development policies; and so acculturation and applied anthropology studied those special processes of change that were going on under the special conditions and institutions of

It is no more possible to study ‘‘social change” in general than it is to study ‘“‘society’’ in

--general; what is given us for analysis .. . are specific social institutions, and what we have to do is to study the modifications of these through time, in the context of their relationships with other co-existing institutions. It is open to some doubt whether such a study will reveal any general laws... of social change... [Beattie 1961:165]. _ Anthropology is a much more difficult profession to practice than is commonly realized, even by anthropologists. One difficulty, already mentioned; is the enormous diversity in the empirical

universe and range of matters studied by anthropologists. Another, particularly important in economic anthropology, is the paucity of comparable, hard statistical data on village-level economies (see the essays by Sahlins and by Adelman and Dalton, in this volume). But it is the very special primacy accorded to fieldwork that also creates difficulties of several sorts. Fieldwork is very important, very difficult to do effectively,’ and, in graduate training, the - absorbing concentration on preparation to do fieldwork tends to obscure the valuable preparation

in economic anthropology to be acquired through conventional study of European economic history, agricultural economics, and the writings of sociologists and economists on development and modernization. Making intelligent policy in applied anthropology, micro-development, or macro-development, always requires more than an intelligent grasp of theory. Theory gives strategic insights of a general sort. Policy requires specific actions addressed to particular situations.® From an anthropological perspective, the problem of village or micro-development has three dimensions: (1) successful economic development, (2) and cultural modernization, (3) without severe social malaise in departing from traditional economy, social organization, and culture. It is this triple aspect that makes anthropological analysis of modernization so complicated. Economic development means new production. activities, labor skills, and technical equipment that generate

ever-increasing income. Cultural modernization is the complementary counterpart of economic development. It means new achievement and activities other than economic and technological— literacy, education, new political activities and organization. (Economics, sociology, and political science share with anthropology these interests in economic development and cultural modernization—how do Third World peoples come to acquire and incorporate the new, successfully?)

It is the third aspect that is of very special interest to anthropologists, who, after all, have specialized in the nature of aboriginal social organization and culture since the beginnings of their

subject: how and why do traditional social organization and culture change in the course of economic development and cultural modernization? Under what conditions is the transformation relatively smooth and untraumatic, and under what conditions are unusual personal stress, group malaise, and conflicts of novel sorts, frequencies, and durations, the case’ Which aspects of traditional social organization and culture are compatible with (transportable into) advanced economic development and cultural modernization? (Scarlett Epstein’s book is unusually good

because it helps to answer all these questions.) | We may now define an ideal model of “successful’? micro-development: continual income growth and modern cultural achievement sustained over generations of time in village communities which are becoming integral, interacting parts of regional and national economies, societies, and polities, in such ways as do not generate severe personal and group malaise in their departure from

whichever traditional social relationships and cultural practices the economic and cultural modernization processes require departure from. What do we know about “successful”’ development, so defined?? -To pinpoint what successful development entails, we must first

10 ) STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 consider the nature of traditional economies (and as I have done elsewhere—Dalton 1964, 1969—examples of unsuccessful development).

Traditional economy, society, and culture. A widely shared situation of traditional bands, tribes, and peasantries is material insecurity due to their extreme dependence on local ecology

, from which livelihood is extracted (via hunting, gathering, herding, and various forms of agriculture), with homemade, low grade technology.'® Seasonal hunger, sporadic famine, and

emergency conversions (i.e., sale of treasure items for food), are widely documented: | The gods have hidden the livelihood of man [Hesiod, Works and Days }.

Agrarian history becomes more catastrophic as we trace it backwards [Maitland 1960:425]. the cities of Asia ... [were] overwhelmed with unspeakable misfortunes. [The province] was

desolated and enslaved by the [tax] farmers of the revenue, and by usurers. The poor

inhabitants were forced to sell the most beautiful of their sons and daughters, the ornaments and offerings in their temples, their paintings and statues of their gods. The last resource was, to serve their creditors as slaves | Plutarch, Life of Lucullus].

So, too, for medieval Europe (Lucas 1930), Ireland in the nineteenth century (Wocodham-Smith

| 1962), and widely in the anthropological literature. What we have recently seen in Biafra (famine following war), and East Pakistan (hunger following a devastating tidal wave) is a central condition

of traditional tribal and peasant life. :

Records for Cyprus, extending over 80 years, show that the wheat growers of the Mesaoria . . . may expect three good seasons, four average seasons, two poor seasons, and one crop failure in each decade [ Allan 1965:38]. Actually, there are two sets of forces at work, one making for group disability, the other for individual disability. The entire community is afflicted by (1) vagaries of nature such as drought,

. flood, animal and plant disease, decimating food production; (2) vagaries of nature decimating people, such as epidemic disease incapacitating and reducing in numbers the labor force that | produces food; (3) warfare which interrups agricultural production when no food sources other

than current production exist. Aside from ravages of nature and ravages of man sporadically starving entire communities,

individual persons in all communities inevitably are incapacitated—unable to produce their own food in the usual manner—by sickness and old age (Douglas 1962). Individual disability occurs in | all communities, traditional and modern; group disability occurs with special frequency and virulence throughout the historical and anthropological universe of traditional bands, tribes, and peasantries which lack(ed) machine technology and applied science, regional integration through market networks, and developed communication and transport facilities. Locusts, droughts, and ' warfare do not starve twentieth century Parisians and New Yorkers, and their individual disability

(sickness and old age) is coped with through private saving and welfare state policies (both

, no external source

age-sets poor d technology of livelihood

Kinship \ a religion bridewealth ™ a, , > village 4—— language

> communi! or ploodwealtn tribal segment —— subsistence physical _—” “t~___ dependence on elders and

protection other superiors f “... to land access to labor

conditions. .

Diagram 2. Diverse forces making for local community dependence under traditional

Dalton ] INTRODUCTION . 11 concomitants of high and growing national incomes). Material insecurity in the sense of uncertain — food supply, together with the absence of alternative sources of livellhood—extreme dependence on one’s local community for subsistence—characterize most traditional economies. Certainly since Malinowski and Mauss wrote, we have known that social organization (e.g.,

kinship) and cultural practices (e.g., religion) are inextricably part of labor and land allocation, | work organization, and produce distribution. I would change Polanyi’s catchphrase by saying | “economy” and “‘society’’ are ‘‘embedded”’ in each other, and that it is impossible to attribute primacy to one over the other, for traditional societies. Other catchphrases are that production and distribution are socially controlled, or that in traditional societies, an individual’s social status (lineage, rank, caste) channels his access to land, labor, and emergency support; or, that local - dependence is so strong because there are no alternative means of livelihood and material security outside of one’s local community.

We can learn about material insecurity and the interleaving of economy and society by considering the variety of coping devices used to reduce material insecurity, before cash-earning

and modern technology come to transform traditional economies (see Dalton 1971c). These are | institutionalized practices which mitigate and compensate for the threat of sporadic hunger. One is | the peoples’ detailed knowledge of their natural environment, which soils are best for which crops, ; which berries and seeds ripen when, how to track game animals, etc. A second is the practice of planting more than is needed of the preferred staple crop in the hope that if bad weather or insects decimate the crop, enough will be harvestable to stave off hunger. (If it turns out to be a good year

with a bumper crop, the sensible thing to do—especially if the abundance cannot be stored or sold—is to have a feast and invite outsiders, thereby obligating them to reciprocate in the future.)

A third coping device is to plant a less preferred crop requiring different growing conditions from , _ the staple crop (say, less rain). If the staple fails, the insurance crop is eaten. Another is to plant

| ||or2®-4§ e8 Y

. Cog, x“SX iy YHxae % .% ¥ 0? Yo, | on™Yea) No}; .. / ae ) orneenyVo, Caretion Ic;

. Ae

VILLAGE REGION| NATION | REST OF WORLD .on | COMMUNITY job opportunities

4,

Y

the region and nation. ——_ Diagram 3. Economic development and cultural modernization require village integration with

12 : STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 strips of land differently located with different soils and growing conditions in the hope that a good crop will come up on some of the differently situated strips. Religion is also a coping device: the use of magic and ritual to propitiate the gods who brought bad harvests and thank them for good harvests and for sending the game and fish to be caught. So, too, with social relationships. If a single household or hamlet suffers disaster while the larger community is not similarly afflicted, the unfortunate receive gifts from kin, friends, neighbors, lineage heads, big men, chiefs, church, feudal lords, or jajmani masters. If the entire community is similarly afflicted, it calls upon distant kin, allies, gift-friends, and trade partners for emergency ' support. And if these fail, it resorts in emergency to money-lenders and debt-bondage, selling

treasure items and children for food, or in desperation, resorts to infanticide, abortion, or migration. The contrivances to cope with the threat of sporadic hunger are so many and so different because the threat is so frequent and so widespread. Subsistence producers depend for daily livelihood and emergency support on local ecology, local technology, and local social organization, while cultivating outlying relationships and contacts to call on when all else fails. One may portray the traditional local communities of bands, tribes, and peasantries (Diagram 2) as a field of force in which utterly different features of life work to magnetize persons to their local communities. Emotional identity as well as material subsistence and security were located in

the home community. .

Development and modernization are complicated, difficult, and time-consuming because they require a reversal of this field of force; individuals and village communities participate in and become dependent on regional, national, and international transactions and institutions. But people do not easily give up their local rights and relationships—that which keeps them from starving. To economists, this means that “big payoffs’ and security guarantees are needed to break the field of force, to generate the drives to income growth and cultural modernization, as in Diagram 3.

NOTES a 1That the functional relationships being disclosed by the statistical analysis be important, is not, of course, a technical requirement for the use of statistical procedures. Indeed, one of the dangers in the use of statistical analysis is its ready application to trivial matters. 2 Elsewhere (Adelman and Dalton 1971, reprinted in Dalton 1971a), we use another statistical

technique, Factor Analysis, on the same data to answer other questions relating to social and | economic change in the 108 villages. 3The precise phrasings anthropologists use to characterize their interests in differing processes of socio-economic change appear in ‘“‘Guide to Departments of Anthropology, 1970-71,” Bulletins

of the American Anthropological Association, Vol. 3, No. 2, July 1970. Culture change,

acculturation, social and culture change, social change, socio-cultural change, acculturation and culture change, modernization, development and modernization, comparative economics, theory | of social persistence and social change, cultural contact and cultural change, technology and economic anthropology, economic anthropology, economic acculturation, cultural dynamics, — applied anthropology with emphasis on public health and community development, cultural change and peasant economies, economic organization in peasant societies, cultural evolution, primitive economics, anthropology of development, new developing nations, modernization in new

nations, economic development and economic anthropology, social change in developing

countries, human and cultural evolution, labor migration and urbanization, sociocultural dynamics and change, economic history, modernization in underdeveloped areas, community development. On the distinctions between acculturation, applied anthropology, and micro-development, see the exchange between H. Dobyns and myself in Current Anthropology, forthcoming 1971: Discussion | and Debate on ‘“‘Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology.” Also, the ‘Introduction,”’ in Dalton (1971a). 4 Actually, the North American Indians (unlike many in Latin America, and unlike Africans and Asians who were colonized by European Powers), were very special because they constituted small minorities in the vast white population of the U.S. >A peculiar point repeatedly stressed in the literature is that the visiting expert must ferret out the ‘“‘felt needs” of the people—what new thing or service they want, as though the hinterland villagers were to have a wide range of choice in how their lives were to be changed. We aren’t told

by the applied anthropologists what happens when the “felt needs’’ of the local people are to

Dalton ] INTRODUCTION 13 return to cannibalism or headhunting or slaughtering their traditional enemies. Do the applied anthropologists then cheerfully oblige these ‘‘felt needs’? Another point is the extreme difficulty of contriving innovations which could be effective in isolation from enlarged transactions with the regional and national economy. The steel axe (Sharp 1952) could be introduced because it is cheap (and therefore does not require expanded commercial production to sell to the outside world in order to get the cash to pay for it), and requires no complementary resources (fuel, skilled labor, repair services) to be used effectively. Chemical fertilizer and irrigation equipment are expensive and require complementary inputs, and therefore cannot be introduced apart from enlarged transactions with the outside world, i.e., micro-development.

© Development economists who illuminate matters of interest to economic anthropology, _

include Lewis (1954,1955), Singer (1950, 1952), Hirschman (1958), Stolper (1966). Two good anthologies are Meier (1970) and Robson and Lury (1970). I recently edited a book of readings explicitly designed to show the importance of work done by other social scientists and by historians to topics of micro-development and modernization studied by anthropologists. Of the 28 readings in Dalton (1971a), 11 are by anthropologists and 17 by economists, historians, and sociologists.

7T shall relegate to a footnote my private opinion about the sensitive matter of doing good fieldwork. Whether one is a physicist, psychiatrist, mathematician, surgeon, economist, or anthropologist, one’s professional effectiveness—quality of performance—depends on a combina- |

tion of brains, training, experience, and personality. Anthropological fieldwork, which, I think, has no real counterpart in any other profession, is very important to professional success both as a training device and as research method through which one gathers source material for subsequent

analysis and publication. But to do good fieldwork requires more than brains and scholarly preparation; it requires—to an extent I think shared only by the profession of psychiatry—

personality characteristics of special sorts. The result, I believe, is that many anthropologists with brains and good scholarly preparation do poor fieldwork (because their personalities are unsuited to the trying experience), from which they never professionally recover. Moreover, and this is a tragic waste, they have never been taught as students that first-rate work can be based on sources other than one’s own fieldwork. As far as I know, only anthropologists use the term ‘“‘library research,” a term that bears a tainted and disdainful connotation. Oddly enough, conventional _ economics seems to be held in enormous respect by other social sciences, including anthropology.

But, with the minor exception of very few of the development economists and agricultural

economists, economists never do fieldwork. Where they are concerned with the real world, it is with numbers—prices, income, investment—not human behavior studied by observation. In this volume, the essays by Polanyi (as well as all of his previous publications), Neale, Grierson, Adelman and Dalton, and in part, Sahlins and Wharton, are based on “library research,” not their

own fieldwork.

8T should like to emphasize that this is true for all social science theory and all social and economic policy. Economists too need reminding that economic theory is never sufficient to devise intelligent policy, even for our own economy. Whenever, for example, an economist sets out

to devise policy for a specific problem situation—inflation in the U.S. or urban renewal in Chicago—he needs institutional information on social and political organization and historical events (e.g., past policies, and events leading up to the present problem situation he is trying to

improve). Development economists working in the unfamiliar institutional situations of the Third World have become quite aware of this need for special information complementary to general principles. See Singer (1950), Seers (1963), Dalton (1965b), Adelman and Morris (1967), Martin

and Knapp (1967). Perhaps all of us in the social sciences are at fault for not making it clear enough to students that the theory we teach them is necessary but not sufficient to solve actual

problems. Good theory, however, will indicate what kinds of real world data are necessary to solve actual problems. For example, to the extent that the analytical conclusions in the essays in this volume by, say, Sahlins and Adelman and Dalton are regarded as “‘contributions to theory,’’ to the same

extent will the factual data used to reach their theoretical conclusions be regarded as necessary data to be collected in: future fieldwork. Perhaps an example from economics will clarify the general point. Most of us agree that Keynes’ General Theory was a contribution to economic theory, because it provided strategic insights into processes of aggregate income determination and fluctuation, real world processes of importance. The theory also suggested (and necessarily so) what kind of empirical data must be collected to make full employment policy, namely, national income data on the components of effective demand. So too, I think, all good theory specifies the real world factual data that should be collected in order to use the theory to make policy. ?In what follows, I must draw on earlier work of mine, particularly Dalton 1964, 1969, 1971a; Adelman and Dalton 1971. 10Tmmediately, one must qualify. There are occasional exceptions, such as the Indians of the

northwest coast of America living in a physical environment yielding unusual abundance from diverse sources. The typical situation, however, is otherwise.

14 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 REFERENCES CITED

| Adelman, Irma, and George Dalton

1971 A Factor Analysis of Modernization in Village India. In Economic Development and

Adelman, Irma, and Cynthia Taft Morris Social Change. G. Dalton, ed. New York: Natural History Press, Doubleday.

1967 Society, Politics, and Economic Development. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Allan, W.

1965 The African Husbandman. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.

Beattie, J. H. M. a

Balandier, Georges

1966 The Colonial Situation: A Theoretical Approach. In Social Change, the Colonial Situa-

tion. I. Wallerstein, ed. New York: Wiley.

1961 Culture Contact and Social Change. British Journal of Sociology 12:165-175.

Bloch, Mare

1963 French Rural History. Berkeley: University of California Press. _

Cohen, Percy | | |

1966 Land and Work in Medieval Europe. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. | Broom, L., B. J. Siegel, E. Z. Vogt, and J. B. Watson a 1954 Acculturation: An Exploratory Formulation. American Anthropologist 56:973-1000. 1967 Economic Analysis and Economic Man: Some Comments on a Controversy. In Themes

in Economic Anthropology. R. Firth, ed. London: Tavistock. a

Dalton, George

Science Journal 16:378-389. | |

25:560-591.

1964 The Development of Subsistence and Peasant Economies in Africa. International Social

day. :

1965a Primitive Money. American Anthropologist 67:44-65. 1965b History, Politics, and Economic Development in Liberia. Journal of Economic History 1966 Bridewealth versus Brideprice. American Anthropologist 68:732-737. 1969 Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology. Current Anthropology 10:63-101. 1971a Economic Development and Social Change. New York: Natural History Press, Double-

1971b Peasantries in Anthropology and History. Current Anthropology (forthcoming). 1971c Traditional Tribal and Peasant Economies: An Introductory Survey of Economic Anthropology (a survey module). Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing

Douglas, Mary : | Epstein, Scarlett Press. M. , I. | : Finley, Company. 1971d Economic Anthropology and Development. New York: Basic Books.

1962 Lele Economy Compared with the Bushong. Jn Markets in Africa. P. Bohannan and G.

Dalton, eds. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. a

1962 Economic Development and Social Change in South India. Manchester: The University

1960 Slavery in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge, England: W. Heffer & Sons. 1965 Between Slavery and Freedom. Comparative Studies in Society and History 6:233-249. Firth, Raymond 1951 Elements of Social Organization. London: Watts. 1966 Primitive Polynesian Economy (revised ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1967 Themes in Economic Anthropology. London: Tavistock. Fortes, Meyer 1953 Analysis and Description in Social Anthropology. The Advancement of Science, No. 38 (September ). Foster, George M. 1960 Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage. New York: Wenner-Gren Founda-

tion for Anthropological Research. , |

Franklin, S. H. 1969 The European Peasantry. London: Methuen.

Hagen, Everett E. Gerschenkron, Alexander

1954 Social Attitudes, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development. International Social Science Journal 6:252-258.

1962 On the Theory of Social Change. Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press. Hirschman, Albert O. 1958 The Strategy of Economic Development. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Dalton] | INTRODUCTION , 15

Hunter, Guy Lucas, Henry S. : Maitland, F. W. | 1969 Modernizing Peasant Societies. New York: Oxford University Press. Lewis, W. Arthur

1954 Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor. The Manchester School of

Economic and Social Studies 22:139-191. |

1955 The Theory of Economic Growth. London: Allen & Unwin.

1930 The Great European Famine of 1315, 1316 and 1317. Speculum 5.

1960 Domesday Book and Beyond. London: Fontana Books. First published in 1897. ; Martin, Kurt, and John Knapp | 1967 The Teaching of Development Economics. Chicago: Aldine Press.

Meier, Gerald M. .

1970 Leading Issues in Economic Development. New York: Oxford University Press. Mellor, John W., et al. 1968 Developing Rural India. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Mitchell, Wesley | Myrdal, Gunnar

Polanyi, Karl |

1970 Lecture Notes on Types of Economic Theory. New York: Augustus Kelley.

1957 Rich Lands and Poor. New York: Harper.

1966 Dahomey and the Slave Trade. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Redfield, R., R. Linton, and M. J. Herskovits . 1936 Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation. American Anthropologist 38:149-152.

Robinson, Joan . 1970 Freedom and Necessity. London: Allen & Unwin. Robson, P., and D. A. Lury

Ruopp, Philipps, ed. } | 1953 Approaches to Eommunity Development. The Hague: W. Van Hoeve.

| 1969 The Economies of Africa. London: George Allen & Unwin.

-Seers, Dudley | 1963 The Limitations of the Special Case. Oxford Institute of Economics and Statistics Bul-

letin 25:77-98. |

Sharp, Lauriston 1952 Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians. Human Organization 11:17-22.

Siegel, Bernard J. ,

1955 Acculturation, Critical Abstracts, North America. Stanford University Press.

Singer, Hans

1950 The Distribution of Gains Between Investing and Borrowing Countries. American Eco| nomic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May. ~ | . 1952 The Mechanics of Economic Development. In International Development: Growth and

Change. New York: McGraw-Hill (1964). Slicher Van Bath, B. H. 1963 The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850. London: Edward Arnold.

Smelser, Neil J. .

- 1963 Mechanisms of Change and Adjustment to Change. Jn Industrialization and society. B. F. Hoselitz and W. E. Moore, eds. Paris: Unesco/Mouton. Spicer, Edward H. | 1952 Human Problems in Technological Change. New York: Russel Sage. Stolper, Wolfgang 1966 Planning Without Facts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Woodham-Smith, Cecil

1962 The Great Hunger. New York: Harper and Row.

PART | CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

1

Carl Menger’s Two Meanings of ‘““Economic””! | KARL POLANYI (POSTHUMOUS) COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

THE ECONOMICS of underdevelopment is giving rise to problems at varying levels of abstraction. Outstanding among these, so it appears to me, is the question of the theoretical handling of early economies that possess no market systems. Such efforts must be condemned to failure as long as investigation is arbitrarily limited to contemporary peoples. Yet alongside today’s _ developing peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, non-market societies comprise most of the highly civilized empires of antiquity, which also had neither secondary industries nor market systems. And indeed there is the same lack of understanding of the manner in which the economy operated in all pre-industrial non-market areas, whether big or small, poor or rich, contemporary or long past. In our concentration on the Trobrianders we must not forget Sumer and Ptolemaic

Egypt. No serious theory of non-market economies can ignore the record of the wealthy civilizations of ancient history. Two fields of organized knowledge into man’s livelihood are on record, economics proper and

those fragments of knowledge that concern pre-modern types of livelihood. These we will

. designate as the “sub-disciplines’? of economic anthropology and economic history. The corresponding economies can be contrasted as ‘“‘advanced”’ and “backward,” specifiable as market economies and pre-industrial non-market economies.

Our interest here is solely in the latter. These backward countries have hitherto proved accessible to theoretical treatment almost exclusively at the fringes where trade and markets of © advanced countries reached them. Beyond that range, the indigenous, alien, socio-economic structures of the underdeveloped countries seemed to obstruct rational analysis for lack of an institutional frame of reference. All the more, it may have come as a surprise that neither have those “sub-disciplines” which

specialize in non-market institutions reached any notable accuracy in describing the underdeveloped countries, nor did attempts in this field attain to any insights even comparable to our understanding of the market economy, which is indeed remarkable. Market-organized livelihood forms a conceptual whole through a system of market prices. Production is carried on for gain made on price differentials, on pricing goods such as land, labor,

and raw materials which have markets of their own, as well as markets for food and other consumer’s goods. Trade is a two-way movement of goods through the market, directed by prices, and money a means of facilitating such a movement. Since prices are formed in markets trade is market trade and money is essentially exchange or commercial money. Both trade and money can then be regarded as functions of the market, and a self-regulating system of price-making markets may clearly result in a continuous supply of goods. The economist’s question is only, how does it all work? As to non-market economies, the position is completely different. For ancient Babylonia or the

West African Negro empires, such as traditional Dahomey, we possess no institutional frame of reference to hold on to, such as price-making markets provide. Hence, there is no agreement about what exactly we wish to know about the place of the economy in the society, nor what lines of investigation a parallel with market economies should follow. Culture complexes resembling trade

16 |

Polanyi | TWO MEANINGS OF “ECONOMIC” . 17 or money occur, but there is no underlying pattern such as that of the market system to explain the movements of the things. Yet in every primitive and archaic society, there is continuous supply of material goods, that is, an economy.

This was largely the burden of the complaint of the economist, when blaming his lack of theoretical understanding of economies in backward countries on those alien socio-cultural values that impede the application of “rational” principles of behavior. In effect, the absence of market institutions was to him identical with that tendency towards “‘irrationality”’ which stultified his

endeavors at comprehension. : :

In terms of empirical research the dispersal of economic information among the social sciences should have suggested a linking up of those enclaves of historical, anthropological, and sociological

knowledge to form a whole. But again the status gained by formal economic analysis in this general field of study discouraged such attempts. Economics in its full-fledged intellectual armor tended to monopolize initiative in primitive economics, economic history, and economic sociology

alike. The prevailing climate of opinion set a premium on common-sense maxims clothed in academic gowns, which were then substituted for empirical research and critical analysis. Faced with the choice between an advantageous and a less advantageous course, most men tend to choose , the former; this was a typical pronouncement of conventional wisdom and was deemed sufficient _ to posit the axiom of gainfulness as a universal principle of human behavior. Once introduced, such an axiom would serve to justify the reception of the ambiguous terms of supply and demand wherever things were available (supply) that could be employed as means to a purpose (demanda). Unwittingly, the human world would thus be transformed into a potential market system with commercial trade and commercial money as logical corollaries. There was now neither necessity nor room left for empirical enquiry. Eventually, price-making markets would be seen—though none were present—wherever any sort of trade or money occurred, and market economics would take over, leaving the specific sub-disciplines where they were. At times such economistic

‘influences flooded not only the economic sub-disciplines [of economic anthropology and pre-industrial economic history] but the main sciences themselves. Anthropology itself was affected by the allocational definition with its wake of a utilitarian psychology and a one-sided exchange definition of money; more recently sociology developed a rationalistic tendency culminating in an ingenious scheme of extending economic theory to the totality of society; with . economic historians of antiquity the myth of an invisible market pattern has come to overlie the economic life of the Near East, hindering the acceptance of a less commercial and more realistic interpretation of the facts about the economies of the Oriental empires. Even this is not all. Apart. from the market frame of reference that was here forced upon non-market societies, there was that fragmentation of knowledge about non-market economies, the relevant facts being domiciled in the different social sciences. Hence, “‘The place of the economy in society’? would mean to the anthropologist, its place in the cultural spectrum; to the sociologist, its place as a subsystem in a structured society; to the historian, its place on a time scale. Differences of semantic coloring would in this way tend to produce a puzzle of non-fitting items. Leading scholars in vain strained to reverse the trend towards departmentalization. The historian of antiquity, Eduard Meyer, the economic historians Henry S. Maine, Carl Buecher, Otto Hintze, Max Weber and Marc Bloch, the sociologists Durkheim and Mauss, the anthropologist Richard Thurnwald, advocated an integration of the disjecta membra of what might be tentatively called non-market economics. Eduard Meyer and Max Weber launched out on the task, but found no followers. B. Laum’s explicit attempts at a

general history, trying to reconstruct the mechanism of primitive and archaic economic institutions, was abortive, not least for lack of a unifying frame of reference. This calamitous uncertainty about the concept of ‘“‘economic’”’ and the “‘economy”’ harks back, we submit, to the founding of the neo-classical school of economics, with its somewhat confusing influence on the study of non-market economies. THE POSTHUMOUS CARL MENGER

Neo-classical economics was established on Carl Menger’s premise that its appropriate concern

was the allocation of insufficient means to provide for man’s livelihood. This was the first

18 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 statement of the postulate of scarcity, or maximization. As a succinct formulation of the logic of } rational action with reference to the economy, it ranks high among the achievements of the human

| mind.

Its importance was enhanced by a superb relevance to the actual operation of market

institutions which, due to their maximizing effects in day-to-day operations, were by their very

| nature amenable to such an approach. :

As Menger explained, however, in a posthumous edition of his work, published in 1923, the economy has two ‘“‘basic directions,’ only one of which was the economizing direction stemming from the insufficiency of means, while the other was the ‘“‘techno-economic’’’ direction as he

called it, deriving from the requirements of production regardless of the sufficiency or

while the factors are available. ,

insufficiency of the means. For rationally, production is called for if consumable goods are absent,

In a section of Chapter IV entitled “The Two Basic Directions of the Human Economy,”

Menger wrote:

I call these two directions that the human economy can take—the technical and the economizing—basic [German: elementar]; though these appear as a rule, indeed, almost always linked with each other, they nevertheless spring from causes that are essentially different and

independent from one another, and in some branches of the economy actually make their appearance alone ... The technical direction of the human economy is neither necessarily dependent upon the economizing one, nor is it necessarily linked with it.°

Menger was avowedly faced by a semantic difficulty. He tells us that for the phrase — “economizing direction’? he found no German word corresponding precisely to the adjective ‘““economizing,’’ and so he used the closest available term ‘sparend’, specifying its meaning

the human economy.

unmistakably in brackets as ‘okonomisierend’. He then added a special section on the phenomena that emerge from the conjunction of the ‘‘techno-economic’”’ and the economizing directions of Because of the brilliant and formidable achievements of price theory opened up by Menger, the

new “economizing” or formal meaning of economic became the meaning, and that more traditional but seemingly pedestrian meaning of ‘“‘materiality,’’ which was not scarcity-bound, lost academic status and was eventually forgotten. Neo-classical economics was founded on the new meaning, while at the same time the old, material or substantive meaning faded from consciousness

and lost its identity for economic thought.* oO

: Later, Menger wished to supplement his ‘‘Principles’”’ of 1871, so as not to appear to ignore the primitive, archaic, and other early societies which were being studied by the new social sciences. Cultural anthropology revealed a variety of non-gainful motivations which induced man to take part in production; sociology refuted the myth of an all-pervading utilitarian bias; ancient history showed cases of high cultures having no market system.° Menger was now anxious to limit the strict application of his ‘“‘Principles” to the modern exchange economy (Verkehrswirtschaft). The

, posthumous edition abounds in references to the exchange or market economy for which the ‘Principles’? were designed, on the one hand, and the non-market or backward economies, on the other.°®

Only quite recently has attention turned again towards the economy of the underdeveloped and backward countries. Menger’s discussion of economic development has, however, been forgotten.

The posthumous edition, where the distinction between the two directions of the economy is made, was never translated into English. No presentation of neo-classical economics—including Lionel Robbins’ (1935)—deals with the “two directions.”’ The London School of Economics edition of the “‘Principles” in its rare book series (1933) chose the first edition. Hayek, in a preface

to this “replica” edition helped to remove the posthumous Menger from the consciousness of economists by passing over the manuscript [of the second edition] as “‘fragmentary and disordered.” ‘‘For the present, at any rate,’ Professor Hayek concluded, ‘“‘the results of the work

of Menger’s later years must be regarded as lost.” Some seventeen years later, when the “Principles,” with F. H. Knight’s preface, were translated into English (1950), the first edition—half the size of the second—was once more selected. Moreover, the translation rendered

thoughout the book the term ‘“‘wirtschaftend” (literally: engaged in economic activity) by

Polanyi]. | TWO MEANINGS OF “ECONOMIC” 19 “economizing.’’ Yet, according to Menger, this was the equivalent not of “wirtschaftend,’” but of “sparend,”’ which he had expressly introduced in the posthumous edition in order to distinguish the allocation of the insufficient means from another direction of the economy which does not

necessarily imply insufficiency. . |

Menger himself was content to universalize the concept of economic activity by stressing its

two directions, and made no attempt to develop a particular set of terms for “backward” — | economies which he was the first to distinguish categorically from “‘advanced”’ ones; nor was this

tried later by other social scientists. For the purposes of such a task, involving as it does a comparison of market and pre-industrial non-market economies, a broader approach to the economy may be needed. Such a concept of the economy may indeed be found to lie nearer to the classical than to the neo-classical school of economic thought. BASIC PATTERNS OF INTEGRATION

The economy as a sub-system in society may be defined as a process of continuous material | supply channeled through definite institutions. The process consists of movements of things, the movements being caused by persons acting in situations created by those institutions. This picture of the economy as an instituted process contains, I believe, in nuce all the semantic

elements needed for our theoretical purposes. The economic process and its institutional integument made up of “persons in situations,’ forms a complex whole. In actuality, things and persons in situations are inseparably linked, while analytically they are separable. ,

Institutions are called economic if they typically create situations that determine the movements of which the process consists. The institution together with the process form the economy: as a sub-system. Its boundaries are elastic since the economic character of the institutions is a matter of the degree to which they contribute to the forming of those situations _ and the immediacy with which these affect the process. Other institutions, less directly affecting the process, are political, religious or otherwise “non-economic.” These exert their influence on the economic process only exceptionally—either accidentally or peripherally—for instance by creating untypical situations, as when a church dignitary who happens to be a successful author claims royalties on a best seller. As a rule, non-economic institutions exert an influence only by entering into a situation that is typically created by an economic institution: the dignitary may help boost sales of an authorized work; or by exerting influence on an economic institution as such, e.g., the book market, the dignitary may favor or frown upon censorship of literary publications—thus influencing the effectiveness of the book market. Analysis must obviously start with the distinguishing of market economies from non-market

economies.

While owing to.the absence of market institutions to guide him, the economist was prevented ~ from penetrating the socio-cultural tangle in underdeveloped societies, the social scientists, though

experts in cultural settings that discount “rational motives,” nevertheless failed to explain the course of the economic process, since no alternative pattern underlying the economy appeared

explored. |

available to serve as a referent. ,

What, it appears, has not been sufficiently considered was the possibility that under the surface

other explanatory patterns might operate, different from [market] exchange, and not yet

Market economies are as we have seen, readily identifiable by the dominance over the whole of a network, a self-regulating system of price-making markets; non-market economies in contrast show a baffling socio-cultural variety of patterns. However, such economies have been found to be

instituted in two basic patterns: reciprocity and redistribution, or a combination of the two. Together with market exchange this raises the number of patterns here distinguished to three. Under a market system things [‘‘commodities’”—natural resources, labor, goods, and services] are moving at the most favorable rate within a self-regulating system of price-making markets, a widely integrative exchange pattern unique to our times. (A) Reciprocity implies that things are moving between two or more symmetrically placed persons

or groups. (BB) ~ ss

20 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 Redistribution postulates centrality; that is, things are directly or indirectly allocated from a center (on a small scale the ubiquitous peasant household belongs here). (C)

A system of price-making markets, institutional symmetry and institutional centrality are

structural requirements of the three basic patterns, respectively. Apart from the market economy, the patterns are not mutually exclusive in a particular economy, rather they tend to co-exist with one more prominent than the others. Long-distance trade for instance, ran between the empires of antiquity regularly as gift-trade, between the rulers, i.e., ON reciprocative lines, while the things exported and those imported by the rulers were domestically collected and distributed by them through the redistributive channels of a central administration. Similarly, isolated markets are frequently found interspersed with non-market

forms of integration. - 7

Nevertheless, three patterns of movements are distinctive and significant causing stability and unity, i.e., a certain measure of recurrence and of interdependence of the parts. These patterns have therefore an integrative function. Hence their designation as “‘patterns of integration.”’ |

As a tule, it is impossible to classify economies according to a single basic pattern, since reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange are not mutually exclusive, and dominance cannot, as a rule, be claimed for any of them (except again, in case of the market system). However, definite branches or levels of the economy, can be often ascribed to one of the patterns,

which may then serve as a frame of reference in regard to that sector. In ancient Israel or in Dahomey, reciprocity prevailed on the village level, while on the nation level the redistributive pattern obtained. Similarly, in the domestic sector of trade, redistribution took care of the movements of imported and exported goods, while in the foreign sector of trade as between the rulers, reciprocity prevailed. Hence for comparative purposes our patterns A, B, and C have a particular significance. We

must aim at comparing corresponding culture traits as they occur under those patterns. For instance, such familiar institutional traits as money, price, or long-distance trade should be compared with broadly corresponding economic culture traits in non-market economies.

Our definition of the economy offers a clue how to proceed. The economic process is conceived as a locational or appropriational movement of things while the institutional integument consists for us of “‘persons in situations’ causing the movements to happen. This should allow the reduction of “economic” traits to a combination of things in movement and persons in situations. The movements of the things can be circumscribed operationally, the situations can be determined | sociologically, thus avoiding such valuational or motivational terms that may be potentially biased by virtue of the associations of the original context. Such a procedure which reduces any phase of the economy to operational and situational terms rests in the last resort on our approach to the

economy as an instituted process. ,

The gist of this formulation was given by Menger himself in his posthumous work. The actual economy, he wrote, consisted of goods that are moving in the process of production and exchange, as well as of persons responsible for putting them in motion, whether their activity be caused by

the insufficiency of the means (economizing direction) or by the requirements of production irrespective of such an insufficiency (techno-economic direction). Goods without persons—persons

without goods, cannot make an economy, he wrote. For persons who are economically active cannot be conceived of in the absence of things to which their activities relate; nor do things by themselves constitute an economy in the absence of persons who are acting in relation to them.

| The two are inseparable constituents of the economy. Menger takes his “order of goods’’-—their distance from consumption—for granted. He can do so, since his definition of the economy is based on the concept of a provision for material want satisfaction, hence materiality enters both into the process of production and exchange, as well as into the situations responsible for the movements of the things on the other hand. When Neo-classical economics was born in 1871, it was developed along the lines of Menger (Grundsdtze, 2nd ed. 1923; Ist ed. 1871). It started from human wants and needs which can be satisfied from scarce resources; it is possible to show through analysis of actions of people dealing with fulfilling these needs, that if a group of people meets and one lot has horses to sell and the

Polanyi] _ TWO MEANINGS OF “ECONOMIC” 21 other wants to buy horses, that a price will emerge at approximately the point at which the desire to buy and the desire to sell overlap as in the now familiar supply and demand curve analyses. Conceptualization of the ‘market process” in this [supply and demand] way was one of the greatest feats of the human mind—showed that price resulted from human activity, and discarded forever the notion that value is intrinsic (deriving from the amount of work expended in making the thing). We have a thorough-going operational definition or viewpoint of price and value. Value

is what somebody is willing to give for something. }

This changed completely our theoretical attitude to what price is and what the economy is. _

What is new here is that price is a subjective affair. Price is, thus, not an attribute of the item but , of the person and of the social relationship. This turns out to be so, even if the price refers to the price of money, land, and labor; and also can be extended to decisions about whether a person will save, or invest, or whether he will spend. Rent, interest, wages—all can be seen in terms of this

formula. No further theory is needed to get a clear understanding of the figures which have emerged in the world economy—this is one of the grandest simplifying theories ever produced.

What becomes important is that there is a network or system of interrelated markets and prices: the system of prices and the system of markets is the theory of economics. Everything else was

super-added to this theory. | Menger himself thought that this theory was not, in fact, capable of answering all of the

questions which were, more or less carelessly, put to it and explained by it. As a result, he never let his book be reprinted or translated because he wanted to find an even more general theory. Menger

intermittently worked on this more general theory for about fifty years. After his death, it was published. In the second edition of the Grundsdtze (1923), he retained his original theory—he _ retained, in fact, every word of the original book—but made a more general theory of the economy

in order that he could make a place for history, anthropology, and sociology. In this second edition, he stated that there are two meanings of ‘‘economy.”

' The reaction of economists was to assume that poor old Menger had not understood his own theory. It was not necessary they felt, to bring in a more general theory in order to understand perfectly all economic activity. The price mechanisms, with the additions to it—those made by

Jevons and the mathematical economists, the restatement of it as the marginal theory of utility—could explain everything. (It is precisely this position that the anthropologist must attack:

he should not try to say that economists are wrong, but only that their theory is not the most general theory. He has been left out in the cold, and he is trying to get back into grace; an economist, Menger, pointed the way to this state of grace, and instead of that the economists have settled for a theory, also Menger’s, which allows them only a pleasant corner outside the gates.)

A second edition of Menger appeared posthumously, which was prepared by his son, the mathematician. When Hayek became the (intellectual) leader of the London School of Economics, '

L. S. E. published not the second, but the first edition of Menger’s work. Hayek wrote an introduction in which he said that some papers of Menger had been left, more or less in confusion (either he did not, thus, know of the existence of the second edition, or else he was claiming that Menger got soft in the head, or else that the son did not know what he was doing in publishing the second edition). Menger was translated, again as principles of economics, in 1950. Frank H. Knight wrote an introduction. There was a footnote explaining the terminology—that footnote said that _ Wirtschaftlich would be translated as “‘economical” (although in the German, the word also has

the meaning of “economic’’—relating to the substantive economy). Knight knew of the posthumous work but he and the translators rejected the second edition in favor of the first on the ground that it was the first edition which influenced economics, and that the second contained

much irrelevant material. | When Menger’s classic of modern economic theory was at long last published in English the

translators decided to use for that purpose the text offered by the first edition of 1871. The second revised edition of 1923, with its text expanded to twice the original length, was passed over

with the briefest of explanations. It is fervently to be hoped that it will not take another seventy-nine years before the English speaking public is enabled to benefit from that posthumous edition of Menger’s ‘Grundsdtze’ with its theoretical anticipations the full significance of which can perhaps be gauged only in our days.

edition. ,

22 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 But let me quote the translators themselves on their reasons for ignoring the text of the second

“The translation presented here,’ they write in their Preface, “‘is a complete rendering of the edition of the Grundsatze which was published in Vienna in 1871. A second German edition was published in Vienna [in 1923], two years after Menger’s death. We rejected the possibility of a © variorum translation because it was the first edition only that influenced the development of economic doctrine, because of the posthumous character of the second edition, and because the numerous differences between the two editions make a variorum translation impractical.” Too much, I feel was here left unsaid. Few men, if any in the long history of human intellectual effort paralleled and none surpassed Menger in his dedication to the unremitting search for the truth, at the risk of self-obliteration. He had refused to permit either a reprint or a translation of the text of the first edition, which he deemed in need of completion; he resigned his chair at the University of Vienna in order to devote himself exclusively to that task; after an effort of fifty years during which he seems to have again and again reverted to the task, he left a manuscript | behind him, which included four fully completed new chapters. At least one of these is of prime theoretical importance for the problems of definition and method that presently exercise the

minds of contemporary scholars in this field. , -

It was mainly after Menger’s death that the influences began to be felt which transcended the economists’ treatment of economics and pointed towards the need for broader terms. Cultural anthropology and primitive economics as represented by Boas or Malinowski, sociology on the lines of Durkheim or Pareto, general economic history as first formulated by Max Weber were more hampered than helped by the “scarcity definition of economics’’—as it came to be called. This was the period when cultural anthropologists excelled in discovering economic institutions of ‘strikingly “‘anti-economic” character such as the potlatch, the kula trade, or the matrimonial finance of the Manus Islanders. Even a rationalist and utilitarian like Pareto indulged in the construction of “irrational”? residues as the roots of history; and Max Weber, who in economics strictly followed Menger and Mises, devoted a decade to tracing the religious origins of business ~ ethics from Confucian China to Benjamin Franklin’s America. Yet what then appeared as a paradox, was no more than the incessant confusion of the two meanings of “‘economic,”’ the one appropriate to the discipline of economic analysis, the other to the other social sciences. In his second edition Menger extended the range of inquiry so as to comprise the facts of anthropology, sociology, and economic history. Theoretically, this required a system of wants and needs, which would permit a distinction between man’s physiological requirements, and the —

cultural definition of those requirements in terms of needs; a distinction between definite consumer’s goods and the variety of combinations of different goods of higher order which according to the state of technological skill, might serve to produce them; and above all, a distinction between the economy as the sphere of man’s livelihood, and the different forms of

integration through which the economy as a unit was institutionalized. | , It is easy to see that the expansion of the Grundasdtze (was made) so as to make room for a theory of wants and needs; for the “‘distinctive determination” of modes of production, but more than anything else for the purpose of providing a definition of the ‘““economy” which would satisfy the requirements of the social sciences dealing with the economy in general without sacrificing the

criteria of an economy instituted through a competitive market system. } It is at this point that the achievement of the posthumous edition of 1923 becomes strikingly apparent. Take Lionel Robbins’ well-known popularization of the scarcity definition as an example. Robbins wrote: “Scarcity of means to satisfy ends of varying importance is an almost [my italics, K. P.] ubiquitous condition of human behavior’ (p. 15). And accordingly he concluded: ‘‘In the light of all that has been said the nature of economic analysis should now be plain. It consists of deductions from a series of postulates, the chief of which are almost [my italics, K. P.] universal facts of experience present whenever human activity has an economic aspect ...’’ Menger, who also noted the fact that scarcity “almost” overlapped with the economy, drew from this lack of complete congruity the opposite conclusion, namely, that the scarcity meaning of economic, could not be universalized so as to cover the phenomenon of human livelihood in general. What seemed to Robbins a negligible quantity, appeared in this way to

Polanyi] _ TWO MEANINGS OF “ECONOMIC” 23 Menger as indisputable evidence for the need of a substantive as against a formal meaning of ‘economic.’ Instead of compounding as Robbins did, the scarcity and the subsistence meaning into one universally applicable concept of the economy, Menger, on the contrary, constructed a comprehensive definition of “economic” which while leaving room for both meanings, would permit them to be related to one another according to the empirical conditions which caused them to be present. : The crucial sentence of Robbins’ argument admits the presence of a gap, which it nevertheless

fails to bridge. Menger noted the gap, and accounted for it by the two meanings of economic _ which he calls ‘“‘the two elemental directions of the human economy.” Robbins proceeds to ignore

the consequences of the gap, and produced a definition of economic exclusively suited to the - needs of [formal] economic analysis. Menger’s superior precision eventually created a concept of the human economy, which can be consistently applied in all social sciences that treat of the economy including economic analysis itself. APPENDIX .

Robbins |

The quotations given below are from Menger’s Grundsdtze, second edition (posthumous) of 1923, as translated from the German original. Robbins’ Nature and Significance of Economic Science, second edition, revised and extended

1935, reprinted 1946. |

Ch. I, Sect. 3, “The Scarcity Definition of Economics”

(1) p. 15. “Searcity of means to satisfy ends of varied importance is an almost [my italics}

ubiquitous condition of human behavior.” Ch. IV, Sect. 7, “Statics and Dynamics”’

- (2) p. 99. “In the light of all that has been said the nature of economic analysis should now be plain. It consists of deductions from a series of postulates, the chief of which are almost [my italics] universal factors of experience present whenever human activity has an economic

aspect..." Menger . oe -. | ;

Ch. IV, Sect. (c), “The two elemental directions of the human economy” (1) p. 77. “I shall designate the two directions in which the human economy may point—the

technical and the economizing—as elemental, for this reason. Although in the actual economy these two directions as presented in the two previous sections’ occur as a rule [my italics] together, and indeed almost [my italics] never found separately, they nevertheless spring from essentially different and mutually independent sources [Mengeyr’s italics]. In

some fields of economic activity the two occur, in fact, separately, and in some not , inconceivable types of economies either of them may in fact regularly appear without the other ... The two directions in which the human economy may point are not mutually dependent upon one another; both are primary and elemental. Their regular joint occurrence in the actual economy results merely from the circumstance that the causative factors that give rise to each of them almost [my italics] without exception happen to coincide.”’

“The particular directions in which man’s economic endeavors, under the invariably determinative influence of actual circumstances, seek a vent, derive from the one or from the other of these elemental directions, if not, as usually [my italics], from their conjunction.

Accordingly, the particular endeavors are :merely variations or manifestations of those elemental directions or a combination of the two [my italics]**

Ch. IV, Sect. 1, “On the Economy and Economic Goods”’ a (2) p. 60. “Thus every actual economy has a subjective and an objective side to it. Under the subjective aspect the economy represents an allocation of the goods that are immediately available to a person, who thus imparts to them a definite direction and a destination aimed at providing for his ultimate requirements. Under its objective aspect, on the other hand, the economy represents an aggregate of the available goods themselves as engaged in the actual - movements induced by the allocative acts. The subject may be a single person or a group of

24 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 persons; the goods may be available by virtue of the natural or of the social situation; the goods shall be understood to include labor services; whether the person’s own or those belonging to others; the allocation itself may be for use in technological production or use in exchange.”’

NOTES

Polanyi Levitt. Ed. .

‘These drafts were written in 1958 and 1960, soon after the publication of Trade and Market in the Karly Empires (1957). They are published here by permission of Ilona Polanyi and Kari * Modern readers might mistake Menger’s “‘technical’’ or ‘“‘techno-economic” for “technological.”

The latter, as Menger was the first to recognize, was in its purpose altogether different from the economy. The economy is limited to providing for the means of want satisfaction, whether by economizing or by production. Technology as such is a sphere of activity not necessarily aimed at any purpose of this kind, but may include scientific or military purposes or be enjoyed for its own sake, according to Menger. * Italics in the original, translation mine, K. P.

*The formal and the substantive meanings of “economic” as previously developed by the author contrasted “‘economizing’’ with ‘‘material.’’ This latter meaning is common to all the ‘“‘subdisciplines’’ of the social sciences grouped above, as economic. In speaking of the economic process, we are referring therefore to the substantive meaning of “economic.”’ In brief, the

institutional approach to the economy implies the substantive meaning of ‘‘economic’”’ which thus

becomes a stepping-stone towards the definition of the economy as given here. (See Trade and

Market in the Early Empires, Ch. XIII.) > Menger himself seems to have held that economizing attitudes involve utilitarian value scales in

a sense which we should regard today as an undue limitation of the logic of the ends-means relationship. This may have been one of the reasons why he hesitated to embark on any theory other than that of ‘“‘advanced’”’ countries where such value scales could be assumed.

° Menger uses several words to designate these ‘“‘backward’’ economies: zuruckgeblieben, unzivilisiert, unentwickelt.

’The first of the sections bears the title: ‘The technico-economic allocation.” The second is entitled: ‘‘The saving or economizing of the human economy as induced by insufficiency of the

available means.”’

2|-

ae Monetization, Commercialization,

| Market Orientation, and Market Dependence’

WALTER C. NEALE | UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE . | IN THE LITERATURE and in discussions of social and economic change in tribal and peasant economies there is frequent use of contrasts: monetized versus non-monetized; commercial agriculture versus subsistence agriculture; market oriented or price sensitive versus subsistence oriented, price insensitive, or “‘traditional.” For many purposes—as first approximations—the contrasts were once satisfactory and opened up areas for research and debate from which we have learned much about differences between economies. But the contrasts have led, and I fear are increasingly leading, to confusions. There is in each an implicit polarity. To say that there are intermediate cases does not save the situation because the intermediate cases become, in the logic of the phrasing, points between the poles and not cases defined in terms of “third or fourth poles” or other characteristics as well. In addition, there has been a strong tendency to use the phrases as substitutes or synonyms, reinforcing the implicit polarity.

This paper tries to point up some of the confusions and suggest that there are ways in which | one could use the terms ‘‘monetized,”’ “commercialized,” market oriented,” and ‘market .

dependent” so that, confusion is less likely. —

My propositions are: (1) that the use of money does not mean that the society has become “commercialized,” nor does it even tell us the kinds of transactions in which money is used; and (2) that commercialization of some kinds of economic activity does not mean that all, or even the — “most important”? economic activities, are highly sensitive to market prices—that is, are “‘market

dependent.’”” oe I start my defining and the reasoning lying behind it with commercialization. One hundred and more years ago the gentlemen who ran Victoria’s empire often used the phrase, ‘““The Commercial

Principle.” Included in its range of meaning was something much like our present day use of

“maximizing.” But it was more restricted—and therefore far more operational—than “maximizing,” for by it they meant that the maximizing was done in terms of money or money flows. The Principle, in its narrowest, Survival sense, was: that the inflow of money receipts must exceed the outflow of money costs. In its broader sense it meant: that the commercial person tried to achieve the largest possible spread between his money receipts and his money costs, i.e., the largest possible profits. One can only make arithmetic statements about gain or profitability or rate of return if there is a numeraire in which one can express the beneficial inflows and the costly or undesired outflows; and the numeraire which we have, and have had, is money. A commercial operation, then, is one in which the Restraint or Limit is the Rule of Survival:

thou shalt take in more money than thou payest out; and one in which the Objective or the Measure of Success is the Rule of Profit: thou shalt so arrange operations that the difference

25 ;

between the inflow of money and the outflow of money cannot be made bigger.

A thoroughly commercialized operation is one in which all of the inputs into the operation must be paid for in money and.in which the only source of benefits, in the first instance at least, is the money received from the sale of the outputs of the operation.

26 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 It is true that many businesses and employments in a society are not run to maximize profits by the stringent Rule of Profit: that people are consumers as well as producers, husbands as well as consumers, biological organisms as well as thinkers-choosers, and that consequently money inflows

will not always be as large as they might, outlays as small as they might; that we are not ., completely driven by the proverbial irrational passion for dispassionate rationality. The pleasures and gains derived from these other roles (economists call them “‘psychic income’’) may be deeply felt, and achieving these pleasures may alter the monetary amount of the producer’s surplus. They — may also be suitable bases for rational decision-making. But they are not commercialized. Only ~

operation is to survive. :

when these pleasures are paid for in money must at least that much money be received if the Two relationships between commercialization and market orientation and monetization are clear, in this usage of the terms. (1) When activities are completely commercialized, the operation must be oriented toward the market, toward the prices of the inputs and the prices of the outputs. In fact, if thoroughly commercialized the operation must be dependent on the market, and until the problem of assuring greater receipts than costs is solved, no other considerations can weigh with the decision-maker. When these circumstances obtain, many of the actions of the operation can be explained—can be predicted—from a knowledge of the decision-maker’s knowledge and beliefs about current and future relative prices of inputs and relative prices of possible alternative outputs. (2) Commercialization can occur only when the activities involved are monetized. Without monetization there can be “implicit price ratios’ or “shadow prices’? computable from actual behavior after the event, but there can be no Rule of Survival, for what might be a penal price in a commercial situation becomes only a different, peculiar, or unexpected—but not limiting—implicit price. This is made clear in Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s discussion of peasant economies and : feudal economies, where an implicit wage of zero—from the decision-maker’s point of view—is not only possible but even likely. This occurs when the labor of the servile population (serf servile to the lord, son of the peasant servile to the peasant) has no money cost to the decision-maker (1960). This Roegen case, which corresponds closely to Hla Myint’s description of the early stages of commercialization of peasant agriculture (1965:23-52), is typical of African situations. There is partial commercialization, but the commercialization has occurred most largely on the sale or receipts side, while many costs remain unmonetized. In the case of some food crops there are commercial sales of some but not all the crop by a farmer or farming group; in the cases of other crops there is sale of the entire crop, and hence in common usage one calls it (and for many purposes quite justifiably) a “commercial” or “cash” crop. Certainly it is a cash crop; and it is srown for purposes of sale for money. But whether a crop sold only in part or a crop sold entirely, | only a portion of the technically necessary inputs require an outlay of cash.? Much labor, often = seeds or seedlings, first stage storage facilities, first stage transportation—all these are found within the family or group without outlay of cash. It is in this respect that one can say that the activities are incompletely commercialized. And, in so far as incompletely commercialized, the activities are not dependent on the market, although they will be “‘oriented toward the market” in | the specific sense that they will be oriented toward ‘‘some markets” but not others. Given a choice between two salable outputs, and given few cash costs involved in producing either output, then

the peasant is surely likely to be ‘“‘oriented toward” the two product markets, and will be responsive to prices in the two: that is, will choose to produce that crop which will bring him the

. greater receipts, and, with few monetized costs, therefore the larger income. In fact, it is difficult to conceive of any other pattern of response being the case: it would imply that the peasant was mad—for why else would he be producing a crop for sale? But unless the farmer has committed most of his land to the production of a cash crop he is not dependent on the market, although his happiness may be importantly influenced by the prices on that market and therefore by the income he receives. But as a continuing farm operation—a “‘going concern”’—he will survive the worst if he also produces his foodstuffs, and can, year after year, return to the market.

This at least partial independence of the market is assured by two characteristics of the situation. One, just mentioned, is the fall-back position provided by food crop production. The other is the absence of money costs in the production of the cash crops. And because there is an

-— Neale] COMMERCIALIZATION AND MARKET DEPENDENCE . 27 absence of dependence on purchased inputs, the peasant farmer is not oriented toward input markets: in many cases he is not oriented toward a wage labor market, often not to a commercial - eredit market, nor to a fertilizer or pesticide market. Thus the dichotomy ‘‘market oriented”’ versus ‘‘subsistence oriented”’ or “‘traditional’’ does not serve to explain but to confuse. For the peasant in the situations mentioned is “‘market oriented’ in some respects, toward some markets, but not toward others. ”

It would indeed be difficult to state the ‘“‘degree of market orientation” because it would be difficult to attach meaning to units of measurement on the axis between the poles. Is the farmer

who puts one-half his land in cash crops which are sold and one-half in food crops which are | consumed at home fifty percent market oriented? Or, has he considered the risks of price fluctuations and decided that business prudence requires an “insurance reserve’ of food crops, and is he therefore one hundred percent market oriented? Or has he a view of himself which requires him, willy-nilly whatever happens, to grow food sufficient for the sustenance of his group, but no more? In which case, could we not say that he is ninety percent subsistence oriented, but having satisfied this ninety percent passion, he spends fifty percent of his time (or land) satisfying the ten percent market interest? I suggest that the appropriate lesson is this: that we do not classify a person or group, or people _ working at a task, as market oriented or price sensitive, or vice-versa; but rather, that we specify the respects, in each particular case under study or discussion, in which the people are oriented to or sensitive to what specific markets and what specific relative prices. Thus studies “‘proving”’ that peasant farmers who produce for sale are “economically oriented”’ often seem to be “‘proving” what they have virtually defined as true: for, as I asked above, how can one conceive of a farmer producing for sale on a market who is not interested in—not sensitive to or oriented toward—the

prices on that and alternative markets? The questions to be asked in cases of partial commercialization are about the circumstances, the restraints, and the encouragements which lead -the farmer to commit some of his time and land to an interest in cash crops and prices and some to non-commercial farming; about the consequences of his behavior on himself, on nis group, and on

others; and about the consequences of changes in the circumstances in which he undertakes activities—such as, for instance, the degree of monetization in the processes of acquiring inputs. Anyone producing for sale is oriented toward the markets in which he does or may sell. What

‘becomes important in predicting the actions of such producers is a knowledge of the ways in

which they are dependent upon what markets, for making some money or for staying in

production at all. 7

Monetization is a necessary condition of commercialization, but it is not a sufficient condition. )

The existence of an identifiable money, the uses of moneys in some particular way or ways, does

not mean that activities are commercialized. To suggest some illustrations: most if not all American five-year-olds are monetized, that is, they want money; they want money to spend; they just want money; they will beg for it; they will snitch it; they will empty wastebaskets for it; they will brag about it; they will moan about it. But they do not acquire it by producing goods for sale on a market; they do not purchase the inputs with which they will acquire their money receipts.

And when they go into the business of running a lemonade stand, they exhibit a degree of commercial competence only slightly larger than that of a Yerkes chimpanzee. Another example: some of our criminal law and much of our civil law is monetized; fines are levied, restitution is made in money. But (except for truckers speeding on highways) these actions |

(or compliances) are not oriented toward relative output prices or relative prices of necessary inputs. (What sort of a question is: Does the rational speeder go to Kentucky or to Utah to do his dangerous driving? Or what kind of a question is: What combination of least cost means does the

negligent householder use to break the milkman’s leg?) oo, | Still other examples are the use of money in bridewealth or blood-feud or dowry. These cases do require ‘“‘wealth.”’ Obviously if one is to give money one must have it; just as, if I am to offer

you a second helping of peas at my dinner table, I must have the peas there. But the money involved in the examples need not have been gotten as proceeds of a sale made on a market, nor have required the outlay of cash costs. Inheritance, raiding, previous acquisition in earlier instances of bridewealth, blood-feud, or dowry can provide the wealth.

28 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 Although monetization, while a necessary condition, is not a sufficient condition of commercialization, it does open up opportunities and temptations. Monetization makes it possible to compare otherwise unlike events—oranges and apples, bridewealth and fertilizers. It creates opportunities (or temptations) to engage in commercial activities in respect of those things which

have become monetized and are salable outputs and to acquire things which have become monetized and are useful inputs into a process of production for sale." I have now come full circle back to my original problem and the propositions which stemmed from it: Monetized does not necessarily imply Commercialized. Cash Cropping implies no more than considered interest in the prices received. It implies a Commercialized agriculture only when the techniques of production, and the choice of crops and markets, depend upon relative output prices or relative input prices in such a way that following the Rule of Survival—Receive more than thou payest—becomes operationally (as well as formally or psychologically) necessary to the continuation of the operation. Commercialization necessarily implies an interest in markets and prices but does not necessarily imply a dependence on markets and prices. Dependence does not occur unless all (or nearly all) the productive activities of the man or people being analyzed are designed to result in sales and unless or until the productive activities would have to cease under

some plausibly possible conditions of price or costs or plausibly possible choices about

combinations of inputs or salable outputs. . Polarizations of commercial or market oriented or price sensitive or monetized versus

subsistence or non-monetized or price insensitive or “‘traditional’’ are only too likely to cause confusion, either in discussion or analysis, because they tend to disguise—to induce us by their silence to overlook—the multiplicity of combinations of monetization, commercialization, specific markets and their structures, and the priorities attached to other duties or ways of organizing activities. We would, I suggest, be clearer if we restricted ourselves to using Monetized when transactions involve money, always aware that there are no necessary implications about specific uses of the money or specific consequences of monetization. It would also be helpful to restrict ourselves to using Commercialized when the continuation of the operation depends immediately upon conscious choices which could be predicted from a knowledge of the relative prices of inputs and outputs and when mistakes would lead to a violation of the Rule of Survival; to drop Market Orientation as a meaningful causative variable since it says no more than that people buying or selling in markets are quite naturally interested in what happens in those markets; and to use Market Dependent when appropriate, specifying the respects in which the people do depend on

markets. NOTES

‘An earlier draft of this paper was delivered to the Panel on ‘“‘Theory in African Rural Development”’ at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Diego, California, November 20, 1970. *«Most important” is here defined either in terms of a proportion of total economic activity,

measured somehow; or in terms of the priorities of the participants, i.e., which activity is maintained longest in the face of pressures to drop one or the other. >Here, of course, I recognize that every productive process uses inputs which are not paid for—climate, air, sunlight, the kind attention of the executive’s wife—but I am assuming the legitimacy of a comparison with more commercialized societies, namely, the North Atlantic ones which most thoroughly developed the commercial system. * For a case study to the point, I can do no better than recommend Paul and Laura Bohannan, Tiv Economy (1968), especially Chapters 16 and 17, where the effects of monetization and the restraints upon monetization in causing commercialization are both dealt with.

: REFERENCES CITED Bohannan, Paul, and Laura Bohannan 1968 Tiv Economy. London: Longmans, Green.

Neale ] COMMERCIALIZATION AND MARKET DEPENDENCE . 29 Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas

1960 Economic Theory and Agrarian Economics. Oxford Economic Papers 12:1-40.

Reprinted in Analytical Economics, pp. 359-397. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Myint, Hla 1965 The Economics of the Developing Countries. New York: Praeger.

PART Il TRADITIONAL ECONOMIES

5)

The Intensity of Domestic Production in Primitive Societies: ~

Social Inflections of the Chayanov Slope’ MARSHALL SAHLINS

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 7 GIVEN AN ECONOMY of domestic production for use, theory says that the intensity of labor will vary inversely to the proportion of workers in the household. Or, to phrase the rule directly, the greater the relative number of consumers, the more each producer will have to work to provide

an acceptable per capita output for the household as a whole. The theory in question was developed principally by A. V. Chayanov (1966). Fact, however, always presents exceptions to Chayanov’s rule, and not simply as chance variations. In its own right, the overall social structure of the primitive community does not envision a Chayanov slope of domestic economic intensity. Kinship and political relations between households—and the dispositions of goods in others’ favor these relations entail—will impel production above simple domestic welfare in certain houses in a position to do so. The social system effects a specific inflection of household labor intensity, departing in a characteristic way and extent from the Chayanov line of production for livelihood. In the event, by this deviation, it becomes possible for the ethnographer to determine, measure and compare social curves of domestic production. That is to say, it becomes possible to conceive a truly anthropological economics. PRODUCTION FOR USE/PRODUCTION FOR EXCHANGE

Some of the earliest anthropological writing on primitive economies, however, interred the

household economy, and with it the classic distinction between production for use versus production for exchange, in the graveyard of prehistoric concepts. Nothing could prevent the later reincarnation of the idea in various ethnographic guises.” But when Malinowski formulated his “Tribal Economy” by opposition to C. Bucher’s “Independent Domestic Economy,” the latter was effectively put aside before its theoretical usefulness had been exhausted (Malinowski 1921). Perhaps the problem was that such conceptions as “‘production for use’”’ or “independent domestic economy” could be interpreted two different ways, one of which proved untenable so the other was then ignored. Compressed in a simple phrase, the formula would suggest domestic autarky, a condition of self-sufficiency untrue of the producing units of any empirical society. Certainly the households of primitive communities do not themselves produce all they consume.

Certainly there is exchange. Quite apart from the usual reciprocity and customary social prestations, the people may work for a frankly utilitarian trade, thus indirectly getting what they require. Still it is ‘““what they require’: the exchange, and the production for it, are geared to livelihood not profits. This is a second rendering of “‘production for use,” and the more fundamental. More

fundamental than a certain exchange is the producer’s relation to the productive process. Two radically different economic objectives are at issue: the provision of goods useful to the producers, whether or not this is mediated by exchange, as opposed to the acquisition of wealth. The first

30 | |

remains a quest of use-values, the second aims singularly at exchange-values.

The most famous discussion of this venerable distinction in fact takes as its example of

production for use an economy dependent on exchange. But it was precisely by its commitment to

Sahlins] INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION . 31 livelihood that Marx could contrast the “simple circulation of commodities’’ to the structure and movement of capitalist accumulation (1967a[1867]:146f). In the well-known formula of simple circulation, C-M-C’, the producer’s interest in consumption continues to govern the level of output, even across the act of exchange. For simple circulation is selling in order to buy: the money realized from the disposal of an original commodity-product (C>M) becomes the means of acquiring another object directly of use (M>C’). Hence production is limited, apt to be suspended at a point equivalent to the exchange-value of customary necessities. This “‘simple circulation”’ is

of course more pertinent to peasant marketing of crafts or food surpluses than to the run of transactions in primitive societies. Yet insofar as both submit production to the livelihood of the , producers, the two are alike—and similarly opposed to the capitalist process. The latter has a ,

different starting-point and another calculus. The “general formula for capital’ is the transformation of a given money-sum into more of the same by way of the commodity: M- C-M’, the engagement of labor power and technical means for the production of a good (M>C) whose sale realizes the highest possible return on an initial capital (C>M’). Unlike simple circulation,

moreover, this cycle is cumulative. Subject always to withdrawal of the end-product by | consumption, a simple circulation of commodities can only repeat itself from zero; but the product of an initial multiplication of capital becomes the base for a new and expanded cycle of

the same general form (M-C- cy The classic distinction speaks thus to a difference in the economic dynamic. Livelihood and gain, “production for use” and ‘‘production for exchange”’ pose contrasting finalities of production—and accordingly, contrasting intensities of production.* It is essentially a difference in quality of the objective, from which follows the difference in quantity of the performance. Even the opposition use-value/exchange-value, by its common invocation of “‘value’’ tends rather to conceal the disparity in the economic projet. Livelihood and wealth are incommensurables. Production for use envisions concrete objects defined in the terms of a customary existence. It is the production of specific goods standing in determinate relations to the producers—things that “satisfy their needs’ as we commonly (if loosely) say. And as in the instance of certain famous bees, such contentment then proves the bane of industry: admiring their ‘“‘homely store,” they ‘“‘neither seek nor covet more.” That is to say, work in such a system has unique possibilities of knowing a term. Economic activity may cease for the time-being when livelihood has been achieved for the time-being. Production for use is discontinuous and on the whole sparing of labor-power. But production for exchange (-value) is as endless as its end is without substance. Where the domestic economy is content merely to renew itself, this other would perpetually exceed itself—in the accumulation of an abstract and universal ‘‘wealth.’’ Such wealth-in-general satisfies no need in particular; on the contrary, the pursuit of wealth creates all kinds of needs to satisfy itself. How sublime, Marx said, seems the ancient conception that made man the objective of production, in comparison with a modern world where production is the objective of man, and wealth the objective of production (1967b[1857-58 |1:450, cf. 159f). - The older conception was an unintensive domestic economy. Consider Douglas Oliver’s excellent observations on Siuai work habits. In this Melanesian community, women do much of the gardening, but they do not normally exhaust themselves at it. Their work is subject rather to all manner of interruption, from heavy ritual to light rainfall, from the mourning taboo deemed

compelling to local definitions of inclement weather manifestly short of a human capacity for : discomfort (1949[3]:16). In the upshot, the intensity of labor is considerably short both of available labor-power and of disposable resources. Neither land, which is not scarce, nor labor, which is not sustained as among other Papuan women, are exploited by Siuai at levels near the © indigenous capacity. That there is a higher capacity is indeed disclosed by the efforts of some few, ‘“‘the most ambitious and enterprising,’ as Oliver indicates, who alone will toil the day and stay the night in their gardens to increase production. The others seem more like those Kapauku described by Pospisil who follow in agriculture a golden mean, moderation in such things, so that for every day of work they insist on an equal period of rest (1963:145). The exception noted by Oliver, a political fact, is a key to the interpretations of Chayanov that follow. But in the meantime, what are we to make of the general rule? While no anthropologist today would concede the imperialist ideology that the “‘natives are

congenitally lazy,’ and almost all could testify rather that the people are capable of sustained

32 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 labor, probably most would also observe that the motivation to do so is not constant, so that work

is in fact irregular, at the least for one or the other sex, over the longer or the shorter term. Perhaps most of us, too, are capable of a relativist complicity with indigenous practice. After all, a diversion of energies from production to ritual, for example, must be effected without prejudice by Tikopians and other Polynesians whose linguistic categories make no such distinctions, but consider both activities sufficiently vital as to merit a common term—thus the “‘work”’ of the

Gods. Yet it may be insufficient simply to grant that production is vulnerable to legitimate interference, that is, to suspension in favor of other obligations or inclinations, themselves “non-economic” but not by that token unworthy of the people’s respect. These other claims—of ceremony, diversion, sociability, or repose—are in a way the complement, the superstructural

counterpart of a movement proper to the economy. They are not simply imposed upon the economy from without. There is within, in the way production is organized, an intrinsic discontinuity. The economy has its own cut-off principle; it is an economy of finite objectives. Thus in another context, Oliver explains more fundamentally just why Siuai working standards | are so modest—because, except for the politically ambitious, they are sufficient. “As a matter of.

fact,’ he wrote, “natives took pride in their ability to estimate their immediate personal consumption needs, and to produce just enough taro to satisfy them” (1949[4]:89). Production has its own contraints. If these are sometimes manifest in the deployment of labor-power to other ends, it should not be thus deemed sufficient by the analysis. Sometimes it is not even disguised thus to the observation: as of certain hunters, who become once again the revelatory case because

they seem to need no other excuse to stop working once they have gotten enough to eat (cf. McCarthy and MacArthur 1960:92; Woodburn 1968:51, 53; Sahlins 1968). This intermittency of the domestic economy can be thought of in another way. From the point of view of the existing mode of production, and interesting fraction of the available labor-power is excess. The social conception of livelihood does not press upon the domestic supply of labor. And

perfectly capable:

the system, having thus defined sufficiency, need not then realize the surplus of which it is

There is no doubt at all that the Kuikuru could produce a surplus of food over the full

productive cycle. At the present time a man spends only about 3% hours a day on

subsistence—2 hours on horticulture, and 1% hours on fishing. Of the remaining 10 or 12 waking hours of the day the Kuikuru men spend a great deal of it dancing, wrestling, in some form of informal recreation, and in loafing. A good deal more of this time could easily be devoted to gardening. Even an extra half hour a day spent on agriculture would enable a man | to produce a substantial surplus of manioc. However, as conditions stand now there is no reason for the Kuikuru to produce such a surplus, nor is there any indication that they will

(Carneiro 1968[1961 ]:134). . CHAYANOV’S RULE

The intensity of the.domestic mode of production (DMP) is limited not only absolutely but in relation to the society’s own potential. And the limitation consists not only in a certain irregular movement but in a differentiated structure of household production. The reduction in intensity of labor will appear particularly in domestic groups of the greatest relative working capacity.

This effect could be deduced theoretically, but it is first of all an empirical observation developed by A. V. Chayanov and his co-workers from extensive research on Russian agriculture of

the immediate pre-revolutionary period. Once again our argument, although it would address primitive communities, passes by way of peasants. But then, a simple circulation of commodities may offer unique tactical advantages for the comprehension of the DMP: the appearance of the system in a peasant context may more nearly approximate its deeper reality. Oriented each to the market, the accumulation for which is won at the expense of sharing among themselves, peasant households may appear as the so many potatoes in a certain well known sack of potatoes. The system is socially fragmented and segmented economically at the household level. At base matters are often the same in primitive society. But there the homebred self-concern of domestic groups is — sublimated by extensive kinship, perhaps also chieftainship, hence compromised by some interest in others’ welfare. In the event, household production is likely to deviate more from the norm of

livelihood: the structure of output that stands forth in the peasant case is in primitive society

Sahlins | INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION . 33 TABLE 1. DISTRIBUTION OF PEASANT LABOR BY SECTOR IN THREE AREAS OF CZARIST RUSSIA

. (AFTER CHAYANOV 1966:74, N NOT GIVEN) *

Percentage of Working-Time in

Crafts Total “Unused

District Agriculture and “productive Housework time’’ Festivalst trades labor’’

Vologda Uezd

(Vologda Guberniya) 24.7 18.1 42.8 4.4 33.8 19.8

Volokolamsk Uezd / (Moscow Guberniya) 28.6 8.2 © 36.8 43.2 20.0 Starobel ’sk Uezd i

(Khar’kov Guberniya 23.6 4.4 28.0 3.0 42.0 27.0 *It is regrettable that many of Chayanov’s tables, fashioned in the main from reports of Czarist agricultural inspectors, lack the kinds of precision modern study considers indispensable, such as description of the sample, operational definitions of the categories employed, etc. +The figures of this column envoke Lafargue’s critique of the bourgois revolution: “Under the Ancien Régime,

. the laws of the Church guaranteed the laborer ninety rest days, fifty-two Sundays and thirty-eight holidays, during which he was strictly forbidden to work. This was the great crime of Catholicism, the principal cause of the irreligion of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie: under the revolution, when once it was in the saddle, it abolished all holidays and replaced the week of seven days by that of ten, in order that the people might no longer have more than one rest day out of 10. It emancipated the laborers from the yoke of the Church in order better to subjugate them under the yoke of work’’ (1909[1883] :32n).

overlaid and transfigured. It seems no accident that the basic laws of domestic economy were first revealed by peasant studies. —

Chayanov’s point of departure, as it would apply just as well to the Siuai or Kuikuru as to Russian peasants, indeed suggests we have to do with phenomena of the same general order: ‘‘In the family farm,” he wrote, “‘rates of labor intensity are considerably lower than if labor were fully utilized. In all areas investigated, farm families possess considerable stocks of unused time”? (1966:75-76). Chayanov adduces several tables in point, of which Table 1 may serve as illustration. But Chayanov passed beyond the mere observation of a general underuse of manpower. He investigated more closely the variation in labor-intensity by household. Referring especially to a field study of his own among twenty-five Volokolamsk farm-families, he showed, first, that these differences are remarkable in scale: within the same community, a threefold range of variation, from 78.8 working days/worker/year in the least industrious household to 216.0 days/worker in the most industrious. (The mean was 131.8/worker/year, the median 125.8.) Secondly, and most revealing, Chayanov plotted these household differences in labor-intensity against variations in relative working capacity, figuring the latter as the domestic proportion of consumers to workers (c/w). A ratio of household size to effective manpower (dependency ratio), the c/w proportion provides an index of domestic economic strength in relation to its appointed tasks of livelihood. The relative working capacity of the domestic group can be understood to decrease as the c/w index increases—in principle from the base of 1.0, where all consumers are also full workers. Chayanov found that the intensity of labor per worker accordingly increases, i.e., in relation to the

domestic proportion of consumers (Table 2). ,

Chayanov’s demonstration might seem a superfluous refinement of the obvious—particularly if the domestic economy of limited objectives is taken for granted. All that it says statistically is what one would then expect logically, viz., given some social conception of domestic welfare, the smaller the proportion of workers in the household the more each will work, and the greater the relative number of workers the less each works. Phrased more broadly, however, and in a way that

ignores the finality of the DMP except by the implicit invitation to comparison with other economies, Chayanov’s rule suddenly seems magnified several theoretical powers. It holds that ina

system of domestic economy, the intensity of labor varies inversely to the relative working capacity of the producing unit.

34 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY » [AS7 TABLE 2. INTENSITY OF WORK BY HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION: 25 VOLOKOLAMSK FAMILIES

(AFTER CHAYANOV 1966:78)* |

consumers/worker 1.01-1.20 1.21-1.40 1.41-1.60 1.61+

working-days/worker/ year (by household) | 98.3 | 102.3 157.2 161.3 | *See also Chayanov 1966:78 for a similar table, covering several regions, where intensity, however, is

measured by rubles of output rather than man-days of work.

Productive intensity is inversely related to productive capacity. This rule of Chayanov’s, derived

_ from experience, sustains understandings of the DMP available otherwise only to theoretical speculation. It affirms, for one, that the social norm of livelihood is not adapted to maximum household efficiency, but set rather within reach of the less-effective majority. The system is prepared—designed—to sacrifice a certain economic potential in its most effective units. Said another way, the DMP is a constituted anti-surplus system. Still, to be able to detect this in the data is a generous concession made by reality to theory. No real society could show a strict Chayanov effect in household production, any more than its households remain indifferent to larger social and economic considerations and devoted singularly to their private welfare. Even

Chayanov’s own observations do not show a consistent and proportionate variation in labor-intensity over the entire range of household differences in composition (Table 2). The Chayanov rule, if it is to be taken as a first principle of domestic production for use, needs a more rigorous formulation than ever any society could give it.

Situated in the deeper structure of economy, the rule has to be projected from a domestic production unimpeded by the larger institutions of society. It is in effect the theoretical law of

domestic economy, the movement proper to domestic production for use, free from the resistances of the social atmosphere. The slope of intensity described by such a law would represent the variation in domestic labor necessary to supply each household with the customary livelihood, supposing each were left to provision itself. For Chayanov’s rule is meaningful to the

extent that domestic production is geared to definite ideas of livelihood, but in that event it cannot admit just any inflection of intensity by household composition. In principle, intensity per worker must increase by the (labor) equivalent of the per-capita consumption quota for every increase of 1.00 in the domestic ratio of consumers to producers. The law, then, is I=k(c/w), where

‘“T” is intensity, ‘‘k’? the average social labor required to maintain one person at normal consumption, and “‘c/w” the dependency ratio. This is the rule of Chayanov precisely stated, the intensity-function that corresponds theoretically to domestic production for use—as the pattern of deviation from it will correspond to the real order of society. ON A METHOD FOR INVESTIGATING THE

“SOCIAL PROFILE OF DOMESTIC PRODUCTION | The pattern of domestic variation in production is a realization on the economic plane of the general structure of the society. Specifically my argument is that the nexus of kinship, alliance and politics materializes as a characteristic deviation from the Chayanov slope of domestic intensity. There follow several modest examples, principally from the Gwembe Tonga of Rhodesia, the Kapauku and the Maring of New Guinea, designed to show that such deviations can be plotted graphically and calculated numerically. With a few quantitative data of a kind often not difficult

to collect in the field, it is possible to determine a production profile for the community of households, profile that notably indicates the amount and distribution of surplus labor. Indeed, to judge from references to the average household output in published ethnographic accounts, a great deal of the necessary data is already on hand. But it is not customarily reported. Perhaps we are too used to thinking the economic fact as a “‘culture trait,’’ so adequately described in terms of a

central tendency. For a fuller analysis, everything depends on the variations in household production. Thus the main hope of this essay is not so much to prove a point of theory as to suggest a possibility of ethnography.

Sahlins] _ INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION 35 This possibility, however, has its limits. The analysis will be restricted to primitive economies, ignoring the “simple commodity circulation” of peasants. The peasant articulation to the market, or more generally the enclavement in a greater polity alien to the village and counterposed to the.

internal disposition of its resources, introduces considerations of another order in peasant economy even as it precludes the kinds of social order common to primitive communities. Subject to a comparative social disengagement of the household, and perhaps to severe differences in access to land, peasant societies seem likely to present an entirely different family of production

curves. On the other hand, our analysis should hold broadly within the primitive sphere, and quite , across the great variety of household systems, so long as there are determinate domestic groups

producing for use. Certain difficulties of measure will be posed by domestic groups of | extraordinary scale or by a frequent deployment of household labor to others’ benefit, such as

working the gardens of relatives—in the latter event, direct measures of labor intensity in man-hours will have to be used rather than, as in the examples that follow, household acreages or outputs. These, however, remain problems of practice, not principle. Finally, inquiry will often have to contend with the disadvantage of small numbers. The largest community considered here has only 41 households, the smallest sixteen—quantities that do not inspire great statistical confidence. Still, as the intention is not so much to prove a theory as to demonstrate a feasibility, these and other deficiencies of method discovered along the way, while surely regrettable, do not seem fatal. -

Valley Tonga (Mazulu) The materials available for the Valley Tonga concern staple crop cultivation, which is the main

sector of production although, of course, not the only one. Table 3 and Figure 1 set out the intensity profile for the 20 households of Mazulu village, after data provided by Scudder (1962:especially Appendix B). Presenting the number of consumers and gardeners by household,

and the domestic indices of labor composition (consumers/gardener) and labor intensity (acres/gardener), Table 3 supplies the basic data for construction of an empirical production curve; the theoretical Chayanov line, we shall see, is otherwise derived. For lack of information, intensity cannot be measured directly, as by man-days or man-hours; it has to be understood indirectly as the acreage cultivated per household worker. Immediately an error of some unknown degree is introduced since efforts expended/acre are probably not the same for all gardeners. Moreover, in the attempt to account for the fractional dietary requirements and labor contributions of different

sex and age classes, some estimates were made, as the population breakdown in Scudder’s household production table (Appendix B) is not entirely specific. In assessing consumption requirements (““Number of Consumers” in Table 3), the following rough and apparently reasonable ©

formula was adopted: taking the adult male as a standard (1.0), preadolescent children were calculated as 0.5 consumers and adult women as 0.8 consumers. (Thus the consumer column yields

a figure less than the total household size, and often not a whole number.) Some judgments, finally, had to be made also in determining the domestic labor force. A few very small plots

0.5 workers. |

appearing in Scudder’s data were evidently the work of quite young persons; probably these were training plots in the charge of younger adolescents. Gardeners tabulated by Scudder as cultivating less than 0.5 acreage and belonging to the youngest generation of the family were thus counted as

Manifestly one must insist on the illustrative character of such an example .. .> Evident to inspection, a light trend parallel to the Chayanov effect holds in these data (final

two columns of Table 3).° The acreage cultivated/gardener mounts in rough relation to the domestic index of consumers/gardener. This effect is clearly not consistent over the entire range of household composition, but in any event we are not yet in a position to evaluate the inflection

imparted by reality to the rule of Chayanov. For this it is necessary to develop another line, responding to the rigorous statement of the rule, I=k(c/w), and representing the performance of each household in a condition of social and economic autonomy. Scudder’s inquiries among Mazulu and neighboring peoples led him to conclude that one acre of cereal cultivation per capita would yield an acceptable subsistence.’ ‘‘Per capita,’ however, applies indiscriminately to men,

36 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 TABLE 3. HOUSEHOLD VARIATIONS IN INTENSITY OF LABOR: MAZULU VILLAGE, VALLEY TONGA, 1956-57 (AFTER SCUDDER 1962: 258-261)

Household Number of Numberof Numberof Total acreage Ratio of Acres Members Consumerst gardeners cultivated consumers/ cultivated/

. gardener gardener

O 1 1.0 1.0 1.71 1.00 1.71 Q 9) 4.3 4.0 6.06 1.08 1.52 B 3 2.3 2.0 2.58 1.15 1.29 S 38 2.3 2.0 12.17 6.18 1.15. 3.09A 6.6 5.5 1.20 2.21 D*624.1 1.33.0 1.07.21 2.261.37 1.30 2.40 2.26. C M 6 4.3 4.1 3.0 3.0 6.30 1.37 2.10 © H 6 0.87 1.438 1.96 R 7 Bl 3.55.07.38 1.46 2.09 G 10 : 7.6 10.11 1.52 2.02 . Ky 14 9.4 6.0 7.88 1.57 1.31 I DD3.3 2.0 4.33 1.65 2.17 N 3.3 2.0 4.55 1.65 2.28 P 5 3.3 2.0 4.81 1.65 2.41. ik 8 5.8 3.5 7.80 1.66 2.23 F 9 5.6 3.0 9.11 1.87 3.04 T 976.1 3.0 6.19 2.03 2.06 L* AL 2.0 5.46 2.05 2.73 J 4 2.3 1.0 2.36 2.30 2.36

*In families D and L, the head of the house was absent in European employ during the entire period. He is not calculated in the household’s figures, although the money he brings back to the village will presumably contribute to the family’s subsistence.

+The head of the house, K, worked part time in European employ. He also cultivated and figures in the computations for his household. am tA persons indicated in Scudders’ table as ‘‘unmarried people for whom the wife must cook,” and who are not further tabulated as gardeners are counted as preadolescent children. Probably some dependent elders have thus slipped in as 0.5 consumers.

women, and children. As the total village population of 123 reduces to 86.2 full consumers (adult male standard), each consumer of account will demand 1.43 acres for a normal subsistence. The |

last, then, becomes the value of “k” in the Chayanov formula. And the true Chayanov slope becomes a straight line, originating at zero household composition and zero intensity, and increasing 1.43 acres/gardener for every increase of 1.00 in the domestic ratio of consumers to

gardeners.

Figure 1 combines the preceding information in a first graphic approximation of the deviation of real intensity from the Chayanov expectation. Mean intensity of labor/household-worker is. measured along the vertical (Y) axis, the variation in household composition (c/w) laid out on the horizontal (X) axis. Each house (cf. Table 3) is then fixed as a point corresponding to its particular intensity and composition values. The Chayanov norm is figured as a dotted line (C) beginning at

X=1.00, Y=1.43 and rising upward and to the right by the value of k (1.43 acres or a full consumption quota) for every increase of 1.00 in the consumer/worker ratio. Hence the scatter of . points in relation to this_line represents the distribution of household differences in intensity by comparison, as it were, with the DMP in a state of nature. The individual Mazulu households deviate more or less radically from the Chayanov norm of

autosubsistence. But perhaps not altogether randomly. With so few households at issue it is impossible to develop a clear picture of the empirical trend in intensity. (Interval analyses, for example, would vary substantially with small differences in the interval selected.) I have therefore chosen a free-hand expression of the real production function, represented on Figure 1 as the solid line I. The difference between slopes I and C is thus the social deviation of domestic production.

Statistical intuition might well hold that with more instances the Mazulu curve would be sigmoidal, or perhaps concave upward to the right in exponential fashion. What seems most

7 o

3.00 , ° ye , 2.60 o? | ad e eo,” . o” e I °

Sahlins] . INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION ) 37

ACRES/WORKERS , yo?

.

7

Y7 C= 1.43Y/1.00X ’ 7 ae e

eve 7 , ¢e 7

2.20 e y? eé ° 7

7

1.80 ys” . 77 e ° 7 ,_

;7

ra

7

e

1.00 | | .

1.40

7

100 |.20 1.40 1.60 1.80 2.00 2.20 C/W

Figure 1. Mazulu village, Valley Tonga (1956-57): Empirical variations of household

labor-intensity in relation to the Chayanov Slope. |

important, however, and consistent with accomplished understandings, is that the real variation in labor intensity increases toward both extremes of the c/w range, disturbing or even reversing the more regular incline of the medial section, where households cluster more compactly around the Chayanov line. For it is precisely at the extremes of domestic composition that Chayanov’s rule

becomes vulnerable to contradiction. On one side are the domestic groups relatively weak in manpower and subject to one or another crippling mischance. (Household J in the Mazulu series, represented in Figure 1 by the point farthest right, is an example in question: a woman widowed at the beginning of the cultivation period and left to support three preadolescent children.) On the | other side, the decline of the real intensity curve to the left is arrested at some moment because certain domestic groups, well-endowed in workers, are functioning beyond their own necessity. From that point of view, i.e., of their own customary requirements, they are working at surplus intensities.

Before going on to a finer calculation of this surplus, a brief digression concerning another African case, the Tiv, like Mazulu in being lineage-ordered and acephalous, and alike also in inflection of the real intensity slope. Unfortunately the available information on yields and consumption does not permit calculation of the Chayanov norm. But materials covering acreage cultivated and domestic composition are on hand for the extended-family compounds of several communities or minimal far (Bohannan 1954). From these data I have abstracted the intensity distribution for the tar Mbagor (Figure 2), community with the largest record among groups comparatively free of (induced) land pressure.®° Again intensity here exclusively concerns subsistence. And though the curve (free-hand) differs somewhat in shape from Mazulu, it likewise shows the Chayanov effect through the middle section of household composition, where also the houses are closely grouped in output per worker, to depart substantially from this inclination at the extremes. Clearly one outruns the data to so affirm, but this juxtaposition of Mazulu (Tonga) and Mbagor (Tiv) does evoke the suspicion of a family of S-shaped production curves for the

..

38 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

1.60 | e ° e°. Ne OS™ ACRES /WORKER

2.40

2.00

e

;@

e e e e .40 . | e

1.20

e

..

e

.90 1.00 1.10 1.20 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60 C/W

Figure 2. Mbagor tar, Tiv (1951): Domestic variations in labor-intensity (after Bohannan 1954: Appendix D).

decentralized and segmented kinship orders. The variation off Chayanov at the extremes of domestic composition would appear to be a systematic compensation, along lines of kinship solidarity, for the underproduction of poorer households out of the overproduction of the more effective, a process it shall be possible to attest further along in the Mazulu analysis.

We return to that analysis. )

By a relatively simple technique, the scatter of household intensity differences in Mazulu as a. whole can be reduced to a general trend. The overall tendency is calculable by deviations from the means of household composition and intensity, that is, as a linear regression computed according to standard formula. The mid-point of the empirical variation, a kind of average household, falls at

X=1.52(c/w), Y=2.16(a/w). And the main drift of variation amounts to an increase of 0.52 acres/gardener for every increase (from the mean) of 1.00 in the domestic ratio of consumers to gardeners. (It must be pointed out in view of the dispersion of intensity-differences that this line has little inductive or predictive value, it being used here for a descriptive appreciation of the overall tendency by comparison to the Chayanov norm.) A straight line, the empirical intensity slope artificially traces proportionate variations in domestic production and composition. Still this general trend is of interest in juxtaposition to the Chayanov slope. Figure 3 presents the two inclinations, the Chayanov (C) in the form of a broken line, the empirical (I') as a solid line. They intersect near the mean of household composition. But the empirical tendency is flatter than the Chayanov, passing upward to the left of the latter and downward to the right, which is to say that the actual relation between labor intensity. and the domestic dependency ratio is something less than the theoretical norm. Or, in other words, social production deviates from a simple domestic production of livelihood. In part this deviation is due to the failure of certain households with relatively few workers to produce their own livelihood. But then, other houses, including especially some with favorable manpower resources, are cultivating above their own normal requirements. They are working at surplus intensities, not simply for their own use: because they are engaged in a social system of production, not simply a domestic system. They contribute to the greater system surplus domestic labor.

,|

A/W , C, e . 7 1,.4371.00 3.00 ae?.77 7 |

Sahlins ] INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION ; 39

2.60 a I' ae ° 2.20 ° 2 , 7

me of a” . 7

©

S (1.36X,240Y) oo 0.52/1,00

e ”? eo@

y e . 7 | |.80 7 7e | 1.40 e 7e, 7

? 7”

M(I.52X,2.16 Y) e

,?

, i”

1.00

1.00 |.20 1.40 1.60 I80 2.00 2.20 C/W

Figure 3. Mazulu village, Valley Tonga (1956-57): Empirical and Chayanov slopes of

labor-intensity.

The surplus impulse again can be calculated and diagrammed. Eight of the twenty Mazulu households are working above their (Chayanov) norm. In these houses there are 20.5 effective producers, or 35.6 percent of the total village labor force. The average production of the eight houses, given their mean c/w composition, is 123.6 per cent of Chayanov. In sum, 40 percent of the domestic producing groups, comprising 35.6 percent of the community working force, are functioning at a mean of 23.6 percent above the normal intensity of labor (see Table 4, line 1). Graphically the surplus impluse appears on the Mazulu profile (Figure 3) as point “S,” whose

co-ordinates (1.36X, 2.40Y) represent the mean composition and intensity of households operating higher than the Chayanov rate. The vertical distance between the Y-value of “‘S’’ and the Chayanov line (segment SE) is an indication of the strength of the surplus impulse. The horizontal

relation between the X-value of “S” (1.36) and the mean household composition of the community (1.52) tells something about the distribution of the surplus impulse, that is, from what sector of the community it tends to come. The further “‘S”’ falls to the left of mean composition, the more surplus labor is a function of higher proportions of workers in the domestic group. A position of “‘S” around the mean would imply a more general participation in surplus labor; a position further right, the unlikely event of unusual economic activity in households of lesser relative capacity. For Mazulu, “‘S” is left of the village mean composition by 0.16 c/w (or 10.5

percent). |

Further, it is possible to compute the contribution of surplus domestic intensity to the total village output. The eight households in question produce a sum of 9.21 acres above their own requirements; this is the amount attributable to surplus domestic labor. The total cultivation for all Mazulu is 120.24 acres. Thus 7.7 percent of village production is the specific contribution of surplus labor. I emphasize that “surplus labor’ here applies only to the domestic groups and that it is “‘surplus” only in relation to their own livelihood. Mazulu as a whole does not achieve a surplus

40 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 TABLE 4. QUANTITATIVE RELATION TO CHAYANOV NORMS OF HOUSEHOLD LABOR INTENSITY

Surplus impulse Mean domestic deviation

(surplus households only) Proportion from the Chayanov norm of total

% of %of Mean% production Gross Signed Deviation | force Chayanov domestic deviation Raw Percent

households labor of due to unsigned

surplus [+%] (of C) Mazulu 40 35.6 123.6 7.7 18.0 -—.016 102.2

: acres/w Kapauku 69 cycle 59.6 182 35.4~ 59.4kilo/w +311 132.9 (near minimum) (+.44k) a (—.011k)

Tsembagamaximum) 73.2 78.1 161 33.8 59.2 +.088 144.4 (cycle acre/w (+.49k) .

intensity of labor. It is a testimony rather to the character of the existing social strategy that the

total acreage cultivated falls slightly below village requirements. (So at the point of mean household composition in Figure 3 [1.52c/w], the empirical inflection of production [I'] passes slightly under the Chayanov slope [C].) A nonproductive class thus could not live on the output of Mazulu villagers, at least not without substantial contradiction and potential conflict. In this respect, as well as in the modesty of the domestic surplus impulse, the intensity profile responds to an acephalous polity: to traditional political institutions described by Colson as “embryonic,” “largely egalitarian”? and in the main no burden on the household economy (Colson 1960:161f). The deviation of domestic production from the rule of Chayanov may be appreciated, finally, from certain measures of the central tendency. The average absolute deviation is 18 percent: that is, the domestic intensity of labor/worker will fall-on average 18 percent off the requirements for | livelihood, whether above or below this Chayanov norm. To what extent does the household actually meet its subsistence standard? Here answers differ somewhat depending on the mode of ~ computation. The mean signed deviation from Chayanov in domestic intensity

No |

» (Ci-li)

falls below the norm by~.016 acre/worker. In terms of real acreage, the average household is thus slightly below livelihood—more precisely, the difference of .016 acres represents 1.1 percent of the per capita consumption quota (k). But in percentage deviations, the matter is more favorable. The Chayanov norm taken as 100, mean household deviation stands at

. C, |N

py “ \I100

102.2% ——_—_—

(The apparent discrepancy is due to a few domestic units functioning at radically high percentages of Chayanov, but not that far above in absolute quantity.) These several indices of

mean deviation are summarized on the Mazulu line of Table 4, where also are found the calculations of surplus impulse. And in all the indices and curves of domestic production there is a certain system: the society.

This scatter of household production around a given convention of livelihood is not accidental.

Sahlins ] INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION . | AL The entire production profile, in its projection of normal intensity as well as its empirical slope, is the specification of a social order. Even the subintensive output of some houses is not independent

of the surplus labor of others. True that as far as the Mazulu information goes, household economic failures seem attributable to circumstances external to the organization of production: | illness, death, European influences (Scudder 1960:218). Yet it would be misleading to contemplate the failures in isolation from the successes, as if some families simply proved unable to make it for reasons entirely their own. Some may not have made it precisely because it was

clear in advance they could depend on others. And even the underproduction due to unforeseen | circumstance is acceptable, these vulnerable households tolerable, by virtue of a surplus intensity. | elsewhere, which in a sense had anticipated in its own dynamic a certain social incidence of domestic tragedy. This dynamic of the productive households, however, is not self-generated; it

expresses the kinship, political and ritual relationships between households. The general production profile for the community, therefore, constitutes an interdependent set of domestic variations. It is a social system of domestic production. i Melanesian Economies

Kapauku is another social system, so a different pattern of domestic economy. By comparison

with Mazulu, the strategy of intensification in this western New Guinea group is especially _ pronounced. But then, the Kapauku develop a marked political differentiation of the lineage order: a “big-man system” of the classic Melanesian variety. Harnessed to an open competition for big-man status, the domestic economy is often moved to prodigies of accumulation—of sweet

(Pospisil 1963). Oo |

_ potatoes and pigs notably, whose distribution and sale are main tactics of political advance . The analysis of Kapauku production must again suffer deficiencies of incompleteness and indirectness. It concerns only sweet potato cultivation—the key sector of production, however. The Kapauku to a very large extent and their pigs to a lesser extent live by sweet potato. This one’ stapleaccounts for over 90 percent of the agricultural land use and seven-eighths of the agricultural labor. A full set of data is available for the cultivations of the Botukebo villagers—16 households,

181 persons—through the first eight months of 1955, a period equivalent to a complete sweet-potato cycle (although cultivation is not in fact seasonal). The basic production materials are given in Table 5. As was true for Mazulu, domestic labor intensity is here known by its product: it is reckoned in kilograms of sweet potatoes produced per worker—doubtless introducing an error analogous to previous calculations insofar as different people expend unequal efforts per kilogram of output. Moreover, I have taken the liberty of revising the ethnographer’s household consumer counts, bringing them in closer line with other Melanesian societies by assessing adult women at:

0.8 of the adult male requirement, rather than the 0.6 Pospisil had concluded from a limited dietary study. (This will penalize Kapauku a few percentage points in surplus intensity, rendering

the comparison with Mazulu and other communities conservative.) For the other household members, children were figured at 0.5 consumers, adolescents at 1.0 and elders at 0.8 consumers. Following the ethnographer’s usage, adolescents are considered also at 0.5 workers. (May I be permitted at this point to express admiration for Pospisil’s excellent report, which by its care for quantification sets a standard for ethnographers of primitive economy.) Two marked differences between the Valley Tonga and Kapauku domestic economy leap to view even without benefit of complicated calculation. First, the Kapauku household is much .larger, on average 8.7 consumers and 6.5 workers, as compared to the Mazulu means of 4.3 consumers and 2.9 workers. The scale and composition of the domestic economy ought to be considered an integral part of the society’s production strategy, with critical implication for the overall accumulation of surplus intensity. Secondly, and rather the reverse of what might be expected from the larger size of Kapauku households, the domestic variation in intensity/worker is not thereby reduced by comparison to Mazulu. On the contrary, the Kapauku range of variation is remarkable, between 276 kg./worker and 2154 kg./worker at the household extremes. In this small community, some families are working nearly eight times as much as others—which is a comment, too, on the society’s propénsity to maximize use of available labor power. For Mazulu the

— 42 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 TABLE 5. HOUSEHOLD VARIATION IN SWEET POTATO CULTIVATION:

BOTUKEBO VILLAGE, KAPAUKU (NEW GUINEA), 1955 (AFTER POSPISIL 1963)

Household Number of Adjusted Number of Kilograms/ Ratio con- Intensity (ethnographer’s) members no. of workerst household sumers/worker (kilograms/

consumers* (revised ) worker)

Pospisil Revised

IV 54 8.5 9.5 8.0 16,000 1.19 2000 VII 16 10.2 11.6 9.5 20,462 1.22 2154 XIV 9 7.3 7.9 6.5 7654 1.22 1177

XV 7 4.8 5.6 4.5 2124 1.25 472 VI 16 10.1 11.3 9.0 6920 1.26 769 XIII 12 8.9 9.5 7.5 2069 1.27 276 Vill 612.2 5.1 13.8 5.1 4.0 2607 1.28 652 I 17 10.5 9976 1.31 950 XVI 5 3.2 4.0 3.0 1557 1.33 519 III 79 4.8 5.4 -4.0 8000 1.35| 2000 Vv 6.4 1.4 5.5 9482 1.35 1724 IT 18 12.4 14.6 10.5 20,049 1.39 1909 XII 15 9.5 10.7 7.5 7267 1.44 969 IX 12 8.9 9.5 6.5 5878 1.46 904 x 5 3.6 3.8 2.5 4224 1.52 1690 XI 14 8.7 9.1 _ 4,5 8898 2.02 1978

*See text for discussion of ‘“‘revised’’ consumer-estimates. .

+Calculated as adults (9 and 6) = 1.0 worker, adolescents and elders of both sexes at 0.5 worker.

counterpart variation is between 1.29 acres/worker and 3.09 acres/worker, less than threefold. Given the limited and skewed distribution of household differences in both cases, standard deviations would poorly measure the variability. A better coefficient is provided by the average deviation from mean intensity expressed as a percentage of that mean

| [x] 100 x

In Mazulu village, the average domestic deviation is 15.7 percent of mean intensity; in Kapauku, A6.1 percent. (This isa measure simply of the variance in domestic intensity, not to be confused

with deviations from the Chayanov norm.) Clearly there is in Kapauku some strong stimulus to | intensification of production; but just as. clearly, it acts selectively upon the several households. The same can be read from the production-function for Botukebo village displayed graphically (Figure 4). The Kapauku profile is a distinct departure from the S-curves of both Mazulu and Tiv

| (Figures 1 and 2). At first glance the distribution of household differences in Botukebo might be thought to compose no regularity, Chayanov or otherwise. Yet the apparent disorder of the whole only conceals a double regularity operating on a lower level. Jt is as if Botukebo village were divided into: two populations, each adhering singularly to its own economic inclination. One group

of households is functioning at clearly higher intensities than the other, and if the latter population shows (more or less) a Chayanov tendency for work to increase with the relative number of consumers, in the first group it is just the reverse. The industrious households directly contravene Chayanov’s rule; intensity increases with the relative number of workers. The overall

effect is a ‘fishtail’? pattern of domestic intensity, responding it seems to the bifurcation of people’s relations to the production process established by a big-man system. For such a polity should just so separate big-men or would be big-men, along with the followers whose production they are able to mobilize, from those lesser men content to praise and live off the ambition of others. Of course the economic differentiation may not correspond perfectly to the political. The former is subject to the caveat, actually realized. in Botukebo, that a leader who has successfully

accumulated adherents and credits may eventually reduce his own particular efforts. The

Sahlins ] INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION 48 -

@ ; | | | [600 a | e| Botukebo headman had already relaxed the domestic autoexploitation characteristic of earlier

phases of a big-man’s career; as of 1955, his household (VI in Table 5) fell into the class of , less-remarkable producers. On the other hand, the man generally favored to succeed him was

men’’), , .

precisely the head of household VII, domestic group developing the greatest economic intensity in the village (Pospisil 1963:393). It may be the rule in big-man systems that the domestic intensity profile fissions toward the left of the household c/w axis. Forming thus two groups of inverse . economic tendency, the political order in a general way precipitates onto the material plane its fundamental categorical opposition between “‘men of importance” and “nothing-men”’ (‘“‘rubbish

In a remarkable parallel, the same pattern appears in the staple crop production of a Fijian ,

chiefdom but transposed now to corporate (ranked lineage) categories. I digress for a moment to bring into comparison these Fijian materials—whose crudeness would not merit juxtaposition to

the Kapauku were it not for the analogous political differentiation of households into two

economic populations. The Fijian data consist of yam cultivation estimates collected from family

headmen in the chiefly village of Naroi, island of Moala, during 1954-55 (Sahlins 1962). Only the 7

estimates are available, not the actual production;.moreover, yams constitute only the first among several staple roots cultivated by Moalans. I am able to supply complete yam schedules for 19 of the 35 Naroi households. These households are organized as extended or independent nuclear families. On higher social levels, Naroi is divided into two moieties, of the chiefs and of ‘‘the land,”’ their respective headmen the ranking leaders of the village (and also the island). Each moiety is

further segmented into a series of descent groups (mataqali and tokatoka), ranked vis-a-vis each , other on such bases as genealogical seniority (see Sahlins 1962). Despite this Polynesian codification of status, the Moalan organization is reminiscent of Melanesian big-men systems in

several respects. Two of these resemblances are especially pertinent here, for the possibility of

KILOS / WORKER

20004 \ e °

e uo 1200 e \.

e,

|800°e °e@ , : , °3, ®

400

1.20 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60 1.70 1.80 190 C/W Figure 4. Botukebo village, Kapauku (1955): Domestic variations in labor-intensity.

44 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 their analogous impact upon the domestic economy. First, persons of authority have serious obligations of generosity toward their followers, the high chief thus toward the community at large, the wherewithal for which must come in part from the chief’s own domestic resources and also in principle from houses or lineages traditionally subordinate to the chiefly line. (So the headman of the second-ranking group in the chiefly moiety, for example, should be especially: prepared to respond to the paramount’s call.) Secondly, succession to chieftainship, particularly to the highest offices, is not automatic but subject to an insistent competition between men of the lineage holding title. Economic liberality is again a main tactic of this rivalry, and autoexploitation

a principal means of liberality. |

The bifurcate distribution of domestic production in the Moalan chieftainship, therefore, takes on a specific lineage organization (Figure 5). With only one exception, all of the households in the high-intensity cluster are members of the chiefly moiety (I), representing three lineages therein

(I,,1,, 1,). The one exception proves the rule: it is the household of the land-moiety chief, second ranking personage of the village (II Ai): The domestic group of the village and island paramount (I, ,) is also securely within this cluster, but operating notably below that of his main . lineage rival: the family head of 1,., in control of the most productive household in Moala, and with whom the chief is not on speaking terms. Here then is a cluster of chiefly persons, charged with the welfare of the community, competing among themselves for the privilege, and in the upshot differentiated economically from all the rest—that not only by superior domestic intensities of production and favorable household ratios of producers to consumers, but by some propensity for these.to increase in relation to each other. The rest of the village is moving strictly in the opposite direction, that is, parallel to the Chayanov slope. Moreover, all the households in the subintensive cluster belong either to the second-ranking moiety or second-ranking lineages of the chief’s moiety. In the same way that the Fijian chieftainship corporately codifies Melanesian political categories, so it reproduces in organized fashion the Melanesian pattern of domestic

1000 ° 800-| elp a; e . economy.

Returning to that pattern, Figure 6 summarizes for Kapauku the relation between the overall empirical slope of domestic intensity (I) and the Chayanov line (C). The empirical slope has been

YAM MOUNDS/ WORKER TAs

e Ta I ° Ta . I, 80° et, ely Teaeir/ / as a / ellp ° U5 Ip LEGEND . . TJ,400 I. CHIEFLY AND LAND MOIETIES. el. ells __ 200 ep ORDER.

els A,B,C. LINEAGES-- RANK WITHIN MOIETY REPRESENTED BY ALPHABETICAL

1,2. HOUSEHOLDS, IN RANK ORDER WITHIN LINEAGE.

O

2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 C/W

Figure 5. Naroi, Moala (1954-55): Estimates of yam-cultivation intensities by household.

°

-.e| ;| ,

Sahlins ] INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION . 45

2000F ° ° le e| 1600 -e

KILOS / WORKER

0| e

. S (1.40X, I731Y) 7 1007/1.00

1200 . G tu.37x, 1259) eee 694k/ 1.00 sook --—~

tee E®, (1.40 X,971 Y)

~ 400 . e

e cen

| 1.20 1.30 1.40 1.50 1.60 1.70 1.80 190 2.00

Figure 6. Botukebo, Kapauku (1955): Empirical and Chayanov slopes of domestic

labor-intensity.

computed in the manner previously outlined for Mazulu (and would be equally if not more inappropriate as a predictive relation); the Chayanov line was fixed from the adult male

consumption requirement determined by Pospisil. The relationship between the two contrasts markedly with Mazulu (Figure 3). For Kapauku the real intensity slope runs above Chayanov expectations through the entire range of known variations in domestic composition. Unlike Mazulu, Botukebo village as a whole is generating surplus intensity in subsistence—much of which, deployed to the raising of pigs, will be converted ultimately into social and political benefits. In

the same connection, the domestic surplus impulse (S) stands decidedly higher (by relation to Chayanov) than in Mazulu, and its position nearer mean household composition argues a more general participation in surplus output. A quantitative appreciation of Botukebo’s superiority in these respects is given by Table 4. Among the more dramatic differences: over 59 percent of the Kapauku labor pool is engaged in surplus output, by comparison to 35.6 percent for Mazulu; average domestic intensity runs at 132.9 percent of the Chayanov norm in Kapauku, 102.2 percent in Mazulu; surplus domestic intensity accounts for 35.4 percent of the Kapauku village output, but only 7.7 percent of Mazulu output. It is a clear economic contrast between a big-man and an acephalous polity. The Kapauku take the advantage, moreover, even while running at relatively low gear. Pospisil’s — study dates to the second year after a massive pig feast, with the local herd (31 pigs) only about a third of what it had been before the slaughter (1963:217). In the same way as other New Guinea Highland economies, the Kapauku develop a long-term intensity cycle, marked at its apogee by a

considerable expansion of gardening in support of a large-scale accumulation cf pigs. The Botukebo village cycle is evidently of four years duration, the last large feast having been staged in

1953 and another projected for 1957 (Pospisil 1963:323). As the ethnographic reading of the economy refers to the beginning of 1955, we have to deal with the system at a point nearer

(Rappaport 1967). , , , minimum functioning. This becomes important in the ensuing comparison with the Tsembaga, a

Maring-speaking group, also of upland New Guinea, but studied at the peak of their own cycle |

e . ee | O C/W

46 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

e : I .400 sd° °. , -600 e

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.500 e

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e ° ° e @ ° .200e| ° e e . e t)

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1.00 1.20 1.40 1.60 1.80 2.00

Figure 7. Tsembaga, Maring (1962): Domestic variations in labor-intensity.

The juxtaposition of Kapauku and Tsembaga presents a double contrast: between Highland communities at different phases of the pig cycle, but also between different social organizations of the cycle. The Tsembaga do not know feast-giving leaders, big-men who garner prestige—and, ultimately, the disposition of others’ goods—through a career of calculated generosity (Rappaport

1968:2-31, 236). Their major pig festivals (Raiko) are instead ritually regulated and socially fragmented, the people severally distributing pigs in discharge of their own particular obligations. These obligations are principally of two kinds: affinal gifts due the kinsmen of a wife, especially those consequent on the birth of children, although payment is often postponed to the kaiko; and compensations due the men of other local groups, again usually affines, who have joined battle on Tsembaga’s behalf. Rappaport’s magnificent ecological study of Tsembaga straddled the period of

. a kaiko. His materials on agricultural production show a pattern of household variations in intensity that corresponds to the atomistic kinship organization of responsibilities—and differs accordingly from the political mobilization of domestic economy manifest in Kapauku or Fiji.

The Tsembaga intensity structure is presented in Figure 7, as drawn from the household (“hearth group”) agricultural schedules of Table 6.” (The irregular course of the real intensity slope [I] in Table 6 is charted from means of 0.10 c/w intervals.) By comparison with all previous cases, the great interest of the Tsembaga pattern lies in its diffuseness. True, there is a general drift

to the scatter of household differences, a kind of fanning upward to the right parallel to the Chayanov effect, but the immediate impression is of radical variability, even incoherence. Major

disparities in acreage/worker are apparent at any given value and throughout the gamut of household constitution. The gross variation is somewhat less than Kapauku—an average deviation

of 31.7 percent of mean domestic intensity compared to Botukebo’s 46.1 percent; although in relation to Chayanov, the average (unsigned) deviation is about equal (59.2% off the livelihood

Sahlins | INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION AT norm for Tsembaga, 59.4% for Kapauku). Yet this generalized dispersion of domestic production seems an expectable reflex of the statistical and contractual solidarities upon which Tsembaga politics depends—even as the more structured production patterns of Kapauku or Moala argue a more mechanical political order. First of all, the impetus to surplus intensity may be very generally TABLE 6. HOUSEHOLD VARIATION IN INTENSITY OF LABOR: TSEMBAGA, 1962

Hearth Number of Number of Number of Ratio of Acreage/ group members consumer gardenerst consumers/ gardener

—_ units* . worker 25 3 2.45 3.00 0.82 448 3 3 : 2.66 3.00 . 0.88 237 31 2 1.84 2.00 0.92 .366 13 5 4.31 4.50 0.96 8338 35 7 6.66 6.80 0.98 .288 38 4 2.36 2.40 0.98 .170 4 4 3.96 4.00 0.99 413 22 4 3.54 3.50 1.01 71 9 2 1.84 1.80 1.02 224 27 4 3.24 3.00 1.08 3852 14 2 1.63 1.50 1.09 © .120 8 3 2.24 2.00 (1.12 143 12 3 2.24 2.00 1.12 142 387 6 3.71 3.25 1.14 .500 415 | 5 4.59 4.00 1.15 476 39 4 3.79 3.30 1.15 3938 36 | | 5 4.14 3.50 1.18 14 28 : 6 5.10 4.30 1.19 274 2 6 5.16 4.30 1.20 279 26 5 3.69 3.00 1.23 383 ) 16 6. | 5.79 4.60 1.26 .270 24 6 4.80 3.80 1.26 421 30 — 8 . 6.72 5.80 1.27 .252 17 4 2.64 2.00 1.32 A55 5. 8| 5.97 a 4.50 | 1.38 .3828 10 6 4.04 3.00 1.35 163 11 6 4.72 | 3.50 1.35 22 40 7 5.46 3.90 1.40 .225 Al 7 5.64 ~ 4,00 1.41 310 19 4 2.87 2.00 1.42 597 23 4 .— 2.874.80 2.00| 1.46 1.44 .550 1 9 7.04 169 29 6 4.08 2.80 1.46 .358 76 95: 6.32 4.20 | 1.50 .295 32 3 2.32 1.50 1.55 174 3.24 2.00 1.62 .234 21 5 3.64 2.00 1.82 .630 34 5 3.64 2.00 1.82 .3809 33 3 1.84 1.00 1.84 407 20 . 5 3.72. 1.80 2.06 O70 18 | 7 5.35 2.50 2.14 170 | *Consumer units, following Rappaport (1967:288), ,

assigned as follows: ) +Worker units, following Rappaport:

Age M F Age M Age F ’ 50+ 0.80 0.63 60+ 0.00 60+ 0.00 21-49 1.00 0.84 55-59 0.50 55-59 0.50

15-20 1.16 0.82 21-54 1.00 13-54 1.00 10-15 0.88 0.84 15-20 0.80 10-12 0.80 5-10 060° «+ 0.60 10-14 0.50 0-9 0.00 0-5 0.40 0.40 0-9 0.00

48 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 ACRES/ WORKER

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Figure 8. Tsembaga, Maring (1962): Empirical and Chayanov slopes of domestic labor-intensity.

distributed among Tsembaga households, inasmuch as anyone may incur obligations toward allies and affines, although for a given period the impetus applies differentially to those indebted since the last pig festival. Secondly the political means (or lack of means) by which pig accumulation is controlled have the effect of confirming important differences in domestic intensity on the eve of the kaiko. Rappaport describes a ‘‘decision-making process’’ so amorphous that a few men, whose Wives are approaching the endurable limits of gardening and pig-tending, are able to precipitate the cycle for the entire local group—which is to say, at a time before the great majority of women have reached their own limits. Lastly, the affinal payments due upon the birth of children must place demands especially on one sector of producing units, viz., households with comparatively high consumer/worker ratios. Probably this accounts for the unusual intensification upward to the right on the Tsembaga profile (Figure 7). I say “unusual” because this is not a simple Chayanov response. Certain groups of the least relative capacity are developing the greatest surplus intensity. A priori an ill-devised strategy of intensification, the last makes an interesting contrast with Kapauku or Moala, where political stimulation of the domestic economy has exactly the reverse effect. In societies of big-men and chiefs, the greater surplus is developed by households of higher

capacity. |

Nevertheless, at the climax of their long-term cycle, the Tsembaga accumulate a substantial surplus intensity—as much as Kapauku in ordinary times. Figure 8 diagrams the Tsembaga surplus impulse, as well as the intersection of the Chayanov and empirical regressions. The quantitative indices of production have been added to Table 4, to facilitate comparison with Kapauku. This comparison shows Tsembaga overtaking Kapauku in several dimensions of domestic intensity,

notably average household production in relation to the Chayanov norm (144.4 percent for Tsembaga, 132.9 percent for Kapauku), and percentage of the labor force involved in surplus

Sahlins ] INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION . 49

repose.

output (78.1 in Tsembaga, 59.4 in Kapauku); although Kapauku does maintain an advantage in

strength of the surplus impulse and proportion of the total output due to surplus domestic intensity. But of course the comparison fixes the two communities at different phases. At best it says that the Tsembaga system at maximum compression is the equal of Kapauku in a period of With a cycle greater in frequency and higher in amplitude, Kapauku proves superior over the long run. The Tsembaga manage a kaiko only once every twelve to fifteen years, on average (Rappaport 1968:156). In a comparable span Kapauku will have undergone at least three complete

revolutions, the optima of which would clearly dominate Tsembaga at its peak—not to mention Tsembaga during the ordinary course. Suppose the number of pigs quartered in Botukebo village in anticipation of a major feast were only double the herd (31 animals) counted at the time of study. (Pospisil notes there were three times as many at the last slaughter, but as Kapauku practice adjisting, it is possible not all were raised from Botukebo cultivations.) At the customary feeding rate of four kilograms sweet potato/pig/day (Pospisil 1963:207), Botukebo would require a 21.8 percent expansion of output over 1955 to undertake a pig feast. Kapauku economy periodically attains a level significantly above the figures with which we have been working. On the other hand, Tsembaga usually functions at a level much lower than we know. Rappaport observed that one | _ small clan reduced its garden acreage by 36.1 percent upon reduction of its pig-holdings in the

kaiko (1967:61). Yet there is nothing, it seems, in the Tsembaga ecology to preclude an intensification cycle on the frequency and order of Kapauku (cf. Rappaport 1967:92f). The economic difference between Tsembaga and Kapauku is social organization. |

, CONCLUSION: A BEGINNING Working from received theory of the domestic mode of production, I have tried to suggest certain techniques for the social analysis of household output in primitive societies. Nothing can

be said in conclusion as important as the appeal, implicit in the very imperfection of these techniques, for ethnographic validation. The many evident defects of method, and the many presently unknown but sure to arise, can only be mastered by sustained investigation in the field. Ethnography too must be our guide to the social interpretation of a domestic production profile. The intimate mediations of social position upon the economic activities of particular men and women are best known to the fine study of life. And then we shall be in much stronger position to make comparisons, society to society, of the kind prematurely envisioned here. There is a very large work to be done: in perfection of technique, collection of statistics on domestic intensity, and socio-cultural analysis of the production curve. The difficulties of this work are only exceeded

by the promise of a new economics, distinctively anthropological, and more indebted to the structures of the societies with which it deals than to the categories of the one from which it comes. NOTES

1T am indebted to a number of students from the University of Michigan and the University of Paris-Nanterre for the work and insights they have contributed to the research described here, particularly David Thomas and Marcus Winter for their respective analyses of Tsembaga and Tiv. The theoretical perspective of this research is given a more sustained and detailed exposition in Sahlins 1971 (in press), Chapters 2 and 3. * See, for example, Firth 1959:192f; Gluckman 1943:36; Leacock 1954:7. Thurnwald (1932) also attempted to keep the argument alive theoretically.

compounding. :

In the special case of simple reproduction, the cycle is at least continuous and additive if not

*Marx wrote thus of the difference in dynamic: “The repetition or renewal of the act of selling

in order to buy [C-M-C’], is kept within bounds by the very object it aims at, namely,

consumption or the satisfaction of definite wants, an aim that lies altogether outside the sphere of circulation. But when we buy in order to sell, we, on the contrary, begin and end with the same _ thing, money, exchange value; and thereby the movement becomes interminable... Money ends the movement only to begin it again. Therefore, the final result of every separate circuit, in which

50 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 a purchase and consequent sale are completed, forms of itself the starting-point of a new circuit. The simple circulation of commodities—selling in order to buy—is a means of carrying out a purpose unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of wants. The circulation of money as capital is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The circulation of capital has

therefore no limits”’ (1967a[1867 ]:151-152). |

> Besides uncertainties in the data, there are external complications, some of which are indicated in footnotes to Table 3 but including one that must be considered in greater detail. There is a modest amount of cash-cropping in Mazulu, mainly of tobacco, with the proceeds invested principally in animal stock. The effects upon the domestic production of cereals are not altogether clear, but the figures on hand probably have not been seriously deformed by.crop sales. The total volume of produce sold is quite limited, of subsistence crops in particular, insignificant. At the time of study, Scudder wrote, “‘most valley Tonga were essentially subsistence cultivators

who rarely sell a guinea’s worth of produce per annum” (1962:89). In any event, it must be considered whether trade actually removes the exchangeable food surplus from internal community circulation. It happens that those Tonga farmers who convert produce into animal stock are precisely the ones most subject to imperious requests from relatives at times of food shortage—for animals, n.b., constitute a reserve that may be again sold for grain (Ibid.:89f,

179-180; Colson 1960:38f). °In this connection, one further complication of the Mazulu data: in richer households able to provide beer for outside workers, some of the labor expended does not come immediately from the domestic group in question. On one hand, then, the figures for acreage cultivated/worker do not do justice to the actual force of the Chayanov principle—richer houses are working less than indicated, poorer more. On the other hand, some portion of the beer thus provided may represent

the congealed labor. of the supplying household, so that over the longer run the slope of intensity/worker is closer again to the data reported. Clearly subtle corrections are necessary, or else direct estimates of hours worked per gardener—both beyond the prerogatives given by the present data.

‘Here is another possibility of methodological difficulty. It is not clear how much Scudder’s estimate of one acre/capita for subsistence was influenced by the de facto tendency of household gardens to cluster about that figure. ®Mbagor was chosen over Iyon because of the severe land (and perhaps food) shortage in the latter tar. Beniseed acreage was excluded from consideration, beniseed being a tax crop. The Bohannans do in a more general context (1968:6) mention a figure of 1.00 acre/capita as yielding ‘“‘adequate subsistence,’’ but it seems not to apply to the areas intensively studied, which operate substantially below that level. ? Hearth group acreages were deterinined by Mr. David Thomas from field maps generously

provided by Professor Rappaport. REFERENCES CITED

Bohannan, Paul -

Office. -.

1954 Tiv Farm and Settlement. Colonial Research Studies No. 15. London: H. M. Stationery

Bohannan, Paul, and Laura Bohannan 1968 Tiv Economy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Carneiro, Robert L.

1968 Slash-and-Burn Cultivation Among the Kuikuru and Its Implications for Cultural

Development in the Amazon Basin. /n Man in Adaptation: The Cultural Present. Y. Cohen, ed. Chicago: Aldine (reprinted from Anthropologica Supplement No. 2, 1961). Chayanov, A. V.

1966 The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, IIl.: R. D. Irwin for the American Economic Association. [Translated from Russian and German editions published in the

Colson, Elizabeth | 1960 Social Organization of the Gwembe Tonga. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1920s. |

Firth, Raymond

. 1959 Economics of the New Zealand Maori. Wellington: Government Printer [second edition ]. Gluckman, Max 1943 Essays on Lozi Land and Royal Property. Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, No. 10. Lafargue, Paul

1909 The Right to be Lazy. Chicago: Kerr [first French edition, 1883].

Sahlins | INTENSITY OF PRODUCTION 51 Leacock, Eleanor

1954 The Montagnais ‘‘Hunting Territory’ and the Fur Trade. American Anthropological

Association Memoir No. 78. Malinowski, Bronislaw

1921 The Primitive Economics of the Trobriand Islanders. Economic Journal 31:1-16. Marx, Karl 1967a Capital. Vol. 1. New York: International Publishers, [first German edition, 1867 ].

1967b Fondaments de la critique de l'économie politique. Paris: Editions Anthropos, 2 vols.

[Manuscripts of 1857-1858, “Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie,”’ first

published in Moscow, 1939]. McCarthy, Frederick D., and Margaret McArthur

1960 The Food Quest and the Time Factor in Aboriginal Economic Life. In Records of the Australian-American Scientific: Expedition to Arnhem Land, Vol 2: Anthropology and Nutrition. C. P. Mountford, ed. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Oliver, Douglas

1949 Studies in the Anthropology of Bougainville, Solomon Islands. Papers of the Peabody

Pospisil, Leopold ,

Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. 29(1-4).

1963 Kapauku Papuan Economy. Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 67. Rappaport, Roy A. 1967 Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Yale University Press. Thurnwald, Richard 1932 Economics in Primitive Communities. London:-Oxford. Sahlins, Marshall 1962 Moala. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

1968 La premiére société d’abondance. Les Temps Modernes, Octobre, No. 268:641-680. 1971 (in press) Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine. Scudder, Thayer 1962 The-Ecology of the Gwembe Tonga. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Woodburn, James

1968 An Introduction to Hadza Ecology. In Man the Hunter. R. Lee and I. Devore, eds. Chicago: Aldine.

4,

: ‘Salt Currency” and the Circulation of Commodities .

Among the Baruya of New Guinea! MAURICE GODELIER

LVEcoLe PRATIQUE DES HautEs ETUDES, PARIS : } WEALTH ITEMS AND MONEY IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES: | SOME PRELIMINARY THEORETICAL REMARKS

AT THE BEGINNING of this century, Boas* and Malinowski° succeeded in revising in part the conventional picture of primitive man victimized by nature and engrossed in the subsistence quest,

when they described and analyzed the Northwest Coast potlatch on the one hand, and the Melanesian kula on the other. Quite apart from his concern with subsistence, it was discovered, primitive man was absorbed in the accumulation of wealth items such as feather headdresses, beads, pigs’ teeth, dolphin teeth, copper plaques, and their transformation, through a skillful strategy of gift-giving and other exchanges, into a “fund of power” (Malinowski), into modes of access to the most valued activities and statuses within his society. At the core of the complex

network of relationships of kinship, production and power existing in primitive societies, gift-giving was revealed as the principal means of exchange and of competition between the individuals of groups and it became necessary to elaborate a theory to account for it.

The first to grapple with this problem was Mauss (1924),* followed by Firth,°> Einzig,° Polanyi,’ Dalton,® Sahlins,’? etc. In this task, a difficulty of an ideological nature immediately became apparent and it has still not been entirely overcome. At first, the ethnographic data seemed to indicate that the prevailing ideas in political economy were applicable: primitive forms of competition and trade were but ‘“‘archaic” versions of market competition; gifts were “loans at compound interest”; and items of wealth were special kinds of currency, perceived in terms of the categories of market economy, the facts suggested that primitive economies differed only in _ degree, but not in kind, from the economies of modern capitalism.’ ° Yet on closer examination, the data did not fit well—if at all—into these readily available categories. It had to be recognized that the Trobrianders, far from confusing kula with market exchange, did distinguish between them, since they had another term for barter which implied “‘bargaining”’ (Gimwali). Again, it had to be conceded that the potlatch differed from a loan, in that the creditor is the one who forces his rival to accept the gift, whereas in the loan, it is the debtor who seeks to

‘ borrow.’ ' Most important, scholars could not overlook the fact that wealth items, the primitive “currencies,” were rarely exchanged and, in most cases, were never exchanged for land or labor; !” that their accumulation and circulation among the individuals and groups did not entail a general development of productive forces as is the case with the accumulation of capital in the capitalist market societies.! °

As objects to be exhibited, given, or redistributed in order to create a social relationship (marriage, adhesion to a secret society, political alliance between tribes), to smooth over a rupture in social relationships (offerings to the ancestors, compensations for murders or offenses), or to

create or symbolize a superior social position (potlatch, wealth items accumulated and redistributed by the important men, chiefs or kings), the wealth items of primitive societies were not considered as capital and rarely used within these societies as currency, i.e., as a medium of commerical exchange.’* Wealth items were considered as media of social exchange, having a 52

Godelier ] “SALT CURRENCY” IN NEW GUINEA 53 multiple and complex symbolic value but their use and circulation were effected through independent channels and limited by the very structure of the social relations of production and power. At the same time, it needs to be remembered that all of these items of wealth were either made

or obtained at the cost of a great deal of work, or by means of very important compensations in the form of scarce products, and that they therefore possessed, at the moment when they were bartered, an exchange value.' ° In Malaita, for instance, lengths of white pearl currency came from

the Kwaio who exported them to their neighbors. An individual could not collect from the reefs, polish and pierce more than two pearl fathoms (at the maximum) per month. Dolphin teeth came from the Lau, fishermen of remarkable skill who lived on little islands where agriculture was impracticable and who exchanged dolphin teeth for pigs and vegetable food. The mill stones of Yap came from very distant islands and sea-going expeditions were necessary in order to obtain and to quarry them, to shape them, .and to bring them back.’® -Generally speaking, everywhere in the interior of Africa, Asia and New Guinea, there was a circulation of cowrie shells which had been found on distant beaches, in India for instance, and were acquired in exchange for rare

products.'’ Therefore, either entering or leaving each of these societies, these wealth items temporarily assumed the form of commodities bartered at fixed rates or at rates which fluctuated only slightly. Within each society these items circulated most often, not as commodities, but as objects to be given or redistributed in the very process of social life, of kinship, production, and power relationships. So, if our analysis is correct, we have to conclude that very often, the wealth items which are found in primitive societies have a double nature, being, at one and the same time, commodities and non-commodities, “currency” and gift, depending upon whether they are being bartered between the groups or being circulated within the groups. First, they function as a commodity

when they must be imported or when they are produced in order to be exported. Then, they function as prestige items, objects of social exchange, when they circulate within a group through

the mechanism of the gift and of other forms of redistribution. The same object, therefore, changes its function. Of the two functions, however, the second one is dominant, since its roots and meaning spring from the requirements of the dominant structures of the primitive social

organization, kinship and power.’ ® .

It should also be noted that a wealth item does not only function as a commodity when it is exported or imported between groups, but each time it is bartered between members of one group rather than being given or redistributed. Then, it circulates within the group as a commodity, even though, very often, it may circulate there as a non-commodity, an object to be given, an object for

social exchange.

Finally, it is necessary to make clear that it is not sufficient for a wealth item to circulate as a commodity in order for it to become a “currency.” To be a currency, one further condition is necessary: it must be possible to exchange the item in question for several commodities of different types. For instance, in Malaita, a red pearl necklace could be exchanged for pigs or for polished stone tools or for raw or cooked food, etc., and in this case it functioned as a currency. To summarize, we can say that in most cases, wealth items which circulated within and between primitive societies were both items of commerical exchange and items of social exchange, goods to be bartered, and goods to be exhibited and given, commodities which sometimes became money and sometimes symbols, visible signs of the fortunes of the individuals and groups, taking their meaning from the most intimate depths of the social structure. They were multi-functional objects whose functions were never confused, even when they were superimposed and combined, and they always circulated within narrow limits determined by the very structures of primitive societies where labor—and even more, all land—were never transformed into commodities which could be acquired in exchange for other commodities. If this is correct, it can be understood why so many analyses and assertions made by economists

and anthropologists about primitive currencies are (or seem to be) contradictory.'” Such contradictions may have two origins: either at the level of the facts themselves, the object (described by the anthropologist) is apprehended when it is functioning solely as a bartered commodity’? or solely as an object of adornment or as a gift; or else, at the level of the

54 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 anthropologist’s perception, the conceptual distinction between commodity and object of social exchange is not fully grasped, so that the difference disappears in the analysis,”' accordingly, a close rereading of the massive corpus of data on “primitive currencies” becomes both possible and necessary.

Thereby we can better understand why many primitive peoples, even in their early contacts with western outsiders, already understood the logic of gifts, barter, and the simple circulation of commodities on the one hand, while on the other, some archaic varieties of money—e.g., shells, amber—were present among their wealth items, even if these items were only rarely employed as capital, invested for profit or for accumulation.*” Finally, we can see more clearly why, under certain circumstances, and from antiquity until the present day, wealth items might lose more of their dominant character as things to be given, becoming specialized as items of commerce,” even

| while long maintaining a “traditional” or “ethical” character:** It is in the light of these preliminary theoretical comments that we can present here the materials we collected in New

Guinea on the production and circulation of salt currency among the Baruya.’° _

BARUYA SOCIETY | The Baruya are a group of approximately 1500 people distributed in a dozen villages and hamlets in the sub-district of Wonenara. This was the last area of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea to be brought under control by the Australian administration, in June, 1960. In terms of language, material culture, and social organization, the Baruya belong to a distinctive group of tribes known at present as the “kukukuku,” a derogatory name used by some of their neighbors and popularized by the Australian Administration. Linguistically, the ““Kukukuku are neither related to the phylum of Highlands languages nor to the Melanesian languages of the coastal tribes of Papua or New Guinea.’”’ The “kukukuku” population is estimated at 50,000, of which the majority lives in the northern part of an immense, extremely broken territory, which spreads from the Vailala River in the West to the Bulolo River in the East, and from the Watut River in the North, to the borders of Kerema on the Papuan coast, In papua, some groups, still scarcely under control, live a nomadic life in a very inaccessible region, protected from European contact by the great distance separating them from the patrol post of Menyamya, Kantiba, and Kerema. . The Kukukuku have the reputation of being warlike tribes, mostly cannibals, who lived in a state of continual warfare, and whose raids struck terror among the neighboring tribes.?® Victims of the discovery of gold on the eastern borders of their territory in the region of Wau and Bulolo at the beginning of this century, they made the penetration of gold prospectors difficult and they put up a lively resistance to the efforts of the Australian administration to control and pacify

them.” ,

The Baruya claim to be descendants of refugees of the Yoyué tribe living originally in the region of Menyamya..-They say they were obliged to flee their original territory after a conflict with other segments of their tribe who, in this instance, were allied with their enemies. We may estimate that this exodus took place about two centuries ago. The refugees settled in the region of Marawaka, three days walk to the northwest of Menyamya and, little by little, by means of both warfare and matrimonial alliances, they took possession of a part of the territory of two local tribes, the Andje and Usarumpia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, they penetrated into the neighboring valley of Wonenara and drove back its original inhabitants. With the Baruya, these inhabitants constitute the western groups of the “kukukuku.” Beyond, begin the Awa, Tairora, Fore tribes whose languages and culture make them more like the tribes of the Eastern Highlands societies studied by Read, Watson, Langness, and Salisbury. The social organization of the Baruya is that of an acephalous tribe composed of thirteen patrilineal clans of which eight are descended from the first refugees and seven originated from segments of lineages belonging to neighboring and enemy tribes with whom the Baruya once exchanged women and who subsequently chose to reside with their affines. The lineage is the basic social unit. Each village includes three to five segments of lineages belonging to different clans. Residence is theoretically patrilocal but the individual has a wide range of choice. Kinship is combined with an hierarchical division of the male population into four age groups. These

Godelier ] “SALT CURRENCY” IN NEW GUINEA . 55 divisions cross-cut all the lineages and clans, and link all the villages, thus unifying the society ideologically (through the cycle of initiations) and militarily as a fighting group.

Agriculture is the main economic activity, with the addition of relatively important pig husbandry and a considerable production of vegetal salt. Villages are located between 1600 and 2000 meters in the high valleys of the Kratke Range, a range: of mountains the highest peak of _ which reaches 3720 meters. The vegetation is rainforest with wide expanses of savannah (Kunai), the result of swidden agriculture. Rainfall is abundant and the seasonal variation is relatively marked. Hunting and gathering play a minimal role in subsistence activities but are of great

ceremonial importance. Until about 1940, the stone adze, the digging stick, the bamboo knife, and the bone chisel were the main implements of the Baruya. Before the arrival of the Europeans, steel

axes and bush knives reached the area through the channels of inter-tribal trade and rapidly

' supplanted stone tools. :

The main crop is sweet potatoes cultivated in a relatively intensive manner with a brief

fallowing cycle, mainly in the deforested area. Taro forms a much smaller part of the normal diet than sweet potatoes, but is of major importance for ceremonial and social purposes. It is grown in . the soils of the secondary forest which are fallowed from twelve to twenty years. Techniques of drainage and irrigation, involving pipelines made of bamboo or pandanus tree trunks, and the use _ of small terraces following the contours of the land which temporarily stop the erosion of topsoils on steeper slopes, are all evidence of an agricultural system considerably more complex than simple swidden methods and superficial scratching of the soil. The lineage is the collective owner of the land. Hunting territories and agricultural areas are distributed among all the clans and lineages. Property rights are very clearly fixed but the use of the land is extremely flexible. Property rights in land as such are based upon the right of conquest and, for each lineage, on the work of clearing the undergrowth of the forest which has been carried out by the ancestors. There is a sexual division of agricultural labor, and work is done either by

individuals or collectively. , SALT PRODUCTION

Technology | On the New Guinea coast, salt is obtained from sea water and is frequently exchanged with inland tribes. The rough terrain, the distances, and the state of inter-tribal warfare did not allow sea salt to reach those tribes deep in the interior. Some of them, however, produced their own salt, either from salt water springs, or by extraction from wild or cultivated plants.° 0 Among the Kukukuku tribes salt production was a common practice, but nowhere did it attain the extent and degree of specialization which characterize it among the Baruya. The Baruya produce salt from the ashes of a plant—the Coix gigantea koenig ex Rob—of south east Asian origin—which they plant in naturally or artificially irrigated areas (canals or ditches).>! The cultivated areas vary from two to thirty acres divided into plots with boundaries marked by various kinds of flowers or shrubs. Salt grass is cut every year during a dry period and grows back - naturally. The cut grass is left to dry for a week or two and then is heaped onto a pile of special wood and bumed for one or two days. The resulting heap of ashes is left on the spot for several months, sheltered by a thatched roof. Finally a filter is built; it is made of a row of gourds, the lower ends of which are blocked with a burr of the plant Triunifetta nigricans to catch the ~ impurities. The gourds are filled with ashes (each gourd containing from 600 to 800 grams) and pure water is slowly poured into them. As it passes through, the water becomes saturated with mineral elements and drips into a gutter of leaves which leads into long bamboo tubes. Later, the full tubes are carried to the salt workshop. From time to time, the water dripping from each gourd is tasted and when it is no longer salty, the gourd is emptied and filled with fresh ashes. The workshop is owned by a specialist. It shelters an oven which consists of a tunnel 3.50 meters long, 30 centimeters high, and 30 centimeters wide, with sides made of fireproof flat stones cemented together with the hardened mud of used salt ashes. In the upper part of the oven a row of twelve to fifteen oblong molds is hollowed out, 80 centimeters long and 12 centimeters wide in

56 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

solution.

the middle. In each mold there is a form made of waterproof banana leaves, of which the upper edges are held open by the pressure of a light bamboo frame. The salt solution is poured into these forms when the oven reaches the correct temperature. A constant temperature is maintained during the five days and nights necessary for the evaporation and crystallization of the salt

The specialist watches the temperature of the oven so that the solution never boils (the

temperature must be kept between 55° and 65° C.) He stirs the surface of the water with a special spatula to prevent the formation of a film. He takes out any impurities that collect, or that may fall into the forms. Finally, and above all, he is the master of the salt magic. At the end of five or six days the evaporation is complete and the crystallized salt takes the form of very hard bars 60 to 72 centimeters long and 10 to 13 centimeters wide. The bars are carefully removed from the forms and the edges are scraped until they have a perfectly regular shape. A group of men wrap the bars in dry banana leaves and long strips of wet bark carefully sewn together with an overcast stitch, which harden as they dry. This packaging is an effective protection against humidity and also allows for easy transport without any risk of breakage. The completed bars are stored in each hut on a frame high over the hearth. Fifteen bars usually come to a total of 25 to 30 kilograms of salt. The oblong shape of the oven itself means that bars fabricated near the two ends are shorter then those hardened near the center. The Baruya classify the bars in three categories according to their size, each with its own name, and each requiring its own rate of exchange. Out of the fifteen bars produced at one time, four or five are small, four or five are medium-sized, and six are large. The Social Division of Labor

The process of salt production thus takes place in two widely separated phases. The first phase consists in the harvest, the burning of the salt grass, and the construction of a shelter for the ashes against the rain. The second phase consists in the very process of the salt production itself, i.e., filtering, evaporating, and packaging. Men and women participate in the operations of the first phase and, depending on the importance of the task, work is either individual or collective. In contrast, salt production proper is essentially a male activity surrounded with specific rituals and

sexual taboos to prevent the risks of female pollution. In addition, the work of a specialist is required for the delicate operations of evaporation and crystallization. These specialists are few, numbering from two to five in each village with an average population of thirty adult males. It is

because of their magic powers and their technical ability that these men are recognized as specialists. If their descendants show interest and sufficient ability, they will be taught the secrets. In Table 1 is to be found the essential data concerning the length of each operation and the ~forms of work required—whether individual or collective, male or female. Next, the amount of social work necessary for the production of fifteen bars has been calculated on the basis of the length of each operation. No difference between male and female work was taken into account and this was permissible since, during the processes in which they participate (cutting, gathering, carrying, and piling grass), the women are practically as efficient as the men. The activities of the

salt specialist (discontinuous attention spread over five days and nights) are more difficult to convert into simple days of work. These have been ‘‘reduced”’ to three days.of simple continuous work.

; After examining Table 1, one notices that every fairly complex job is done by males. This is equally true for the construction of a house, the digging of an irrigation ditch, the installation of pipe-lines, the manufacture of weapons, etc. It also becomes clear that there is somewhat more collective than individual work and that the number of people working together is quite small, varying from two to ten. Altogether, salt production requires the participation of eight to ten men and eight to ten women, which is to say about twenty people. What effect did the introduction of steel tools have on the traditional forms of production

based on stone technology? Without going into detail it can be noted that this technological change has only reduced the time required for cutting the salt grass and the firewood. Before ~ 1940, salt grass was cut with long bamboo knives and the wood was cut with stone adzes. It can be

Godelier | “SALT CURRENCY” IN NEW GUINEA 57

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Salt is a luxury commodity, but is it a “money’’? In order for a commodity to function as money, it must be possible to exchange it for the totality of the other commodities, it must work | as their general equivalent. Turning again to Table 3, let us take the example of the circulation of a cross-belt of pig’s teeth. It cannot be exchanged for a stone axe or for a pig, either dead or alive: It could perhaps be exchanged for feathers but the possibilities of converting it into another product end there. Its circulation is ascribable to the most current barter and, if it is a commodity, it is certainly not a money. Stone axes and pigs could conceivably be converted into any other sort of commodity but this is, in fact, not possible because they are too scarce.’ On the other hand, salt alone can undergo (enter into) all the possible conversions. It therefore functionsas money. — When they are converted into—exchanged for—salt, bird of paradise feathers, stone axes, and even the services of a sorcerer, become, to some extent, comparable. Salt, in the form of bars, large or small, always divisible, is a convenient unit of measurement for the sake of computation. Its careful packaging makes it easily transportable and allows it to keep for years. Salt is therefore a general equivalent, the medium essential to give one access to all socially available and necessary commodities. “‘General equivalent’? does not mean “universal equivalent,’’ however, since the items of daily consumption, sweet potatoes, taros, etc., land, and labor are not commodities and remain beyond the sphere of exchange involving “salt money.”’ And salt is this general equivalent not only for the Baruya but also for their neighbors, for example the Youndouyé, who had — first to come and convert their bark capes into Baruya salt before exchanging the salt for the stone axes of the Awa and Tairora tribes. Baruya salt is therefore a primitive form of money and precisely because it is “primitive,” this money offers us an exceptional opportunity to explore the mysteries of the theory of value. What is the basis of the exchange value of Baruya ‘“‘salt money”: labor or scarcity?

If a Baruya is asked the reasons why he exchanges one salt bar for five or six bark capes and not

for one and two, on the one hand or, more improbably, for eighteen or twenty on the other, the answer is generally given in two parts which in no way exclude each other. He will first of all emphasize that he does not exchange for himself alone but for his wife (wives), his children, his brothers’ children, etc.; that is to say, he refers to the importance of the collective need. At other times, however, he will refer explicitly to the long and difficult work involved in the production of salt. From our own observations, he will, during a trading session, use the first type of argument in order to play on his partner’s emotions: “My children have nothing left to cover their backs with ... etc.” Later, if the partner remains unmoved; he will bring work “‘in consideration.”’ An informant told us one day, ““When we are bargaining, work is the last motive put forward. Work is something belonging to the past and almost forgotten. It is only remembered if the partner is

exaggerating his demands.”’ |

The balance of exchanges is thus primarily regulated by the volume of social necessities. In any given exchange, bargaining determines the equilibrium between supply and demand. If it is felt that for a salt bar the visitor has brought an insufficient number of capes or capes of bad quality, the bar is not given to him. The partner will then add one or two capes to the pile and the bar will be passed over to him. If one of the partners demands too much, the transaction will be broken off. Nevertheless, bargaining is rare and most frequently each partner knows what he has to give in order to receive. Both act as though there were a “‘normal”’ rate, a “‘just price”’ for the items they

are exchanging and this rate is known to all the members of the tribes to which they belong. However, it ought to be pointed out that this rate is not identical for all the tribes. The Wantékia give five large capes and five bark loin-cloths for one salt bar (which corresponds to seven capes) i.e., a Slightly higher rate than the one used by the Youndouye (five or six). This raises numerous

Godelier ] “SALT CURRENCY” IN NEW GUINEA | 67 problems which we can only mention in passing. Even if trade with other tribes was of vital importance to the Baruya, it was continually endangered and interrupted by the fluctuations of. their political relations, alternatively peaceful and warlike. It is one of the reasons explaining why they did not limit their exchanges solely to the groups which offered them the “best price.” Besides, the tribes which gave the highest price were, most of the time, those which had the least

variety of things to offer in exchange, with the exception of the Yoyué whom the Baruya constantly reminded of their common origin, their blood ties (which should forestall meanness). A final reason why some groups exchanged their products with the Baruya at a low rate was their lack of contact and their ignorance, both of the rates agreed upon with the other groups, and of the conditions of salt production. For example, when the Baruya contacted the Watchakés in > order to obtain steel axes, they offered one salt bar for one axe and this rate was accepted until the day when a Baruya man, not having spoken to those who had come before him, and being terrified by the Watchakes who were known to be cannibals, threw three salt bars onto the ground and fled with the axe which was given to him. He had applied the rate which the Baruya used with the Yoyueé. After that, the Watchakeés refused to exchange an axe for less than three salt bars and the man at fault was insulted for his stupidity and cowardice.

This example is very important because it throws a light on the conditions under which a “normal” rate is determined. A “normal”’ rate could be determined when regular and substantial exchanges existed between foreign (but neighboring) groups who were well aware of the conditions of production or of the efforts which their partners had to make to procure their goods. It is perhaps not by chance that the Baruya depict as “chard” and ‘“‘mean”’ the groups with whom they most often made exchanges (Youndouye, Tchavalié, Kokwayé). However, once the

objective social conditions of the formation of a normal exchange rate has been clarified, what does this rate consist of? Is it the relationship between two equivalent amounts of work, as certain economists, remembering Marx or even Ricardo, would not refrain from hoping? In order to explore this problem, let us take the case of the trade which, at the present time, is the most important and regular, namely that of salt for bark capes between the Baruya and a tribe with whom they are bound by a pact of “‘eternal friendship”: the Kenasé (whom the Baruya call

Youndouye and the Australian administration calls Azana). According to our observations, the production of one great bark cape requires five hours of intense work which can be sub-divided

into three distinct operations (see Table 6). Oo

Every man and woman knows how to make bark capes. There is no specialization of labor | beyond the simple sexual division. The most delicate operation (thinning the bark without tearing it) and the hardest (the beater weighs from 800 to 1000 grams) is done by women. One woman.

can beat one cape and one blanket in one. day, but this represents eight hours of intense and continuous work. If we analyze the exchange of one average size salt bar (Baruya) for six bark capes (Youndouyée) in terms of work, we have: 1 day 1/2 «> 4 days of work

The normal rate of exchange is thus an unequal rate since, in terms of work, the Baruya receive

almost three times more than they give. The normal exchange is not an exchange of labor equivalents. TABLE 6. BARK CAPE: PROCESS OF MANUFACTURE

Nature and order 1. Cut and take the bark 2. Scrape the bark inside 3. Beat the bark with a

of the operations off the tree. and outside witha. stone to soften it. bamboo knife.

male male female

Form of work Individual Individual Individual Time required | . 1/2 hour 1 1/2 hours 3 hours

68 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 Apart from the substitution of steel knives for bamboo—which has practically no effect on the productivity—the process of bark cape production has remained entirely traditional. If we take

two as the number of days required for the Baruya to produce one salt bar (before the introduction of steel tools) the exchange remains unequal: 2 days + 4 days The Baruya are undoubtedly conscious of this fact, since they admit that they “‘gain”’ and it is

the unanimous opinion of their partners that Baruya salt is expensive. Thus, the last question which must be asked in order to explain the basis of the value of salt is this: Since they know each other and have lived at peace with each other, why do the Baruya and the Youndouyé consider as

exchange of social labor)? .

normal this unequal rate of exchange (unequal from our point of view, and in terms of the

We offer the following answer, which is in agreement with the statements of our informants: salt is expensive because it is a “luxury item” the production of which requires both technical and magical knowledge that the neighboring tribes do not possess. That for which the Baruya request payment and for which their partners normally agree to pay, is the monopoly of a double sacrcity, scarcity of a product and scarcity of a knowledge. Following the same logic, the Baruya used to

pay a great deal for certain products which were precious to them, such as stone axes and gamshells. The exchange is fixed at a level which indicates both the need and the work (or the effort necessary to procure a resource), but work seems to play a secondary role: it only defined as a kind of minimum below which the rate of exchange should not go, whereas the need, the scarcity of the product, seems to define the maximum level which it could reach.?8 “Primitive,” therefore, does not mean “‘simple.’’ Primitive reality contains not only the germ of some of the conditions, i.e., of the complexity of the future, but it often shows “developed”’ forms of social practices, the “‘analogue”’ of which is to be found in other periods of historical evolution. This conclusion will be reinforced after the analysis of two other.cases of the exchange of Baruya salt.

The Baruya procured nuts (niaka) from the region of Menyama; when used together with the bark of cinnamon tree, these nuts had the magical power of attracting marsupials ‘en masse”’ along

the path taken by the hunter. These nuts are also sucked during a ceremony by young men who have fathered their first child, in order to purify their mouths and bodies of the dangerous | pollution resulting from sexual intercourse with their wives. In the Menyamya region, these nuts are exchanged for pieces of salt. It seems that the nuts come from the south of Menyamya, in. Papua, where they are gathered by local tribes. This is an example of an object which has a “social utility,” is a commodity and thus has a relatively high “‘price’’ which corresponds only to the labor input consisting in the mere gathering and transporting of the nuts in small quantities. We will close with another example of “complexity.” If a man wished to purchase a young sow from the Yoyue, he had to possess at least four large salt bars (Tchameunie). Most of the time, he would lack one or two bars and would borrow them from a brother or a brother-in-law. Later, when the sow had thrown, he would give a piglet for each borrowed salt bar. If this is translated in terms of salt money, he had borrowed one salt bar and given back the equivalent of two to three bars if the piglet was a male and four or five if it was a female. This corresponds to the practice of an “interest rate’ of 100 to 400 percent. However, this was a rare event, and what has to be noted above all is that nobody, to our knowledge, accumulated salt in order to lend it. This example brings us to the last problem: was the salt exchange among the Baruya motivated by a desire for

profit? |

Exchange—Money and Profit |

The necessary elements for the answer are already at hand and we only need to bring them together. We have seen that in the valley of Wonenara, there is unequal division of salt grounds among the various lineage segments, to the benefit of the first colonizers. This situation does not entail any inequality in the distribution of salt itself since the owners of the ground grant to their

Godelier ] “SALT CURRENCY” IN NEW GUINEA ) 69 relatives, allies, or friends, the right of temporary or permanent use of a part of their salt ground and, above all, because every person who makes salt is obliged to redistribute a portion of it. A widow, an old man, an ophan will receive salt or products which they need like bark capes, knives, etc. The example of the “interest rate’ practiced when salt bars are lent for the purchase of a piglet brings to light a fact that is essential in showing the essence of the process of exchange:

nobody accumulates salt in order to lend it out and make profit from it. Certainly, material advantage and moral prestige are drawn from having lent, but profit is not sought after to the detriment of the debtor. The principle and the aim of these exchanges remain the satisfaction of social needs, consumption rather than profit-seeking. The political authority and the social prestige

of a clan, lineage, or an individual, lie less in the wealth of land or salt than in the ritual and warfare functions and in the number of wives and children. Within the Baruya society, a certain hierarchy of clans and individuals does exist, but nothing like the “big man” of the societies of the western Highlands who manipulates a vast network of men and goods, and certainly nothing which recalls the noble lineages of the Trobrianders or the Polynesian aristocracies.°”

It is the same in regard to the relationship between the Baruya and their trade partners, and does the profit which they draw from certain unequal exchanges mean that one group is being exploited by another? It is not certain that, by giving four or five salt bars for one long barely polished stone blade, the exchange was not unequal to the detriment of the Baruya. It seems to us that the answer is negative for two reasons: Inequality consists, as we have seen, in an unequal exchange of labor.*° Among the Baruya, as among most primitive societies, labor is not a scarce resource. Productive activities, at least as far as men are concerned, take up only a small part of the available time (we estimate that only about one-third of the time is occupied by productive work). In trade between groups, what counts is the reciprocal satisfaction of their needs rather than an even balance in their labor output. For this reason, the inequality of the exchanges shows the comparative social utility of the product exchanges, their unequal importance in the scale of social necessities and the various monopolistic situations of the exchangers’ groups involved. What counts is that there should be enough to satisfy the needs, or, in the words of an informant, “If one receives enough, work is something belonging to the past and forgotten.” We have, therefore, inequality without exploitation of man by man. Baruya salt exchange belongs to the sphere of simple circulation of commodities. It is a case of simple market economy closely bound to a non-market economy based upon individual and collective labor of direct producers redistributing their products along channels of kinship and neighborhood. Can we go even further and indicate the theoretical extrapolations implied by the above analysis? 1) A theoretical study of the mechanisms of the simple circulation of commodities—of circulation motivated by the reciprocal satisfaction of the social needs of groups monopolizing a few scarce products—such a study hardly exists. This theory has to be constructed step by step, but, as of now, it is clear that it will not consist in the simple application of theorems developed to account for the functioning of monopolistic economies motivated by the maximization of profit. Economic anthropology will not be a simple application or extension of these theorems, although

it will borrow any concepts which might be useful. For the borrowed concepts and all the

suggested analogies will have to be confronted with the basic fact that for exchange, production—when it exists in primitive societies—is closely combined with an economy of direct

production and of redistribution of the products along channels of kinship and neighborhood relationships. The aim of economic anthropology is to develop specific concepts to account for: this unique combination of economic and social structures and to discover the law of possible evolution for the different social relationships of production corresponding to different levels of the evolution of technology and given historical conditions. Certainly, this research into the laws of the functioning and the evolution of social structures points to a level of reality which is most of the time invisible and unconscious for the members of primitive societies. (2) Our analysis demonstrates that economic anthropology can only exist if it takes as its own

the standard definition of economic activity as consisting of production, distribution, and consumption of material goods. This definition is the only one which delimits the field of inquiry to subjects proper to economic science. It in no way prejudges the nature of the relations existing

in each type of society between its economic structure and other institutional sub-systems.

70 _ STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 Besides, economic anthropology has mainly to do with relationships of production and distribution which appear directly as aspects of the functioning of relationships of kinship between

- the individuals and groups which form a primitive society. The theory of the relationship of production and exchange in this type of society can not be constructed. independently of the © theory of the multi-functional specific nature of the kinship relationships of primitive societies, (i.e., functioning as economic, political, and ideological relations). Economic anthropology, less than any other part of the science of economics, can not claim that economic rationality exists per se’* and that economic relationships are entirely determined by their own internal laws. (3) What can the formalist school, allied to neo-classical marginal economic theory, bring to economic anthropology? This school no longer specifies the subject matter of economic theory, choosing instead to blend economic activity with activities directed toward the acquisition of power and of knowledge—only covertly reintroducing the “material” definition of economics. Moreover, the formalist school views the individual as the starting point—if not at the center—of theoretical analysis. Yet all those relationships which relate and counterpose groups, as well as. individuals, in the quest for power, knowledge, and wealth, form an essential point of reference in any genuine inquiry about the organization of society. Since Aristotle, at the very least, the role of the individual has been viewed as other than the starting point in social science. At the same time, the formalist school brings a powerful stimulus to economic anthropology in

stressing the important fact that the groups and individuals of which each type of society is composed, seek the satisfaction of their social needs, and develop certain forms of competition in

order to realize them. Yet, here again, it is impossible to apply mechanically the theorems constructed to account for a fictitious competitive economy opposing individuals or firms of a constant number and having equal resources at their disposal. These restrictive hypotheses put the theoretical constructions at the level of simple and ideal mathematical models. If primitive societies do seek to obtain a maximum of satisfaction of their social needs, this quest takes specific forms in specific cases, requiring an appropriate explanation. For instance, if the existence of a “normal” rate of exchange of salt for bark capes is interpreted as an optimal situation, then it has to be noted immediately that the maximization of output or minimization of the labor input does not appear in the minds of those engaged in exchange as the means to reach their aim—namely, the reciprocal satisfaction of needs for goods of differing scarcity. On the other hand, the substitution of steel tools for stone ones clearly shows their will to minimize the labor involved in productive work. And in order to carry out this substitution, the Baruya were obliged to increase their salt production, to look for new partners, and to intensify their exchanges. Hence, they were engaged in processes which modified their society; and if a new equilibrium were to occur, it would require new—and probably unforeseeable—adjustments for the members of Baruya society. Perhaps there is some such single theoretical explanation of these various practices but, to our knowledge, no such theory is available to be borrowed.

- CONCLUSION :

This analysis of the Baruya “‘salt money” thus illustrates our preliminary theoretical comments. For the Baruya, salt is the following: (1) It isa wealth item of a particular nature since, with pigs, it falls under the category of things “good to eat but scarce and essential,’’ namely meat and salt. (2) It isa wealth item, not only because it satisfies certain physical and gustatory needs but also because it is consumed exclusively during the key moments of social life—birth, initiation and marriage—that is to say, during ceremonies and rites celebrating these moments. Salt is thus endowed with all the significance attached to the most solemn and decisive moments in the lives of

the individuals and the group.

(3) Salt is a wealth item because its production can only be brought to completion by the hand

of specialists who possess both the technical and the magical knowledge to insure its crystallization. Fundamentally, it is thanks to the magical powers of the salt specialist that the owners of salt grounds have “heavy and white”’ salt at their disposal, which other tribes covet and

are ready to “pay” a good price to get. |

Godelier] | “SALT CURRENCY” IN NEW GUINEA 71 (4) Salt is a wealth item because, thanks to salt, the Baruya can obtain everything they lack and need to subsist (stone axes), to protect themselves from the cold (bark capes), to adorn themselves (feathers and beads), compensate murder, initiate their daughters and warriors (magical seeds), arm themselves, etc. Salt is therefore precious, because it allows.the Baruya to overcome the limitations

of their resources, limitations imposed by their ecology and economy. Therefore, salt is at the same time a commodity, and a non-commodity produced for others, and an object which people distribute among themselves—i.e., within the group. Insofar as it is the

only commodity which can be exchanged for any other, it plays (with respect to the others), the | privileged role of a currency. Reciprocally, all the goods which can be exchanged for sale become by means of this exchange, commodities and, in this form, leave the neighboring tribes to enter ~ among the Baruya, where they again lose their quality as commodities to become objects to be exhibited or given, just like salt, which is never an object of barter but always one of redistribution

or for gift-giving, an object of social exchange. _ :

This explains why in some Baruya huts, bars of salt almost a generation old, desiccated and black with soot, are hanging above the hearth. For “nothing in the world’? would the owner exchange them or consume them because, for him, they represent the symbol of a friendship long past, or a pact sealed with enemies—a silent language which, in each moment of the present, tells of those things now past which ought not to be forgotten. They are, therefore, no longer good to eat, nor good to exchange, nor good for gifts. They are only “‘good to think about.”

| NOTES a

‘The data for this study were collected during fieldwork in New Guinea 1967-1969. The research was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. The author is also indebted to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for a personal grant. A more descriptive version of this study has been published in L’Homme, Vol. IX, No. 2, 1969:5-37. The author is grateful to Mrs. Jablonko, Miss Challonge, and Professor Sidney Mintz for their kind

help in translation. | | * Boas, “The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians,”’ Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1895, Washington, 1897 pp. 341-359.

* Malinowski—1921—“The primitive Economics of _the Trobiand Islanders,’’ Economic Journal : 31, pp. 1-15; ““Kula”’ in Man art. 51, 1920-1921. .

1968. _ | | 346, 881. |

* Mauss, ‘‘Eissai sur le Don, forme archaique de |’échange,”’ Année Sociologique, 1923-1924. | > Firth, art. “Currency, primitive,” and ‘‘Trade, primitive,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, pp. 345,

° Kinzig, Primitive Money, Hire, Spottiswoode, 1948. , Polanyi, “The Semantics of Money-Uses,” in: Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies,

> Dalton, ‘‘Primitive Money,’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 67, 1965, pp. 44-65. | ” Sahlins, ‘‘On the sociology of primitive exchange,’ in: The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology A.S.A. Monographs, New York, Praeger, 1965. : ° Herskovits, Economic Anthropology, New York, A. Knopf, 1952, pp. 487-488. '! Goldmann, “The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island,” in: Cooperation and competition among

primitive peoples, 1937.

12 Moore, ‘““Labor attitudes toward industrialization in Underdeveloped Countries,’’ American

Economic Review, n45, 1955, pp. 156-165.

‘3 Forde, ‘Primitive Economics,” in Man, Culture and Society, N.Y. Oxford Press, p. 342..

Especially: L. Lancaster, ‘‘Credit, épargne et investissement dans uné économie non monétaire,”’ Archives Européennes de Sociologie, III, 1961, pp. 156-165. 1“ Dalton, art. cité, p. 59. 'S Davenport, “Red Feather Money,” Scientific American, Vol. 206, March 1962, pp. 94-105. 16 A Senft, ‘““Ethnographische Beitrage uber Karolinen-Insel Yap,” in Dr. A. Petermann’s Mitteilungen, 1908, pp. 50-151, and W.H. Furness, The Island of stone money, Philadelphia, 1910, . 96.

-_ TK, Polanyi, Arensberg, Pearson, in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Glencoe, 1957.

18. Godelier, “Objet et méthodes de l’Anthropologie Economique,” in L’Homme, V, n 2, 1965, and Rationalité et Irrationalité en Economie, Paris, Maspero, 1966, pp. 262-279. '? Kinzig, Primitive Money, pp. 24-25.

72 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 20 Sahlins, “Exchange value and the Diplomacy of Primitive Trade,” American Ethnological Society, 1965 annual meeting, pp. 95-129. *1 See how the concept of capital is used by Salisbury in From Stone to Steel, Melbourne, 1962, and our analysis in “‘Economie politique et Anthropologie économique,” in L’Homme, IV, n

4, 1964, pp. 118-132, and Bessaignet, “An Alleged case of primitive money,’ Southwestern

Journal of Anthropology, 1956, pp. 383-345. 22To be mentioned, among other cases: the Tolai of New Britain: cf. T. S. Epstein, ‘‘European

contact and Tolai economic development. A Schema of Economic Growth,” in Economic Development and Cultural Change, April 19638, pp. 283-307, and R. Salisbury, ‘‘Politics and

Shell-Money finance in New Britain,” in Political Anthropology, Aldine, 1966, pp. 113-128. *° Davenport, ‘‘When a primitive and a civilized money meet,” Proceedings of the American Ethnographical Society, Spring Meeting Symposium, Seattle, 1961, pp. 64-68. 2*On the gift and commerce in Homeric times, see: M. Finley, The World of Odysseus, Viking Press, N.Y., 1954, Chap. 8; E. Will, ““De lVaspect éthique des origines grecques de la monnaie,”’

nom:le commerce.’’ | a Revue Historique, 1954, pp. 212-231, and Benveniste, Le Vocabulaire des institutions

Indo-Européennes, 1969, t. I, Chap. 2: “Donner et prendre,’ and Chap. II: “Un mé€tier sans — *>The use of salt ought to be compared in various societies and various periods. See Mahieu, Numismatique du Congo, 1924, p. 57, and on salt bars in Abyssinia, Salviac, ‘‘Les Galla,”’

Geographical Journal, 1901, p. 159. : |

Press, 1966. =

2° The Baruya were discovered by J. Sinclair in 1951. He calls them Batia in his book, Behind the Ranges (ch. 3: ‘‘The Saltmakers’’). Cf. J. Sinclair, Behind the Ranges, Melbourne, Melbourne Univ.

27S. A. Wurm, ‘Australian New Guinea Highlands Languages and the Distribution of their Typological Features,’ Amer. Anthrop., New Guinea, August 1964, pp. 77-97. 283 Pp. Murray, Papua or British New Guinea, T. Fischer-Unwin, 1912, pp. 170-171.

*°Cf. Demaitre, New Guinea Gold: Cannibals and Goldseekers in New Guinea, London,

Geoffrey Bles, 19386. The only scientific publications concerning the Kukukuku are B. Blackwood’s: ‘“‘Use of Plants among the Kukukuku of Southeast Central New Guinea,” Proceedings

of the Sixth Pacific Science Congress, Berkeley, IV, 1939, pp. 111-126, “The Technology of a | Modern Stone Age People in New Guinea,”’ Oxford, Pitt-Rivers Museum, 1950 (60 p.). Signalons H. Fischer, ‘‘Ethnographien von der Kukukuku,’’ Baessler Archiv 7 (neue-Folge), pp. 99-122; description of a collection of the Hamburg Museum, that has been collected by a missionary, J. Maurer.

5° Cr. J. M. Meggitt, “Salt Manufacture and Trading in the Western Highlands of New Guinea,”’ The Australian Museum Magazine, XII, 19,1958, pp. 309-313. 31A. Freund, E. Henty, M. Lynch, ‘‘Salt Making in Inland New Guinea,” in Transactions, 1965, Papua and New Guinea Scientific Society, pp. 16-19; Herskovits, M., Economic Anthropology, Knopf, 1952.

52In their language the Baruya distinguish moumbié, to barter and also buy and sell, from

yanga, to give; the generous man is the one who shares. |

°°This type of market (space and transaction), functioning sporadically each time that a seller appears, can be added to and contrasted with currently distinguished markets, the periodic or

permanent markets (for example the Halles of Paris). One could easily correlate these market types with the volume and diversity of transactions. P. Bohannan and G. Dalton 1965:1-32.

Nicholson, 1967. . |

54 rom A. L. Rand and E. T. Gillard, Handbook of New Guinea, London, Weidenfeld and

*°Deluz and Godelier 1967:78-91. “A propos de deux textes d’Anthropologie Economique,”’ L’Homme VU, 3:7-91.

3°When, for the first time, the Baruya were paid with coins, they could not understand the utility of these objects. Some threw the coins into the bush, others pierced them and hung them round their neck like shells. However, as soon as a store was opened in Wonenara where, for cash, they could buy shorts, shirts, canned goods, chewing gum, etc., they had no more doubt at all as to the usefulness of coins. Perhaps the first anecdote explains why the Baruya use the same term for european money as they use for their own cowrie shells: nounguyé; no informant could explain the reason for this assimilation. It should also be pointed out that, when they want to explain the value or functions of salt, the Baruya like to compare it with the “‘big money’”’ of the

White, i.e. with the pound notes or dollar bills. |

37This merits separate treatment which would go beyond the limits of this paper. 381¢ should be pointed out that Marx clearly indicated the restrictive conditions in which, in a developed market economy, commodities are exchanged. To correspond approximately to their

value, it is necessary that: (1) The exchange of the various commodities ceases being purely

fortuitous or purely occasional; (2) Insofar as direct exchanges of commodities is considered, these

commodities are produced on both sides in quantities corresponding approximately to the

Godelier | “SALT CURRENCY” IN NEW GUINEA 73 reciprocal needs ... (3) Insofar as sale is considered, no natural or artificial monopoly makes it possible to one of the contracting parties, to sell above the value or forces this party to sell below the value (Capital, III, I:193-194; underlined by M. Godelier). cf. also Godelier, 1964, Theorie marginaliste et theorie marxiste de la valeur et des prix: quelques hypothéses. Problemes de planification. Paris, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 3 mai 1964. 3° Sahlins 1963:285-303 and 1965, Sahlins, M, ‘Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political

Types in Melanesia and Polynesia,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, 1963 pp. 285-303, see also from the same author: 1965, “On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange,” in The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology. M. Banton (ed.), New York, Praeger. In the Baruya language the category “‘labor”’ is not an abstract notion without reference to

the concrete activity being performed. The verb waounié, to work, to make, is always used in a practical context: to make a house, salt, a fence, etc. Let us remember that Marx added, after

having emphasized the huge progress made by A. Smith when the latter broke out of the

Physiocrats’ philosophy and defined the notion of work alone, independent of its concrete forms: agricultural work (the only productive work according to the Physiocrats), manufacturing work, commerical work. _

41M. Godelier, 1966:17-19. Rationalité et irrationalité en économie, Paris, Maspero.

I.

oD

Commerce in the Dark Ages: A Critique of the Evidence! — PHILIP GRIERSON, M.A., F. R. Hist. S. -

GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE oo

WHEN PIRENNE contributed an article entitled ‘Mahomet et Charlemagne’ to the first issue - of the Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire in 1922,” he can have little realized how the ideas he there put forward were to be developed. His paper was designed as a protest against the traditional and deep-rooted conviction of western scholars that Latin Christendom was the direct and almost

the sole heir of classical antiquity. Its argument was the now familiar one that Greco-Roman society survived with little change the shock of the Germanic invasions, and that it was only the appearance of Islam upon the scene that pushed the centre of Latin Christendom away from the Mediterranean and made possible the emergence of a new cultural unit based upon the land mass

of western Europe. Medieval Christendom was not a continuation of the Roman world but something new, and Muhammed was a necessary precursor of Charlemagne.

In his first formulation of this point of view, Pirenne was not particularly concerned with economic issues, but he did argue that even after the invasions the west remained under the | economic dominance of the east. Jewish and Syrian merchants continued to provide it with luxury goods, and it was through their intermediacy that it received the papyrus used in its chancelleries . and the gold necessary for its coinage. Economic emancipation did not occur till the end of the Merovingian period, and when it did occur, it was almost synonymous with economic collapse.

Such opinions were not likely to pass unchallenged, and as discussion of Pirenne’s views developed, economic and social considerations came more and more to the fore. Statistical evidence could not be hoped for: for the centuries in question there was a total absence of commercial documents, of customs and taxation records, of gild regulations, of detailed trade agreements, of the innumerable sources from which we can piece together something like a credible picture of the nature, direction and volume of commerce during the last four centuries of the Middle Ages. The west provided one with nothing comparable even to such Byzantine sources

as the Book of the Prefect or the Rhodian Sea Law, unless the Capitulare de Villis could be regarded as coming into such a category. In the absence of quantitative evidence, such scraps of qualitative evidence as were available had to do. Chronicles, ecclesiastical biographies, Miracula and Translationes of relics, royal and episcopal correspondence, monastic privileges and concessions, Carolingian capitularies and Anglo-Saxon law codes were ransacked for references to traders and trade. Archaeology and in particular numismatics were brought in to help, since they provided much information on the distribution of coin and of certain other types of manufactured articles.

The net result by now, thirty-five years after the opening of the great debate, is the very widespread impression that Pirenne and his critics were almost equally wrong. Commerce in the Dark Ages was much more considerable in volume than has been generally allowed, even if less highly organized than it was to be in later centuries.” This view I believe to be largely incorrect. It results in the main from the failure to distinguish between three different types of evidence: (i) evidence of the existence of traders, i.e. of persons

Grierson ] COMMERCE IN THE DARK AGES ) 75 making their living by commerce; (ii) evidence of trade, in the narrow sense of the sale of specialized or surplus goods directly by producer to consumer without the intervention of any

third party; and (ili) evidence for the distribution by unspecified means of goods, particularly | luxury goods, and money. The confusion between the first two categories is not perhaps very important, but that between trade and distribution, and still more the habit of treating evidence of the distribution of luxury goods and coin as if it were nothing more than supplementary evidence of the existence and activity of traders, is of a serious character. It involves the error of reading

history backwards—or in this case also forwards: of assuming that because material goods were later, as they had been in Roman times, distributed largely by the agency of trade, the same was | necessarily the case in the Dark Ages. Even the briefest reflection must show that this is scarcely likely to have been the case. The whole approach, that of accumulating evidence for the existence of trade instead of trying to form an overall picture of how and to what extent material goods changed ownership, is in itself profoundly misleading and can-only result in conclusions that are

far from the truth. | II

The confusion between ‘traders’ and ‘trade’ need not delay us for long. Mercator and negotiator were elastic terms. They could cover a quidam pauperculus hawking a mule-load of salt between

Paris and Orléans, or two petty traders in the Saturday market at Fleury quarrelling over a shilling,” just as effectively as rich Syrian or Jewish traders who dealt in slaves and spices or wealthy merchants at Mainz who bought corn in the upper Main valley and sold it in the Rhineland. The merchants of Verdun who are found specializing in the slave trade in the ninth and tenth centuries, shipping their unhappy merchandise from eastern Europe or Britain as far afield as

Spain and Constantinople, may well have vied in wealth with some of their counterparts in the Islamic.or Byzantine worlds. Merchants of these various types, ranging from pedlars to rich traders

but alike in the fact that commerce was their profession and means of livelihood, existed throughout the Dark Ages. Only their numbers and character, and to some extent the regions in

which they operated, altered with the passage of time. | The mercatores dealt mainly, though not exclusively, in goods that were to some degree luxuries; only exceptionally did they deal in corn or clothing. The ordinary surplus of a great ) estate, the eggs and chickens and the fish from the fish ponds which the lord’s household did not need and which the steward in the Capitulare de Villis” is told to use his discretion over selling,

would go to the local market; only when an estate was of a specialized character, possessing vineyards or salt deposits or minerals, were professional mercatores likely to be interested in its produce. The development of this local buying and selling can probably be related to the transition from gold to silver as a medium of exchange in the last quarter of the seventh century. The spread of a silver coinage in regions where no coin had previously circulated—Mercia and Wessex in the ninth century, Germany and east central Europe in the tenth—is intimately connected with its further extension.

The development of markets—and grants of moneta are closely associated with those of mercatum publicum and teloneum—is one of the most noticeable features of the economic history of the ninth and tenth centuries, but while recognizing the importance of the mutual buying and

selling of surplus farm produce or peasant handicrafts, we must be careful to distinguish its | economic consequences from those of the activities of the mercatores. Such exchanges might in varying degrees raise the standard of life of those participating in them, but they would only rarely serve as a stimulus to increasing output and to saving and investment. It is here that the activities of the mercatores left their mark: they injected the element of a profit motive into a society so organized as to exclude it from many aspects of its daily life. Mr. Southern has with characteristic felicity described the far-reaching consequences of ‘the taste for spices and the charm of luxuries’: it was to satisfy this taste that merchants travelled, sailors perished, bankers created credit and peasants raised the numbers of their sheep. As so often happens, the secondary effects are more interesting than the primary ones: ... the activities and organization which existed to satisfy the demands of the relatively few coloured the whole history of the Middle Ages, and are the foundations of modern commerce and industry.°

76 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 One of my colleagues, a specialist on the economy of underdeveloped countries, has commented to me on the insight displayed in this passage, since in regions as far apart as west Africa and Malaya he had again and again seen the same process at work at the present day.

In dealing with the economic life of the Dark Ages, therefore, there are good reasons for keeping these two types of trade separate from one another. The undoubted importance of the Vikings in the economic development of Europe’ has often been attributed to their interest in trade and supported by somewhat unconvincing parallels between their activities and those of Elizabethan buccaneers in whose enterprises no hard and fast line between piracy and commerce can be drawn. The situation of the two was in fact very different. The background in the one case was a society with a money economy in which the profit motive, if not dominant, played at least a leading role; in the other it was a society in which coined money did not even exist and money and the concept of mercantile profit were alike in an embryonic stage. The reputation of the Vikings as

traders depends very largely on archaeological evidence, which is ambiguous, or on the misinterpretation of such texts as that which describes their first landing at Dorchester, when they were taken for peaceful merchants instead of pirates.® It is true that Franks had to be prohibited from selling them arms and horses’ and that Danegeld sometimes included a demand for wine as well as gold and silver,'° but these objects were obviously required for use, not for sale. This was trade, if you like, but it scarcely proves that the Vikings were traders. Their importance in the history of European commerce resulted, it seems to me, from quite different considerations: by their accumulation of treasure they naturally encouraged enterprising merchants to attempt to relieve them of it by offering them goods in exchange. These hopes were sometimes disappointed, as in the case of the luckless merchants who made their way into Asselt in 882 hoping to trade with the victors and were massacred for their pains.’+ Even in the case of such acknowledged trading centres as Hedeby and Birka we do not know how far the ‘trade’ was in Viking hands or how far their influence extended. Furthermore, in recognizing the existence of traders and of trade, we must also remember that purchase was not the ‘natural’ way in which a household in the Dark Ages strove to satisfy its needs. Its ambition was to become as self-sufficient as possible. Lesser households could not hope to match the range of produce envisaged in the Capitulare de Villis, but the desire to do so was a universal one. The efforts made by monasteries to acquire ‘propriétés excentriques’ which would

supply them with wine or salt or wax was not characteristic of the Carolingian era and a contracting economy, as Van Werveke argued;'” it was natural and reasonable in itself and examples of it can be found in any of the centuries for which a reasonable documentation exists.!? Buying was only resorted to when all else failed. Kinhard might resign himself to paying £50 for the lead required to cover the roof of his church at Seligenstadt,'* but Servatus Lupus preferred to write directly to the king of Wessex and a court official named Felix and beg for the metal he wanted as a gift. Merchants would thus be excluded from the transaction; the lead would be paid for not in material wealth but in the promise of prayers, and the abbot arranged to send his serfs to the mouth of the Canche to collect the lead and bring it by barge to the abbey.’ > Similarly,

: Il : , when Pope Adrian I was promised a thousand pounds of lead for the repair of the roof of St. Peter’s, he requested Charlemagne to have it sent in hundred-pound packages in the baggage of court officials who happened to be visiting Rome, instead of arranging its transport by the care of traders.'° In both these transactions we are in the presence not of commerce but of a form of gift-exchange to which we will return in a moment.

Distortion of the picture arises less from the confusion of traders with trade than from the

assumption that goods and money necessarily passed from one hand to another only by means of trade. Here we come up squarely against the archaeological evidence, which in its very nature substitutes inference for explanation. It has been said that the spade cannot lie, but it owes this merit in part to the fact that it cannot speak. There is of course some written evidence, such as references to silks, spices, ivories and similar objects in the inventories of monastic possessions or

in the correspondence of the time. But the evidence is mainly archaeological: the finding of

Grierson | COMMERCEIN THE DARK AGES , 77 Byzantine coins and silver plate in such hoards as Pereshschepino and Sutton Hoo, of ‘Coptic’ bronze bowls and Frankish brooches in England, of Islamic silver coins in gigantic quantities in ) eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The importance of this type of evidence has grown enormously in recent years, since archaeological advances in the last half-century now enable us to speak with greater assurance than was previously possible on the dates and places of origin of many of the objects that have been found. Almost all scholars who have written about them have assumed that

they reached their destination through the medium of trade. This is particularly true of numismatists, whose approach to the whole subject is sometimes one of singular naivety. Walter Havernick, perhaps the most distinguished living German numismatist, virtually assumes that even

coins of an exceptional character, like the gold solidi of Louis the Pious, were produced for commercial reasons and that since they were distributed in the normal course of trade it is possible to draw valid conclusions regarding trade routes from studying the localities in which they have been found.’ ’ One of the best of English numismatists can write, of a silver coin of Athalaric found at Brighton, that ‘this piece can have journeyed hither only by the slow process of trade. In

this way it might have taken upwards of a century to reach Britain’ °—and this despite the fact that the coin was quite fresh and.in good condition when it was found. The most recent work on the economic life of the Dark Ages, Professor A. R. Lewis’s The Northern Seas,‘” takes it for granted that trade, and trade alone, was responsible for the distribution of goods and coins in the centuries with which he deals.” ° -

IV

Such a view is altogether too narrow, and prejudges too many issues. There are other means whereby goods can pass from hand to hand, means which must have played a more conspicuous part in the society of the Dark Ages than they would in more settled and advanced periods. They can be characterized most briefly as ‘theft’ and ‘gift’, using ‘theft’ to include all unilateral transfers — of property which take place involuntarily—plunder in war would be the commonest type—and ‘gift’? to cover all those which take place with the free consent of the donor. Somewhere between the two would be a varied series of payments, such as ransoms, compensations, and fines, while such payments as dowries, the wages of mercenaries, property carried to and fro by political exiles,

would all form part of the picture. Our difficulty lies in trying to estimate their relative

importance. | -

' We need not linger long over the category of ‘theft’. Life in the early middle ages was insecure

in the extreme, and plundering raids, highway robbery and theft in the narrow sense were everywhere of frequent occurrence. There is a curious clause in the laws of Ine of Wessex which seeks to define the various types of forcible attack to which a householder and his property might be subjected: if less than seven men are involved, they are thieves; if between seven and thirty-five, they form a gang; if above thirty-five, they are a military expedition.*’ Such phrases as cum preda or captis thesauris form a regular accompaniment to the accounts of wars in Gregory of Tours

and Fredegarius. Plunder and robbery must be accounted factors of major importance in the 7 distribution of valuables in the Dark Ages, and would sometimes be effective over a considerable area. Gifts from the plundered Avar treasure were sent to English kings and bishops as well as to favoured recipients throughout the Frankish kingdom,’* and much of the plate and many of the silks and oriental embroideries which occur in ninth-century ecclesiastical inventories had probably passed through Avar hands.

Almost equally important, and in their total bulk far overshadowing transfers of bullion for

commercial purposes, were payments of a purely political character. These might be war indemnities, annual tributes, ex gratia payments intended to keep a potentially troublesome neighbour in a good humour, or the purchase of services under specific circumstances and on carefully defined conditions. The distribution of gold, in particular, must have been largely influenced by the political payments which bulk so large in the history of Byzantine foreign relations from the fifth century onwards. Theodosius II, for example, was compelled in c. 430 to promise an annual tribute of 350 lbs. of gold a year to the Huns, a figure which was doubled in 435 and sextupled—with a lump payment of 6000 lbs.—in 443, the consequent payment of 2,100

: 78 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 lbs. a year continuing down to the accession of Marcian.** His successors were only to a slight - degree more fortunate, and if Germans and Avars were normally less well placed to bring pressure on the empire than the Huns had been, the tradition of tribute continued throughout the sixth and well into the seventh century. We find Maurice paying 50,000 solidi to Childebert II in the hopes of enlisting his aid against the Lombards,”?* while the exarch of Ravenna had to buy off the © attacks of the latter by an annual tribute to 300 lbs. of gold.*° Similar payments, sometimes in one direction and sometimes in the other, played a major part in Byzantine-Arab relations, and the huge sums involved in such transactions—the 6000 lbs. of gold paid to the Huns in 443 would have amounted to nearly half a million solidi—must have largely determined the distribution of

bullion between the Byzantine empire and its neighbours. .

Political payments of a similar character were also effective within the barbarian world ‘itself. Witigis paid the Franks 2000 lbs. of gold in the hope of securing their neutrality in the Gothic war.”° At one moment, in the late sixth century, the Lombards were paying the Franks an annual tribute of 12,000 gold solidi.2” It was probably a Beneventan tribute paid in gold ‘that made possible the scanty gold coinage of Louis the Pious.*° The payments of Danegeld by the Franks and Anglo-Saxons were at a later time responsible for the transfer of comparable sums in silver from one part of western Europe to another. Works of art, as well as coin or metal in ingot form, sometimes passed to and fro in a similar fashion. It is notorious that many of the surviving gold medallions of the later empire have been found in Germanic territory and probably reached it by way of gift,’?’ like the gold medallions of Tiberius II which Chilperic I showed with pride to Gregory of Tours.°° When the Visigothic king Sisenand revolted against Swinthila and asked help from Dagobert, he promised in returnan immense gold missorium, part of the royal treasure of the Goths, which weighed 500 lbs. and had been given by Aetius to King Thorismund two hundred years before. In the end, the Gothic nobles vetoed its alienation, and Dagobert had to content himself with 200,000 gold solidi instead.°’ Two further facets of diplomatic intercourse, the exchange of gifts between rulers and the expenses of embassies, must not be overlooked. The interchange of gifts can be regarded as a survival of gift-exchange, and will be referred to later. The payment of the expenses of envoys was an extension of the custom of hospitality, but served the not unimportant functions of gratifying and impressing potentially friendly individuals and allowing suspicious governments to exercise some control over their activities. The sums involved were often enormous. Procopius estimated the total lavished by Justinian on a Persian ambassador, including his expenses within the empire.

and what he was able to take home with him, at 1000 lbs. of gold,’? and Constantine Porphyrogenitus gives the precise reckoning of the payments in silver, amounting to over a million

miliaresia, which were made to the Russian princess Olga on the occasion of her visit to Constantinople in 957.°° A substantial proportion of these sums would no doubt be recovered in the form of gratuities before the envoys departed, but much of it would normally leave the empire

in the form of either bullion or luxury ‘goods.°* In the case of Olga’s embassy, the miliaresia

| brought back to Russia must have exceeded the total number of Byzantine silver coins found in

that country many times over. ) ) Sums paid in ransoming captives formed likewise an element of great importance in the life of

the early Middle Ages. A successful raid into the Byzantine empire would be followed by complex negotiations regarding the fate of those who had been carried off, while towns and cities might have to buy immunity during the actual campaign. Enormous sums of money might change hands in this way. Procopius has recorded the levies of Chosroes on the cities of Syria during the Persian wars of-Justinian: 2000 lbs. of silver on Hierapolis and Beroea, 1000 lbs.of gold on Antioch, 1000 lbs. of silver on Apamea, 200 lbs. of gold on Chalcis, 200 lbs. of gold and later a further 500 Ibs. on Edessa.°° Such huge figures were no doubt exceptional, and it is probable that in the relations between Byzantium and the west, and within Latin Christendom itself, personal ransoms were as a

whole of rather greater significance. A solidus per head was the common reckoning at Constantinople, though it might be higher or lower on occasion: when Maurice broke off negotiations with the khagan of the Avars for the ransom of over 12,000 captured soldiers, they were priced at only 4 keratia—a sixth of a solidus—apiece.’° Individuals of any importance were naturally worth a great deal more. When Isaac Comnenus, duke of Antioch and brother of the

Grierson | COMMERCE IN THE DARK AGES 79 future emperor Alexius, was captured by the Seljuqs in the reign of Michael VII, a sum of 20,000

nomismata had to be paid for his release,>’ and the ransom of Romanus IV after the battle of Manzikert was reputed to be a million or even a million and a half nomismata. At Byzantium, amid : a mass of legislation forbidding the alienation of church property, an exception is always made causa redemptionis captivorum; cum non absurdum est, in the words of the Code of Justinian, animas hominum quibuscumque causis vel vestimentis praeferri.°* Probably many of the articles

of silverware which left the empire in the sixth and seventh centuries did so for the ransom of prisoners; one remembers that a silver dish in the Pereshschepino hoard had previously belonged to a bishop of Tomi,*’ and Priscus tells us how a far-sighted bishop of Sirmium set aside the sacred vessels of his church to ransom him in the event of his capture during the campaigns of Attila.

The payment of mercenaries must also not be forgotten. In the later Roman period we hear mainly of the services rendered by neighbouring tribes, or on occasion by the Huns, to such leaders

as Stilicho and Aetius, but we are ignorant of the precise figures for which they were hired. Individuals—adventurers or exiles—may have come from even further afield; it is reasonable to conjecture that the gold coins of the fifth and early sixth centuries which have been found in considerable numbers in the Baltic region reached there as payment to mercenaries instead of by

trade, as they are frequently assumed to have done.*' One of the clearest examples of such payments to mercenaries dates from the mid-eleventh century. In the late 1040’s there was a sudden spread of Byzantine types in Danish coinage, which up to then had been mainly English in inspiration. It was quite short-lived, starting under Sven Estrithsson (1047-75) during the civil war between him and his predecessor Magnus (1042-47) and ending under St. Cnut (1080-86). But it was intense while it lasted: almost half of the 77 monetary types attributed to Sven Estrithsson are of recognizably Byzantine origin. The explanation is not a sudden expansion of Byzantine trade

with Scandinavia, but the return of Harold Hardrada from Constantinople in 1046 with an immense treasure which, if a gloss in Adam of Bremen can be believed, twelve men could scarcely

lift.*? Its dissemination during the twenty years between his return and his death at | Stamfordbridge provided the models for this whole remarkable series of coins.* ° The compensations and fines of Germanic law would normally result in dissemination of wealth

only within relatively restricted areas, but there would be exceptions, as for example when the men of Kent paid ‘thirty thousands’ to Ine of Wessex in compensation for the death of Mul

and his companions or when Theodore of Tarsus induced Aethelbald of Mercia to pay compensation to Ecgfrid of Northumbria after the death of the latter’s brother at the battle of the Trent.** Dowyries might be important: a Frankish princess took with her fifty waggon-loads of treasure in gold, silver and other valuables when she set out to marry Reccared of Spain.*° The constant movement of exiles to and fro must also not be forgotten. Lombard exiles in Bavaria, Frankish exiles in Ireland, Northumbrian exiles at the court of Charlemagne would rarely be entirely penniless, and the feuds of the Germanic world must have frequently contributed to the

transfer of jewellery and personal valuables from one country to another. : Last but not least, though perhaps the most likely to be overlooked, is the survival in early medieval society of the phenomenon known to anthropologists as gift-exchange.* ° The custom of present-giving is only vestigial in modern society, confined to such occasions as Christmas and Easter and to birthdays and other anniversaries, but in earlier times it was a major form of social activity, serving a function analogous to that of commerce in securing the distribution of goods — and services. Such gifts would not be one-sided, for social custom required that every gift had to be compensated sooner or later by a counter-gift, or by equivalent services if persons of different : social status were involved. This mutual exchange of gifts at first sight resembles commerce, but its

objects and ethos are entirely different. Its object is not that of material and tangible ‘profit’, derived from the difference between the value of what one parts with and what one receives in exchange; rather it is the social prestige attached to generosity, to one’s ability and readiness to lavish one’s wealth on one’s neighbours and dependents. The ‘profit’ consists in placing other people morally in one’s debt, for a counter-gift—or services in lieu of one—is necessary if the recipient is to retain his self-respect. From this point of view, indeed, the relationship between the

Church and its benefactors can be regarded as involving no more than a particular form of |

80 _ STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 gift-exchange, the counter-gift taking the form of prayers for the souls of the donor and his family. The practice of gift-giving is naturally most strongly found in the period of the invasions and

the barbarian kingdoms, where society had altered less from its primitive Germanic pattern. Tacitus had long before recorded the peculiar pleasure which Germanic chieftains took in the — receiving of presents from neighbouring states, such objects as fine horses and armour, or metal discs and collars,’ ’ and there is a striking passage in Beowulf in which Hrothgar bids farewell to the hero, praising him for the peace he has brought about between the Danes and the Geats, so that in the future gift and counter-gift can be freely exchanged between the two peoples:

There shall be, while I rule this spacious kingdom,

Interchange of treasure: many with good things a Shall greet one another across the gannet’s bath; And over the deep the ringed ship shall carry Gifts and love-tokens.* 8

Again and again, in Anglo-Saxon literature and in northern sagas, the giving of gifts and the generosity of a ruler is singled out for the highest praise. In the preface to Wulfsige’s copy of the Old English translation of Gregory’s Dialogues the bishop describes Alfred as ‘the best ring-giver’ he has ever heard of amongst earthly kings,*” and in such poems as the Battle of Maldon the relationship of mutual obligation created by gift-giving is one to which appeal is made again and again. Meanness vies with cowardice as the most shameful of human defects; the miserliness of the Scylding Prince Hrethric, son of the generous Hrothgar, earns him the nickname Hnauggvanbaugi, ‘the niggard with rings’, in the Old Norse royal list (Langfeogatal).°° The wealth amassed with

insatiable cupidity by Merovingian kings>’ was not intended to defray the expenses of an elaborate system of government, as was the heavy taxation of Roman times, but was designed to maintain the social prestige of the kings by being lavished on their followers. The custom of gift-giving survived the heroic age, and the correspondence of such men as St. Boniface and Alcuin, as later of Einhard and Servatus Lupus, is full of the passage of gifts to and fro. Often these are objects which would be produced in the household of the donor, or in his monastery if he happened to be an abbot, but they might be luxuries or manufactured goods of some special type. Spices being both valuable and easy to transport were in constant demand, and a number of Boniface’s correspondents at Rome accompanied their letters with such gifts. These

are constantly referred to in the letters which accompanied them as being of a most trifling character—‘small indeed, but given out of heartfelt affection’—but such depreciatory terms should

not delude us into believing their values were as slight as the donors pretended. The hawk, two falcons, two shields and two spears which Boniface sent to King Aethelbald of Mercia®* cannot really have merited the description of them as ‘those trifling gifts’ (munuscula), and the presents of spices must always have been costly. No doubt they represent a development in the direction of the modern custom of gift-giving, where the gifts are of the nature of tokens, but they have not yet reached that point. Nor were men reluctant to ask for what they wanted, however curious or unusual their demands might be. When King Aethelbert of Kent sent Boniface a silver gilt cup weighing 3% lbs. and two woollen cloaks—nonnulla munuscula—he asked the bishop to procure him in return a pair of falcons of a breed, rare in Kent but common in Germany, which would attack cranes.°* We have seen already how such a raw material as lead might form an acceptable gift, * and in any picture which we make of exchange in the early Middle Ages, the phenomenon of gift and counter-gift must be allowed a conspicuous place. V

In attempting to assess the importance of trade in the Dark Ages, then, we have a body of ‘positive’ evidence for the existence of traders and trade, another body of ‘positive’ evidence for the existence of various alternatives to trade, and a third body of ‘neutral’ evidence—mainly archaeological—for the distribution of wealth—goods or coin—by unspecified means. All that we

know of the social conditions of the time suggests that the alternatives to trade were more important than trade itself: the onus probandi rests on those who believe the contrary to have been the case. In a few instances we can say definitely that trade was not involved: for example,

Grierson | COMMERCE IN THE DARK AGES 81 Dr. Adelson’s view that Byzantine light-weight solidi were struck for the convenience of merchants

trading with the Germanic world°> is contradicted by reiterated imperial legislation forbidding merchants on pain of death to export gold from the empire.° © This case, however, is exceptional; in general, we do not know how coins or jewellery or similar objects reached their destinations, and with so many possibilities from which to choose any conclusions that we draw can only be of the most tentative description. Much evidence alleged to ‘prove’ the existence of trade proves nothing of the kind, and in dealing with the Dark Ages, in cases where we cannot prove, we are not . entitled without a careful weighing of the evidence to assume.

NOTES

1 Reprinted from Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, Volume 9, 1959, pp. 123-40, by permission of the author and the Royal Historical Society.

2SIt isRBPH, i(1922), 77-86. | not possible here to attempt a bibliography. Pirenne’s own views were embodied in his

posthumously published Mahomet et Charlemagne (Paris-Brussels, 1937). Two valuable critical studies, concentrating on certain aspects and including much bibliographical material, are R. S. Lopez, ‘Mohammed and Charlemagne: a revision’, Speculum, xviii (1943), 14-38, and D C. Dennett, ‘Pirenne and Muhammad’, ibid xxiii (1948), 165-90. A résumé of the views of Alfons Dopsch will be found in his Naturalwirtschaft und Geldwirtschaft in die Weltgeschichte (Vienna, 1930), pp. 110 seg. Many works on specific topics are referred to below. The most recent general survey is R. Latouche, Les Origines de l’économie occidentale (Paris, 1956). *cf. E. Sabbe, ‘Quelques types de marchands des [Xe et Xe siécles’, RBPH, xiii (1934),

176-87.

1883), pp. 86, 89). |

° Capitulare de Villis, cc. 39, 65 (in Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius, i (Hanover,

R. W. Southern, The making of the Middle Ages (London, 19538), p. 42. 7See particularly A. Bugge, ‘Die nordeuropaischen Verkehrswege im friihen Mittelalter und die Bedeutung der Wikinger ftir die Entwickelung des europaischen Handels und der europaischen Schiffahrt’, Vierteljahrschrift f. Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, iv (1906), 227-77; P. Kletler, Nordwesteuropas Verkehr, Handel und Gewerbe im fruhen Mittelalter (Vienna, 1924); H. Arbman, Schweden und das karolingische Reich. Studien zu den Handelverbindungen der 9. Jahrhunderts (Stockholm, 1937); and the work of Jankuhn referred to below, p. 136, n. For a very sceptical approach, see F’. J. Himly, ‘Y a-t-il emprise musulmane sur |l’é€conomie des états européens du VIIle au Xe siécle?’; Revue suisse d’histoire, v (1955), 35-48. 5 Aethelweard, Chronicon, iii. 1 (in H. Petrie, Monumenta Historica Britannica, i (1848), p. 509). The king’s reeve ordered them to come to Dorchester, putans eos magis negotiatores esse quam hostes. The text does not imply that he believed them to be Scandinavian traders, and the terms of Alcuin’s letter to King Aethelred on the sack of Lindisfarne, in which he expresses his amazement that Scandinavians should have made such a voyage (nec elusmodi navigium fieri posse putabatur), sufficiently shows that they cannot have been regarded as such (Mon. Germ. Hist., Epist. Karolini Aevi, ii. 42). ? Edictum Pistense, c. 25 (in Capitularia, ii. 321). 10 Bg. Annales Bertiniani, a. 866 (ed. G. Waitz, Hanover, 1888, p. 81). 11 Annales Fuldenses, a.882 (ed. F. Kurze, Hanover, 1891, pp. 98-99). Kurze’s identification of Ascloha with Elsloo is incorrect. ‘247 Van Werveke, ‘Comment les établissements religieux belges se procuraient-ils du vin au

haut moyen Age’, RBPH, ii (1923), 643-62; ‘Les propriétés excentriques des églises au haut > moyen-age’, ibid., iv (1925), 136-41. 13 Wan Werveke’s views were criticized by Dennett, op. cit. (above, n. 2), pp. 188-9, who points

out that the grants of vineyards cited date from anywhere between 650 and 1180. He himself regards it as a form of investment. It seems to me that Van Werveke is correct in treating it as an

urge towards greater self-sufficiency, since the grouping together of estates with products complementary to one another is found elsewhere, but that difficulties over purchasing the

commodities had nothing to do with it. | ‘4 Ppistolae, no. 36 (Kpist. Karolini aevi, ili. 128). See H. Van Werveke, ‘Note sur le commerce du plomb au moyen 4ge’, in Mélanges d’histoire offerts a Henri Pirenne (Brussels, 1926), pp. 653-62.

I's Loup de Ferriéres, Correspondance, ed. L. Levillain, ii (Paris, 1935), 70-74. Cf. also below, n.53.

82 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

i(1941), 87.

1© Codex Carolinus, no. 78 (Epist. Karol. aevi, i. 670). 17’ Nicephorus Bryennius, Commentarii, ii. 29 (Bonn edn., p. 99). |

38 Cod. Just.,1.2.21. Cf. Nov. Just., 7.8;65.1; 120.10. 3°T, Matzulewitsch, Byzantinische Antike (Berlin, 1929), no. 6, pp. 101 seq. *° Priscus, Excerpta de legationibus (Bonn edn., pp. 186-7). *! This particular point has been much discussed. T. J. Arne was firmly of the opinion that the

coins left the empire as payment for mercenaries (‘Solidusfynden pa Oland och Gotland’, Fornudnnen, xiv (1919), 107-111; ‘Deux nouvelles découvertes de solidi en Gotland’, Acta Archaeologica, ii (1931), 1-28), a view supported by J. Werner for the Oland but not for the Gotland series (‘Zu den auf Oland und Gotland gefundenen byzantinischen Goldmunzen’, Fornvdnnen, xliv (1949), 257-86). A non-commercial origin seems to me indicated by the

Grierson | COMMERCE IN THE DARK: AGES 83 uncirculated condition of many of the coins and by the dating of the hoards, notably by the

coincidence between the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom and the ending of the Gotland series in the 550’s. H. Jankuhn in his capital study ‘Der frankisch-friesische Handel zur Ostsee im friihen Mittelalter’ (Vierteljahrschrift f. Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, xl (1953), 193-248) regards them as commercial imports. *2 Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, iii. 51, Schol. 84 (Mon. Germ. Hist., Script., vii. 356). The scribe believed that Harold still had at least the bulk of it in his possession at the time of his death, and that it fell to William the Conqueror, which is certainly incorrect. *3 Cf. P. Hauberg, ‘De lVinfluence byzantine sur les monnaies de Danemark au Xle siécle’, Congres international de numismatique (Paris, 1900), pp. 335-45. *4 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Parker MS.), a. 694; Bede, Hist. eccles., iv. 19. -*° Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc., vi. 45 (p. 284). *© The classic study is M. Mauss, Essai sur le don (1925; Eng. transl. by I. Cunnison, The Gift; forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies, 1954). 4 ’ Germania, c. 15, ad fin. *87 1. 1859-63. The translation is that of D. H. Crawford. ase Hecht, Bischofs Waerferth von Worcester Ubersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, i

(Leipzig, 1900), 2. On the identity of the bishop— Wulfsige, not Wulfstan, as it stands in the text—see K. Sisam, Studies in the history of Old English literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 201-2, 225-31. Gold rings were the chief form in which wealth was displayed in the early Germanic period, hence the general use of the word for ‘riches’. 9° Rd. J, Langebek, Scriptores rerum Danicarum, i (Copenhagen, 1772), 5, cited in Dorothy

Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1951), p. 36, n. 4. > Cf R. Doehaerd, ‘La richesse des Mérovingiens’, in Studi in onore di Gino Luzzatto (Milan,

1949), i. 80-46. The urge to accumulate treasure was common to all Germanic rulers.

Amalasuntha’s treasure, sent for safety to Epidamnus, was reputed to include 40,000 lbs. of gold, the equivalent of nearly three million solidi (Procopius, De bello Goth., 2. 26-28: Loeb edn., iii. 22). >? Boniface, Epistolae, no. 69 (ed. M. Tangl, 1916, p. 142). 3 Tbid., no. 105 (pp. 230-1). >* Cf. also Alcuin’s gift of 100 lbs. of tin—presumably lead is meant—to Archbishop Eanbald II of York for covering the bell-tower of the cathedral (Kpist. Karol. aevi, ii. 370). >> Above, n. 20. . °° Cod. Just., 4.63.2; Basilics, 56.1.20. I hope to deal with this question in a forthcoming article in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift.

6

Beggar Moneylenders of Central India! SHIRLEY BIRCH

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN | THE PARDHI on the Deccan Plateau in Central India are beggars, hunters, and gatherers”. who do not buy and sell things with money. They do “‘sell”” money but they do not themselves “buy” it. For they live in a land where socialworthiness determines creditworthiness and Pardhi status is below that of the Harijan (untouchable) in village hierarchies. Yet the lowly Pardhi, despite their status, illegally lend hundreds of thousands of rupees to villagers ranking all the way from Harijan to Brahmin. And despite their moneylending, the Pardhi appear never to spend money on goods and services, on material creature comforts.

This paper is addressed to two questions: How do the Pardhi manage to be beggars and moneylenders at the same time? And how is the Pardhi moneylending system integrated with other financial systems in the Deccan? THE PARDHI IN ACTION?

A tanda (caravan) of Lamani tribals, who enjoy a higher status than the Pardhi, has been camping on a hillside some ten miles above a Deccan town for several hundred years. More recently the Lamani have worked as charcoal makers and carriers two hundred miles away where monsoon rains are heavy, retreating to the hill where rainfall is scant during the monsoons. Some Lamani women and children worked as tenants for Brahmin and Muslim landholders in a nearby village prior to land reforms. The charcoal industry was their only source of income by the early 1960s, when a voluntary developmental agency helped the tanda receive special considerations

which the government accorded groups classified as ‘“‘depressed.”’

In addition to the hillside land and houses, the Lamani received land reclamation loans in 1963 from the District Cooperative Land Development Bank totaling Rs. 6500. Loans were given for

terracing and bundhing land belonging to thirteen households, but only five persons signed mortgages and had their names on the loan records. The installment payment was Rs. 35 per year including interest, the entire sum to be paid off in this manner within ten years (we are concerned with the borrower’s views here rather than with 35 x 138 x 10 = Rs. 4,550). No member paid more than three installments over the six years of the loan.

Just when sowing crops began in July, a group of officials—government, cooperative, bank—arrived by jeep. This group had authority to collect the installments by padlocking houses, selling cooking vessels, taking control of the land or its produce. The threat that really sent the Lamani running here and there trying to raise money was the potential shame of their utensils

being displayed at the District Bank. |

The purpose for which the loans were given had been accomplished. The land had been terraced and bundhed, but the likelihood that its produce would repay the loan was remote unless the right amount of rain came at the right time and topsoil for growing the usual regional crops was brought up in headpacks from streambeds miles away. Money in hand from the proceeds of a harvest, then, was not available to pay the amounts overdue.

| 84. | .

Birch | BEGGAR MONEYLENDERS OF INDIA 85 The officials demanded Rs.1100 immediately, collected Rs.700 by staying until 7 P.M. arguing with villagers and with themselves. Rs.400 was still demanded from two mortgage signers and four’ other unrecorded partners. (The remaining amount overdue was postponed until March along with

a penalty payment, double interest on unpaid installments, and the collection expenses such as

travel costs incurred by the officials.) . ,

Where did the first Rs.700 paid come from? Very little ready cash is kept for purposes other than moneylending in households of the Deccan; such wealth as they have is held in other forms.

Anyone holding Rs.20 is a potential moneylender. Other than a couple of rupees, only one person | seems to have had money that day; he uses money in his work as a Bull Laman in the charcoal industry. The Headman got rupees interest-free from the Bull Laman, who also paid dues for himself and his partner in order not to lose the land which was in the Bull Laman’s name. The rest of the money came from outside the tanda—from the Pardhi. Neither of the two big Pardhi moneylenders known to these Lamani were within two days of the tanda in their village walking circuit. The Lamani therefore took combination loans, that is,

loans put together through a collection of petty sums from several Pardhi in a radius of five to ten ; miles of the tanda. The day the officials came, a couple of ragged patchwork tents of the Pardhi were on the same

ridge as the tanda hill, near the cooperative farm of yet another village. When approached for a loan, the head of the Pardhi camp replied, “‘I am just a poor Pardhi, why would I have money to lend?’’? But he was sympathetic to the plight of his friends, the Lamani, and eventually agreed to try to find other Pardhi with money.” He and the other members of his camp went running about the hills to find Pardhi willing to put rupees in the pool, for no Pardhi puts all his rupees into a single loan or even into a single village.

That day three Lamani raised most of their money from Pardhi at nine or ten percent per Hindu month. The next day the nearby Pardhi knew about the crisis at the tanda and a fourth Lamani had to pay 11 percent. Even so, the rates were concessionary; the Lamani and the Pardhi have “understandings.” Lamani who received Pardhi combination loans repaid them during the

villages.

following month—by refinancing through big Pardhi moneylenders who serve clients in ten to fifty

Had the Lamani not found the Pardhi camped on the ridge the day the officials came, they would not have had to go more than three miles to find Pardhi. For instance, a retired Pardhi moneylender is attached to one of the villages in the valley below. After half the land of this

village had been lost to other moneylenders in nearby villages, these villagers were receptive to the

cooperative movement. The ex-moneylender agreed to become a member of the village’s cooperative farm; his membership was seen as an advantage because Pardhi are classed as depressed

tribals entitled to governmental concessions. Serving as a greeter to visitors at the cooperative farm, the ex-moneylender has become well informed about cooperative credit and various governmental agencies. Otherwise he and his wife live as true Pardhi, with the usual meager tent and dress, and hunt and gather in the vicinity of the cooperative farm. He is an intermediary who sends children to fetch Pardhi lenders and is able to arrange loans; his two older sons have themselves now become big Pardhi moneylenders. THE PROBLEM FOR THE PARDHI MONEYLEN DER

The Pardhi’s difficulties as a beggar-moneylender can be more fully appreciated by first describing the difficulties which beset even “‘respectable’’ moneylenders. Licensed or not (and the Pardhi are not), any moneylender in India faces the basic problem that

his activity incurs social stigma yet requires power in order to collect what is owed to him. The problem from the moneylender’s point of view has been acute in Deccan villages for more than a century. That moneylending itself is unethical becomes a justification for default and sometimes

violence. Moneylenders have lost noses and ears, property, and sometimes life. A licensed professional moneylender described a recent incident to me in the following words: Our family left the village and came to stay in the town as a result of the political campaign to uproot us from our village. Our house was looted, our property was destroyed, and we had to

86 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 flee for our lives. We sustained a loss of about two hundred thousand rupees at the time of this

assault.

At that time, two other families from this informant’s caste, Marwari Jain, were also driven from the village. Yet the Marwari Jains are a powerful group of merchants, traders, and moneylenders in | India. So astute are they in dealing with police, courts, and government, that they coped with half a century of British moneylending reforms; so ritually pure are they that they allow no eggs to be eaten in their homes. But even in the town, they feel the stigma of moneylending which, like original sin, is inherited; their sons are not encouraged to aspire to elective office.

Moneylenders rationalize their activities in some such terms as did another professional

moneylender, a rich Brahmin, who said to me: | ae

Thus you will see that these are not malpractices because all of these transactions are done openly with documents regularly drawn up. Considered from the strict ethical point of view, however, even this is improper. But in that sense all business activity could be classified as being unethical. Only great Saints can follow strict ethical practices. Small men like us living in

a mundane world with family responsibilities cannot help being practical. But he who has genuine devotion and respect towards the Saints is less likely to be inhuman in his dealings with ° his fellow human beings. This is what our family and I have tried to remember—and do pardon

me for these side remarks. ,

Even so, the stigma remains; he has not been able to find suitable husbands for all his daughters. There are limits even to the pressure which higher caste professional moneylenders can exert.

against debtors. Both Jain and Brahmin have high status in terms of ritual purity, power, and wealth. They also have subsidiary occupations that involve monetary transactions which can serve

as a “‘cover’’ for moneylending receipts.

The Pardhi, in striking contrast, is at the bottom of the village hierarchies of ritual purity,

power, and ‘“‘wealth.’® If even licensed high caste moneylenders are driven from villages and lose their assets, how do the bottom-of-the-ladder Pardhi survive? THE PARDHI SOLUTION: ROLES AND RULES

In the social climate of rural India, reinforced by a national policy that calls for ‘ousting the village moneylender,” the operations of the Pardhi depend on creating a semblance of role conflict. Moneylending and other illegal activities of the Pardhi are possible only so long as the Pardhi appear to be destitute and powerless. Even the biggest Pardhi moneylender cannot operate without his cover: that Pardhi tribals are perceived as wretched subservients and clients to others. Pardhi are still perceived by government officials, police officers, outside observers, and villages

as they were almost a hundred years ago: . .

They live outside of villages under bamboo frames covered with matting, or under the shade of trees with scarcely any covering. They are wretchedly poor, begging both by day and night, and gather where they hear that a feast is to be given. After the usual dinner hour they go from house to house to pick up the remains of the food. Not satisfied with what they get by begging

they rake the spots where the dinner plates and fragments of food are thrown and lick the

plates along with dogs and cats, the dogs barking at the beggars and the beggars driving off the dogs with one hand and eating with the other ... They are always in rags or half naked. The

men roll a short waistcloth round their loins and rags of cloth round their heads, and the

women wear a gown and bodice or often a piece of cloth round the loins like the men leaving the bosom bare. They are filthy, shameless, and noisy beggars. They wander in bands of three or four families. The men go first carrying nets and baskets, followed by the women ... and the children with earthen pots and pans. Occasionally there is a bullock or a buffalo loaded | with tattered blankets, baskets, bamboo sticks, and extra nets and mats. They are very skillful in making horse-hair nooses in which they catch birds and beasts ... They do not send their boys to school and are wretchedly poor. [Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency 1855:409]. As beggars the Pardhi are regarded as clients and subservients. In the rigid hierarchies of village India, how can they be moneylenders at the same time, persons who are patrons and superiors? The apparently conflicting roles are made compatible by being rigorously separated. Pardhi moneylending is an illegal business. While a moneylender may grant concessionary loans to village police, he very much fears outside officers. The Pardhi’s best defense were he questioned

Birch ] BEGGAR MONEYLENDERS OF INDIA 87 is the reply, ““How can I be a big moneylender? Look at my tent; look at my wife, my children. Look at how we beg.” To maintain his public image as an impoverished scavenger a Pardhi does not use money as a medium of commercial exchange. “‘I am just a poor Pardhi. Where would I get so much money? The few coins that are given in the cities are not even enough that my daughter can be married.” Pardhi are not supposed to have money to buy their material needs: What have I to sell? Look in my tent. Who would pay money for such things? Who would hire

anything? a Pardhi? People think Pardhi are thieves. Sometimes people hire thieves as for village

watchmen, but Bhils and other thieves are hired, not Pardhi. Villagers also hunt and Pardhi do

not find enough game even to feed themselves. How can I sell anything? How can I buy

Pardhi spend most of their time scrounging for food; they seldom store food for more than a day nor do they usually transport more than a few handfuls of food. Stores of food might attract the attention of the police, the Pardhis say. ““How could we explain where we got so much grain? We are not landholders. We are not cultivators. We would be arrested.’’ Even in the cities which Pardhi cross going from one village to another, begging women and children move toward places where food is being eaten; when food is not in sight, they beg for anything. In cities, at railway stations, and at large fairs and festivals, money may be given to the Pardhi. Money gifts form the initial money capital for moneylending and most Pardhi, even children, have claims to a few rupees. A young man who aspires to be a moneylender sometimes spends a short period in the

city to accumulate starter-money for village operations. ) The moneylending sphere of the Pardhi’s life, in which he is a patron with power to collect what is owed him, is kept separate from the sphere of daily livelihood, in which he is a scrounging client, by two rules: (1) he will neither buy nor sell goods for money; and (2) he will not lend money in the village where he camps. These rules are illustrated by the case of the ex-moneylender who settled in the village as the depressed tribal member of the cooperative. The villagers make joking references to the sahukar (moneylender), but the only item to be found in his tent not mentioned in the nineteenth century description quoted above is an axe which is shared with other tents in the camp. The local villagers react to him as toward a true Pardhi because his wife and tent always maintain the proper public

appearance of utter destitution. This is not unusual in the region. Among caste Hindus, for example, ritual purity is maintained by the wife’s not eating meat, by the man’s not bringing meat

home to eat. So long as the man does not get a reputation as a beefeater, he will be treated as clean. So long as the Pardhi moneylender does not lend money in his resident village, he will be treated as a proper Pardhi. THE PARDHI TECHNIQUE OF COLLECTION

The Lamani know, as do all the villagers about, that the Pardhi have ways of collecting what is owed them. Pardhi methods are not as obtrusive and obvious to nonvillagers as the techniques of the Pathans whom the Pardhi have replaced as itinerant lenders-of-last-resort in villages of the Deccan. They know that Pardhi techniques are harder to resist and more certain to work than the powers of government that the cooperative lending system now uses. Pathans used their larger physical size to cope with defaulters; villagers did not gang up on a Pathan, they ran. But Pardhi do not threaten with immediate violence. Should a Laman be late with his interest payment in any month, there will be a penalty of two or three rupees—plus meals eaten at the Laman’s house until payment is somehow managed. Pardhi will go and sit, several of them, at or in the borrower’s house until they get their money, taking food and drink with the family. Such is not considered begging by either party but a right in much the same sense that a family member has a right to share family meals. This right can be extended to all members of the Pardhi lender’s family. The definition of the lender’s family is elastic depending on the lender’s sense of propriety, especially when several lenders are involved in collecting the same debt. In case of default, the big lender tends to be more sympathetic; but no Pardhi will accept a substitute for money and exactions or earnest payments in kind are not deducted from the money

88 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 owed. The big man will send members of his family to eat at the houses of defaulters. Many more are likely to be sent when the loan was initially contributed to by several Pardhi in combination. Sometimes the big man recruits new Pardhi followers on “eat-in” occasions. Round-the-clock sitting and eating with a defaulting household offers an attractive change to the Pardhi from their usual subservient scrounging. Community pressure works for the Pardhi on these occasions. Not only would other villagers see the debtor’s failure to feed the Pardhi as shameful but the villagers are aware that they may also need money at times when Pardhi are the only source of funds.

Pardhi watch the reactions of the village carefully especially if there is a camp of non-participating Pardhi resident in the village or they think the village is a likely prospect for a future camp. Shadows of right of access to the land and its produce are difficult to acquire and maintain. The Pardhi try not to lose their tenuous rights to squat and scrounge. When the Pardhi sense that community resentment of an eat-in is rising, they disappear. In a day or so, a goat ora bullock or a cow belonging to the defaulter may also disappear. This is not, from the Pardhi point of view, a cancellation of a debt; it is an abnegation of a social relationship. While the Pardhi do not so phrase it, the default is permanent and the cow is in effect ‘“‘a payment of sorts” as wellasa © punitive lesson. Both the socialworthiness and the creditworthiness of the defaulting household will be lowered. Not only may village lenders refuse service to the household, but villagers will exert pressure against a defaulting borrower calling in the police to help the lender recover his lost

assets.° | | INTEREST AND THE ACCUMULATION OF MONEY

There is what may be described as a “social structure of interest rates.’ Depending not only upon Pardhi status but also upon the borrower’s status, the proper Pardhi rate ranges from 12.5% to 25% per Hindu month. The proper rate for professional merchant and moneylending castes to charge ranges from 2% per Hindu month on loans to village leaders to 6.25% per Hindu month for Harijans and tribals. Although both Pardhi and clients agree that the proper rate for a Pardhi to charge is a minimum of 12.5% per Hindu month, the Pardhi know the maximum charged by other lenders is 6.25% and so feel concessions to “friends” are possible. The lowest rate actually charged by a Pardhi lender, according to my reports, is 6.25% per Hindu month.’ During the last few decades, there has not been an increase in the amount of material goods produced in these villages which could be sold for money to repay the loans. How can the high interest rates charged by the Pardhi and, for that matter, by other lenders exist? The high social structure of interest rates cannot be explained in terms of the production and consumption of material goods but is made possible by ‘“‘money whirlpools.”’ Money whirlpools occur when money | flows round and round with little impact on the economic processes of making and moving — material goods as is the case with money within the Pardhi system. If the Pardhi receive such high rates of interest, and if they do not spend their earnings on purchasing goods, what happens to their accumulating funds? Pardhi do spend money; both ways have to do with women. Money flows at Pardhi marriages, sometimes to the groom’s family and sometimes to the bride’s. Money also flows between Pardhi in payment of fines at the tribal court | in cases concerning sexual and marriage offenses. Having so few ways to pay out money may put inflationary pressure on these payments.

Intratribal payments do not, of course, reduce the total amount of money claimed by the © } Pardhi as a group. Because money payments are only to other Pardhi, there is a rapid expansion in the total amount of money-claims that the Pardhi hold against other groups indebted to them. I estimate for one district that the total amount of loans Pardhi have outstanding is at least as great as the amount overdue to the District Cooperative Bank. Assuming patron moneylenders who do not themselves spend money on material goods but who lend at rates ranging from 6.25 to 25

| percent per Hindu month, the logical conclusion is that the Pardhi could expand their claims to a total equivalent to the amount of money in India®—a state of affairs in which these breechclouted tribals would hold most of the liquidity in the country and their decisions would determine the © allocation of resources and incomes, the level of consumption as well as of capital formation. There is no evidence that such a situation is developing; there must, therefore, be leakages.

Birch | BEGGAR MONEYLENDERS OF INDIA | 89 How- does money leak out of the fund Pardhi have to lend? On the evidence collected, no confident answer can be given. Some leakages we know; others can be guessed at. But in the — absence of quantitative data and in the face of possibly “‘hidden”’ other uses, we cannot know if the known and the guessed at account for all leakages. .

The amount of money owed to Pardhi is reduced by defaults, concessionary rates of interest, destruction of money hidden in breech-clouts or buried among rocks. The possibility that money is used to “pass”? or convert oneself upward from Pardhi to a higher status is illustrated by the

example of the third son of the ex-moneylender-turned-cooperator. He did not marry a Pardhi but, evidently by paying brideprice, a Harijan (untouchable) girl. He now owns ten acres of land and a house in the village. His house is in the same village to which his father’s camp is attached; they see each other but the son no longer participates in Pardhi affairs. The villagers say that this man “‘is not a Pardhi; he married a Harijan; he lives as a Harijan.’’ What was bought for the third son was a higher status from which he then could convert rupees into conventional “‘wealth,’’? land and houses. »

Since they are no longer known as ‘“‘Pardhi,”’ persons who make such transformations would be

difficult to locate. I found no other person who had “passed’’ nor were others mentioned by Pardhi. Special conditions were present in the village where rupees were converted into “wealth” - for the third son’s household.” Ordinarily a Pardhi could not at any price convert his rupees into village land or houses, and, ordinarily, attainment of Harijan status would not suffice for such conversion. We therefore do not know—and probably can never know—whether or not passing is a significant leakage from the Pardhi moneylending fund. THE NON-MONETARY BENEFITS FOR THE PARDHI

Their roles as inferior clients not only provide the public cover for moneylending but also provide Pardhi with real income. Most Pardhi stay in camps of two or three nuclear families on _ village wasteland. Their ordinary economic activity is concerned with the produce of land to which they, as a social group, have no legal right. As hunters and gatherers they become “thieves” when they poach domestic plants and animals. That the British had a dim view of such poaching, along with the occasional major depredations of fields by larger groups of Pardhi, probably accounts for much of the current Pardhi fear of the police. Pardhi rarely pick more than a handful or so of food at a time from the fields of the village where they are camped. Upon seeing a Pardhi pick a bit of food, a villager may ignore him, may rant and rave as a matter of principle, or may simply say, “‘go

pick from someone else for a change.” Most villagers think that allowing Pardhis such meager

pickings prevents raids by larger bands of Pardhi. | Villagers do not ordinarily discourage Pardhi from trapping birds and small game or from

stalking prey from behind a grazing cow even though villagers themselves hunt. Whether villagers give Pardhi food because they are destitute or because they beg is not clear. Begging has a special significance because the giver receives merit. The acceptance of cooked food from another caste places the receiver in the position of an inferior. The villagers give the Pardhi food scraps for the most part, sometimes a double-handful of grain, ragged cloth, or battered utensils. The Pardhi system was observed in non-irrigated areas, in the famine tracts of the Deccan. When

the rain comes to these tracts in the right amount at the right time, there is food. But in dry seasons and in dry years, villagers also hunt and gather wild foods. They remember that Pardhi — sacrifice and eat animals—even cows. They guard their scant domestic foods more carefully. People

picking handfuls here and there are resented. The household with food finds its obligations to kin . and other backdoor types have expanded, obligations that have precedence over merit gained from ~ giving to Pardhi. But at such hard times, villagers are more concerned than usual about their sources of credit should high-priced grain have to be purchased from the markets. Furthermore, in lean times there are likely to be more defaulting borrowers and the number of Pardhi doing eat-ins can be widely distributed. Villagers watching their stores disappear and thinking of their credit rating are more likely to see that Pardhi are fed: during bad times. These roundabout economic returns for Pardhi

moneylending activities accrue to the tribe, however, and not to the separate household of the

90 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 Pardhi lender. Moneylending is itself a way of maintaining at least a shadow of rights for the Pardhi tribe in the region. Honor in his tribe and duty to his tribe, not the motive of accumulating material goods or the things money can buy, are the major incentives of the Pardhi moneylender. The successful man has the sheer joy of having many followers and is a big man in tribal affairs. During those brief periods when the tribal court meets, the man who can manage relationships with villagers and outsiders with even a small amount of skill is accepted as an authority on tribal law. A big man may help establish a Pardhi camp on village wasteland, although the nuclear families who live in such camps _

tend to move about the territory. Admirers, not subjects, the families are free to change their allegiance to another big man. THE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL EFFECTS OF THE PARDHI SYSTEM

Payment to the family of a Pardhi bride can move money into districts other than the one selected by the government for intensive programs to increase production. The logic by which money flows among the Pardhi does not coincide with the logic predicated in development plans. That the movement of Pardhi money and the movement of material goods and services are not the same creates analytical problems for economists accustomed to a theoretical view of money as an “egalitarian lubricant’’ in economic processes. But when one man’s money is not as good as any

other man’s money in any input or output market, money intended to expand agricultural production may be drained elsewhere and the developmental economist may not realize what makes economic processes sticky. While the accumulation of money-claims by the Pardhi is constrained, the Pardhi contribute to

the expansion of total indebtedness in the Deccan villages because the Pardhi system has been adapted to fit the social structure of credit. It serves as a balancing aid to two other village systems—the professional moneylenders and the credit cooperatives—which must clear accounts with larger financial systems at the end of their respective financial years.

The accounts of Hindu and Jain banking, moneylending, merchant, and trading castes are cleared during the Divali festival, when prayers are performed over account books. A member of one of these professional castes who fails to pay his debts to other members risks divala: bankruptcy, which not only spoils his credit rating, but even today in the Deccan may make him a

social outcast as well. Short-term loans from the cooperative system, on the other hand, are cleared some six months later; village cooperative societies are required to repay a fixed proportion of loans taken from the District Cooperative Bank, and indirectly from the Reserve Bank of India. These must be paid on time in order for the village co-ops to qualify for fresh finance (a borrower does not qualify for a fresh loan unless his village co-op society qualifies). To keep his credit good, a client from either system pays money to the lender on a specific day even though he may again borrow the same sum the following day. Because the clearing dates

differ, a more rapid expansion of the level of total indebtedness based on the same amount of money occurs than would be possible with only one system. Not only do the professionals and cooperatives draw on each other, as clients borrow from Peter to repay Paul so that thay can reborrow from Paul, but both conventional systems borrow from the Pardhi as well. The Pardhi alone do not have to come to terms with a deadline date when accounts must be cleared. Instances of accommodation of cooperatives with other village moneylending systems are not local trivia. The cooperative system has received an ever increasing amount of new money from the Reserve Bank of India in accord with the twofold national objective of ‘“‘ousting’’ the village moneylenders and of increasing agricultural production. In the incident described at the beginning of the paper, the Lamani were able to pay amounts owed to cooperatives with loans from Pardhi.

In another typical incident, the efforts of village leaders to repay amounts owed to a credit cooperative were described by one of the participants: The loans should actually have been repaid from the sales proceeds of the harvest, but hardly

25 per cent of the borrowers did that, even though the crops had done well. The bank inspector, keen on the recoveries on which his job and promotions depend, came to the

chairman of the cooperative and said that the District Bank would not make further advances to the society unless a fixed percentage of overdue amounts was paid.

Birch | BEGGAR MONEYLENDERS OF INDIA 91 Sometimes a chairman’s strength will be tested; factions refuse to cooperate and he loses

respect when he does not get fresh loans. So when the Chairman asked cultivators,

moneylenders, and traders to advance the amount required to settle the account at the District Bank, each leader watched to see what others would do. :

The Chairman first used the installments paid by borrowers of mid-term loans to accommodate

| favored followers by entering the receipt of repayment.of mid-term loans on a date later than that on which they were actually repaid.!° He next arranged short-term loans from relatives

and moneylenders to cover the dues of more borrowers. a

It now becomes a matter of pride for the other leaders to find money. A group of people | -would go outside and later come back with money. Moneylenders, knowing that borrowers would soon get new cooperative loans, usually gave freely.

When other lenders were reluctant, the leaders would go to the Pardhi. Sometimes borrowers

with overdues went directly to the Pardhi. )

No more than twenty-five percent of the money flow in this situation coincided with the circuits in which goods are produced and distributed. The rest of the money flow may represent

no production and consumption of real output but money whirlpools that have not been . . adequately described by scholars nor anticipated by formulators of central governmental policy.

. The situation also illustrates the hierarchical structure of rural credit flows, e.g., while the Pardhi participate in the repayment of cooperative loans, the Pardhi-are not themselves able to borrow from the same cooperative.’ * Whereas the Pardhi are a source of money to pay cooperative dues without themselves having

_ the ability to borrow from the cooperative, their pressures on defaulting borrowers result in cooperatives making loans, ostensibly for productive purposes, to pay what is owed to the Pardhi. The relationship between the Pardhi and the professional and cooperative moneylending systems is

not a one-way matter but a mutual accommodation whereby all the moneylending systems contribute (a) to relief from immediate danger of default, and (b) to the long-term pyramiding of

indebtedness. 7

| ; | NOTES

: The research on which this essay is based-was conducted during 1968-69 as a Fulbright-Hays

' fellow in India and England. I am indebted to the Office of Education for finance and to the

Fulbright Commission in England, the British Museum, the High Commissioner’s Office, the India Office Library, the Reserve Bank of India, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, the U. S. Educational Foundation in India, and especially to Professor S. B. Kolte of Ahmednagar College

for help in conducting the research. Most of all I am grateful to Walter C. Neale, Professor of Economics at the University of Tennessee, for serving as supervising professor as well as for

~| *«Pardhi” valuable aid with the present essay. | comes from paradh, which means hunting. While census reports indicate that Pardhi

are scattered about other regions of India, this account should not suggest that even all Deccan groups called “‘Pardhi’’ engage in moneylending. My field research was mostly in one district of the

Maharashtrian Deccan. An unpublished monograph by Charles H. Childers on the Pardhi, from - which I have also drawn much other material for the present essay, indicates that the Pardhi moneylending system extends to four adjoining districts. Because the lending of money, as is _ done by the Pardhi, without licenses and other documents is illegal, specific names and places will

._ with not be used in this account. a participating patrons and clients. >The incidents considered here have been constructed from observations and conversations

*In everyday livelihood he is a food-scrounging beggar in the view of the Lamani, but as an

- intermediary between borrowers and lenders, he became a patron with respect to both. After - arranging the contacts, he again became the powerless client with respect to the borrowers; other

. Pardhi collected the dues. His worth in the Pardhi tribe rose as others decided he handled the | | situation well.

>In the thinking of most villagers, ‘“wealth’’ may be counted in terms of rupees but in order for rupees to be converted into ‘‘wealth’’ one must have a certain social status. For example, a

- borrower had a loan from Moneylender A for Rs.2000 at four percent per month and from

- Moneylender B for Rs.1000 at two percent per month. When asked why he borrowed more from Moneylender A at a higher rate of interest, he replied that Moneylender A was a “poor man.” “He

92 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 must have many rupees.”’ ‘‘Yes. But he has a small family, no connections, no land...’ The point is that money is not readily convertible into ‘‘wealth”’ in the village world, especially for those of low status. Hereafter in this essay I shall use ‘‘wealth’”’ in the same sense as the villagers do, but place it in quotation marks. © But just in case, the Pardhi sacrifice and eat the animal or move it to another area for use in |

stalking game. Because domesticated animals are used for hunting, they can eventually be

‘‘owned”’ and moved about with a Pardhi family’s other meager possessions. As a general rule, however, people and not economic goods are moved in the Pardhi redistribution system. 'The above rates are the stated or nominal rates; all are above the legal maximum; lenders other than the Pardhi tend to compound interest monthly. How do these illiterate people calculate? Even the big Pardhi leader is illiterate. A rising young Pardhi had Rs.15,000 in loans outstanding; villagers and Pardhi agree that the biggest Pardhi moneylender in the region has approximately Rs.250,000. Each big man uses his own money and/or serves as a non-paid agent for other Pardhi. The usual phrasing at the time of a loan, “‘Rs.20 for 16 per month’’ (meaning Rs.4 per month in interest for a principal of Rs.16) makes further calculation unnecessary because both interest payment and total amount due are included in the phrase. Pardhi do not seem to keep reminders or notations, although the practice of collecting interest each month and operating a routinized circuit of villages is a reinforcement to memory. Many times another villager asks to borrow money that he has heard is being repaid. Interest on Pardhi loans is collected on a monthly basis

this century. :

which also tends to simplify calculations. . 5 The Jains, it seems, were financing much of the domestic trade of India around the turn of

? A cholera epidemic, along with the loss of land to other villages described earlier, had led to

the selection of the village for special projects by the Central Ministry for Community

Development and Cooperation. Entrusted with funds for that purpose, the headman of the village failed to finance the construction of Harijan houses. After a great deal of effort, workers from a

voluntary developmental agency were able to use this and other incidents to “‘persuade”’ the castes in the village that recognition of certain rights of depressed peoples was essential to the continued receipt of aid on which the village had become dependent.

1° The primary credit cooperatives offer both medium-term and short-term (‘‘crop loan’’) |

credit. The deficit here has to do with short-term loans which are settled annually. That cooperative officials can make ‘“‘paper adjustments” in the accounts is yet another way of

increasing the potential amount of indebtedness. Medium-term loan payers cooperate for several reasons including (a) doing what one is told to do by a person of higher status is both proper and wise, (b) cooperative borrowers may themselves. be moneylenders profiting by the difference in interest rates, and (c) borrowers see a few more days’ interest charge as insignificant compared to

the merit gained. . a

11 The Pardhi keep informed about the operations of the cooperative system through borrowers and intermediaries as well as through Pardhi agents, e.g., the ex-moneylender described above. Knowing which villagers can get what cooperative loans when, helps in the smooth functioning of the redistribution of persons among the village camps. REFERENCE CITED

1885 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency. Bombay: Government Central Press, Vol. XVIII.

PART Il

|7

ACCULTURATION, MARKETS, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT —

oF Reciprocity of Favors

in the Urban Middle Class of Chile?

LARISSA LOMNITZ UNIVERSIDAD IBEROAMERICANA, MEXICO

THE DEVELOPMENT of a middle elass in Chile followed a different historical course than in Europe. It arose in response to transformations brought on by Independence and the shift from agriculture to commerce and mining, but before large scale industrial development occurred. The middle class rode to power on the crest of the nitrate boom, a period of unprecedented prosperity and growth following the war against Peru and Bolivia (1879-83), which brought the rich Northern

provinces under Chilean sovereignty. By the First World War new technology of synthetic fertilizers dealt a fatal blow to Chilean nitrates. The middle class was left without solid economic underpinning at the very moment of its accession to power through the 1920 electoral victory of Arturo Alessandri. For the next twenty years the middle class built a powerful, well-organized state bureaucracy, which promoted industrialization through specialized agencies of government. Bent on broadening its privileges and on improving its standard of living, it reached the summit of its influence in the decade of the 1950s. Administrative power had become the main source of livelihood for a well-defined social group, which saw its. role no longer as pioneer of industrial

srowth but rather as a political mediator and stabilizer between the upper class (i.e., the landowning aristocracy, industry, banking, and big business) and the working classes (Petras 1970:123; Vega 1950:90-91; Ruiz 1961:16-17).

What are the attributes of the social group whose membership currently identifies and designates itself as the middle class of Chile? In economic terms it includes public servants, professional people, salaried employees in general, and white collar workers who neither engage in manual labor nor own the means of production. If one also includes certain fringe groups discussed

below, the middle class groups comprised about 45% of the population of Santiago in 1958 | (Briones 1963:386). Culturally speaking, the following features are recognized as typical of the

Chilean middle class: (a) rejection of manual labor (in distinction to the lower class); (b) heterogeneity of origin, income, education level, etc. (in distinction to the upper class); (c) lack of

savings and chronic economic difficulties; (d) importance of an outward standard of living consistent with “decency” even to the extent of living beyond their means; (e) schooling beyond

the grade school level; (f) use of compadrazgo, a system of reciprocity of favors. This paper suggests that participation in the compadrazgo system is a distinctive characteristic of middle class affiliation (Vega 1950:86-87; Johnson 1961:22; Gillin 1960:22-23; Petras 1970:107-111). Vertical mobility in Chilean society has produced two transitional groups situated between the upper class and the middle class. These fringe groups had a different origin: (a) sons of upper-class families who entered government service and the liberal professions; (b) families engaged in small industry and commerce, frequently immigrants who are economically on the rise, and who have acquired upper-class aspirations. Similarly, there is a fringe group of working-class extraction which has become incorporated into the middle class by virtue of opportunities made accessible

through education and subsequent incorporation into public service or as private employees. Borderline cases at both ends of the social scale tend to become increasingly frequent. Hence, the 93

94 _ STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 middle class is an open group which continues to grow through heterogeneous contributions from the upper and lower classes, as well as from foreign immigration. A core member (as opposed to a fringe member) of the Chilean middle class, neither controls

| the means of production nor engages in manual labor. His economic role is chiefly in administration, politics, and the professions; his principal employer is the State. Scarce openings in , the bureaucracy are filled through political and social patronage (UNESCO 1963:104). In short,

shall now discuss.” .

one of the major resources of a member of the middle class is his set of social and family connections. This is the sociological context of the peculiar institution of reciprocity which we

CHILEAN COMPADRAZGO: DEFINITION

Among members of the urban middle class in Santiago, (male and female alike) compadrazgo is. a system of reciprocity which involves a continuing exchange of complimentary services (favores) . performed and motivated within an ideologyof friendship. Such favors are often of a bureaucratic nature and usually involve giving someone preferred treatment and therefore setting aside the rights and priorities of third parties, or of the community as a whole. Hence, the popular term compadrazgo is a euphemism for this institution, which should not be confused with the ritualistic

Catholic institution of God-parenthood. |

An informant defined compadrazgo as a form of assistance used “to obtain something with greater ease and in less time.” He pointed out that “‘the objectives are usually legal, though the means may be less so. Such favors are given and received in a spirit of friendship and without apparent guilt feelings. Yet the person conferring the favor is always aware of future benefits which will accrue to himself or to some relative or friend.”’ The following example (supplied by another informant) may clarify the essential features of compadrazgo: Judge A and attorney B were friends and political associates. Judge A had a daughter who was > looking for a job; through the use of compadrazgo she obtained a job in the business owned by attorney B’s brother, C. Some years later this same businessman (C) wanted to get a divorce. Legal divorce does not exist in Chile; annulments are legally valid but require proof of some technical error made in the original marriage contract. This means that annulment depends on the leniency of the judge who tries the case. At this time Judge A, in reciprocity for the earlier

favor, scheduled the case with a friendly court and even advised C about the financial

arrangement involved in the separation. No money changed hands at any time in this episode. Compadrazgo is therefore a tacit dyadic contract or chain of such contracts involving common friends acting as go-betweens. In the case described above the favor was returned directly by A to C, but the middleman B remains a party to the relationship. It is important to note that the initial favor is bestowed without any overt thought of a specific reciprocal return; rather, the obligation is stored in a sort of savings account of future services to be rendered to various persons and drawn upon as the need arises. TYPES OF SERVICES PERFORMED

The following services are typically obtained through the compadrazgo system: Job placement. President Ibanez (1956-1962) is popularly credited with the following saying: ‘Between a relative and a friend I prefer the relative; between a friend and a stranger I prefer the

friend.” This saying is in connection with jobs. Particularly the lower echelon jobs in the administrative bureaucracy, which are in great demand among a large and relatively unskilled segment of the middle class, are frequently awarded through compadrazgo. In a situation of job scarcity and danger of status loss through manual labor it is not surprising to find the compadre valued as the first and last resource of livelihood. The actual process of job hunting consists in reviewing mentally all one’s personal connections

in order to locate someone who is close to the source of appointments in a given agency. Conversely, finding a person for a job opening involves going over the list of one’s relatives and friends in the hope of discovering someone suitable. Personal recommendations are vital in all cases

Lomnitz | RECIPROCITY IN URBAN CHILE 95 and represent an important favor to the applicant. Compadrazgo may be regarded as the basic mechanism of job allocation in the irresistible growth of the low-level bureaucracy in Chile. Even

highly qualified people do not apply unless they are assured of strong backing through compadrazgo connections. a Bureaucratic favors are the most common use of compadrazgo: acquiring certificates, licenses, permits, transcripts, passports, identity cards, tax clearances, and countless other red tape items which would otherwise require many mornings spent standing in line and chasing paperwork from ; one office to another. Compadrazgo may also be used in obtaining special facilities at customs, waiver of military service, granting of import licenses, and other such bureaucratic awards. — , . Loans. The scarcest of all resources in Chile is money. Borrowing is often beyond reach of the

middle class because of the high collateral required. A well-placed friend in a bank or credit association facilitates matters. A Caja is a credit union operated under the social security system; it is supposed to provide loans, but is chronically short of funds. As soon as fresh funds for loans become available the compadre is notified ahead of the general public and his application is then

guided to the top of the pile so as to get it processed before the funds are exhausted. This is a typical use of compadrazgo, a situation in which people in key positions give their relatives and friends confidential tips based on inside information. None of this appears to the practitioner as strictly illegal since “‘no harm is done except to the people waiting in line, every one of whom would have done the same if he’d had the right connection.”’

Schools. Admission to the better schools, both public and private, is difficult because of the tremendous demand for places at the few establishments of top reputation. Any compadre who works at one of these good schools, or who has a friend who does, may be in a position to perform _a vital service which elicits considerable gratitude. Such compadrazgo relationships are sometimes jealously nurtured for one’s personal benefit, and are not as willingly shared. Middle-class parents are aware that the most valuable asset they can provide for their children is

an education, and the lifelong connections that go with it. Sources of friendship acquire great value as a means of extending social interaction beyond the immediate family circle; schoolmates form lasting friendships through shared experiences of work and leisure, sentimental escapades and intellectual-political awakening. Throughout adult life a former ‘schoolmate will enjoy a special

status and an old university classmate will also be entitled to preferential treatment; such relationships may cut across boundaries of class, sex, and national origin. Therefore, the right school is likely to provide the middle-class child with lifelong friends in influential positions.

Legal favors. According to a lawyer informant.there is no end to the use of compadrazgo in legal matters. Files get conveniently “‘lost,’? charges are suspended or sidetracked, witnesses are

coached, fines or bail are set at minimal levels. The case of marriage annulments (mentioned above) is typical because the legal case hinges on a technicality, e.g., proving that the clerk who performed the wedding had no jurisdiction over the place of residence of the couple. Proof may be furnished by “witnesses” who could be easily discredited unless the judge was willing to go along for the sake of friendship or compadrazgo. Of course this assumes that the judge is not opposed to divorce on principle. Characteristically, the spirit of the law counts for less than the spirit of friendship, as long as the letter of the law has been formally complied with. Social introductions to persons who control access to jobs or whose acquaintance is seen as desirable and potentially useful is yet another example. Invitations to dinner parties are often used for such introductions and are therefore reckoned as important favors; widening the circle of one’s friends and acquaintances is essential to success in all walks of middle-class life. Waiving of priorities in getting a number of scarce items for which there are long waiting lists: telephone service, buying a car at wholesale price, scholarships and grants, service commissions

abroad, and so on.

Politics. Many informants believe that the Chilean party system is based largely on

compadrazgo. Certain well-known politicians have started on the basis of a personal following of people who owed them favors. The eventual conversion into political power of favors one has done for clients will be discussed later in this article. What cannot be obtained through compadrazgo? According to informants ‘‘anything that goes against the ideology of friendship and ‘decency.’ Sexual advances made by a man as the result of

96 _ STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 granting a favor to a woman would be regarded as extremely gross behavior. Any behavior which infringes middle-class standards: theft, murder, taking advantage of women or other defenseless persons, and in general acts against dignity and ‘chivalry.’ Such acts would destroy the rationale of friendship by degrading it into downright complicity. Compadrazgo has a moral code which sets _ boundaries on permissible favors and return payments.

Several of the compadrazgo favors described above might seem illegal or contrary to middle-class standards. However, cheating the Treasury (hacer leso al Fisco) is not regarded as a morally contemptible crime. Intrigue and institutional infighting between rival cliques are also accepted even though they may affect the jobs, reputations, etc. of third parties. These points will

be further discussed in connection with the problem of values. a

The preceding list of services obtained under compadrazgo is, of course, always conditional on having the right friend in the right place at the right time. No person is ever in a position to use compadrazgo in every situation that arises. The essential point is to have as many friends and connections as possible. Hence the tendency, which has become a mental habit, to look for a compadre before undertaking anything at all. Compadrazgo connections are used not only in

matters of importance but in trivial everyday situations as well. .

RULES OF RECIPROCITY ] Social sanctions enforcing reciprocity in compadrazgo are often stronger than written contracts or legal obligations. As put by one informant, “failure to reciprocate is as dishonorable as failure to pay for something; one never forgives someone who has accepted an important favor and then forgets. This rarely happens, though.” An unwritten principle of compadrazgo is contained in the Spanish saying: ““Hoy por ti, manana por mi’ (For you today, for me tomorrow). The element of reciprocity despite its strength, is not normally acknowledged overtly. If a person is never in a position to reciprocate one eventually stops helping him out. The user of | compadrazgo will attempt to ask favors sparingly, since otherwise obligations pile up, which may be called in at any time. The moral pressure to comply with such return requests, even at great inconvenience, is felt to be very strong by all informants and is attributed to ‘“‘a tradition of chivalry.”’ It is clear that a continuing relationship of compadrazgo cannot persist unless both. partners exchange favors from time to time; a person who values such a relationship will activate it periodically in small matters, rather than wait for a pressing need to arise; he thereby shows his: friends that he is ready to be of service to them at any time. Reciprocity does not include tangible presents, and definitely excludes money and similar material rewards—offering these would be regarded as a personal offense between social equals. In requesting or returning a favor certain rules of civility are observed in order to avoid mutual embarrassment. Requests for favors are intimated, suggested, or phrased as requests for advice, so that the compadre is free to propose the service on his own terms. Requests which might endanger the compadre’s job or expose him to ridicule are to be avoided. Many of the services performed fall in an ethical no-man’s land and it is not always easy to tell where a friend’s moral scruples might be violated. “Some favors are just not done, not even for the sake of friendship.” The problem of assessing the status of reciprocity in such a relationship may require a great deal of tact and judgment. A “‘compadre”’ whose resources and connections are unequal to one’s own is not to be taxed unduly, but must be given the opportunity to reciprocate, nevertheless. Otherwise, pride may prevent the compadre from making any further requests until his friend decides to “‘cash in’’ on earlier favors. On the other hand, a powerful compadre is not to be bothered with

trivial requests: his services should be worthy of his rank. | All these rules of reciprocity are subject to variations according to the exact degree of confianza, the closeness of the relationship or social distance between the two. Among close relatives for example, bestowing favors is simply taken for granted; there is no question of reciprocity or etiquette. So too with close friends. Indeed, certain favors are more easily asked of close friends than of relatives. It is significant that children of the Chilean middle class are taught to address all adult friends who visit the home as “uncle” or “aunt.”’ Thus friends are awarded the status of kinship.

Lomnitz | RECIPROCITY IN URBAN CHILE 97 In general a feeling of friendship or common liking (simpatia) is considered essential for any compadrazgo relationship. However, the category of friendship has many shades and gradations of social distance. An intimate friend may be asked for advice about a personal problem which one would not readily disclose to a casual or recent friend. As social distance increases so does the necessity for favors to be repaid; until a level of social distance is reached at which return favors

may be openly expected. | - | WHO ARE THE COMPADRES? |

Compadrazgo is essentially a personal relationship between individuals who regard themselves as social equals. An informant said that compadres were recruited among “relatives, members of the same political party, friends and acquaintances on the same social level, friends of friends, work associates, members of a masonic lodge, and in general people of similar intellectual aspirations, political ideology, or common interests in life.” In short, they are people who are regarded as peers

within the middle class ideology of friendship. . | It might be asked why compadrazgo is confined to the middle class. This may best be

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understood by comparing the types of services each social class has to offer, with the return expectations attached to each of them. The middle class is in a position to offer favors, i.e.,

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members of the three social classes of Chile. Payment for services rendered by ego is usually in the form of a salary or a professional fee.

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Figure 2. A model for the exchange of ‘“‘favors’’ (services not reckoned as a normal part of —

ego’s assigned duties). Only fellow-members of the middle class are eligible for a balanced exchange (compadrazgo).

services of a bureaucratic, business, and professional nature which are not a part of their normal duties. Lower-class partners cannot reciprocate in kind, having only their manual labor to offer. On the other hand, the upper class possesses many resources that the middle class would be willing

to trade in an exchange of favors; but the superior status of the upper class member would eventually be forfeited through acknowledging social equality with the middle class. The upper

fringe group of the middle class contains members of the upper-class who are willing to

acknowledge this social equality. 7

Thus, when two individuals of different social levels are involved the exchange may still exist

but will take different forms, which lack the reciprocal elements of favor plus friendship characteristic of compadrazgo. One may attempt to describe this situation more concisely, by means of simplified models of exchange. Figure 1 represents the ideal model, i.e., the model of exchange of services according to the officially recognized ideology of free enterprise and equality of opportunity irrespective of social background. This model does not contemplate the existence of favors, as each citizen is served impartially according to his rights, and is assessed according to his dues. The real model is quite different (Fig. 2). It reveals the fact that the social symmetry postulated by the ideal. model does not exist in reality. The working class does not occupy worldly positions giving them scope to confer favors; while the high social position of the upper class rules out continuing social relationships with the middle class. Only another member of the middle class has both the access to favors of a bureaucratic, political or professional nature, and the possibility

of interacting as social equals.°

Material payment in return for favors is graft. It means the absence of any kind of personal relationship or friends in common. Graft and bribery are restricted to (a) dealings between the upper class and the middle-class, and (b) dealings within the middle-class, but incognito, through middlemen, such as the routine procurement of exit permits by travel agencies, when the client has no personal knowledge of the arrangement between the agency and the government clerk.

Lomnitz ] RECIPROCITY IN URBAN CHILE ) 99

ACQUAINTANCES ""*.,. > oe | FRIENDS eT "ee, , i -_ *

CLOSE FRIENDS "*, * io \t .

FAMILY "*., ¥ ‘ ‘ 4 :

eg LZ, | . Figure 3. A mechanism for extending the social network through the use of friendship. A

common friend (CF) is used to bring EGO and ALTER (formerly unacquainted with each other) into social range, for the ulterior use of compadrazgo. F of F = friend of friend, i.e., no personal acquaintance of EGO but known to be a friend of CF.

The institution of compadrazgo may be interpreted as an expression of solidarity needed for the survival of the group. The middle class does not control the means of production; neither does it engage in manual labor. Its major resource is the control of public and private administration.

Manipulating the administrative processes for its members’ benefit requires a system of tacit mutual assistance. A crude analogy to such a system is nepotism; however, the number of blood relatives augmented by the ranks of fictive kinship—ritual compadrazgo—is still much too small when measured against a person’s need to enlarge his social network. Ideally a member of the Chilean middle class seeks as many compadres as possible, preferably ones strategically placed throughout the public and private administration. It is therefore regarded as absolutely necessary to extend one’s network of relatives and to incorporate friends, relatives of friends, friends of friends, and so on. Each middle-class person may be visualized at the center of an extensive network of personal relationships connected by bonds of kinship or friendship (Fig. 3). ATTITUDES AND VALUES

Informants are quite ambivalent about their compadrazgo relationships. They tend to feel uncomfortable about discussing personal benefits obtained, particularly financial, political, or legal —

benefits. Favors which cut red tape are acknowledged freely, but more important benefits are mentioned sheepishly and accompanied by apologetic explanations. Most informants agree that compadrazgo should not exist in an ideal society, but important individual differences were observed in the degree of rejection. Some rationalized the use of compadrazgo as a response to scarcity and pointed out that it develops positive traits of friendship and mutual assistance. On the

one hand, the ideology of friendship and unselfish assistance is viewed as positive and worth preserving at any cost. On the other hand, it is recognized that compadrazgo is unfair to others, -and perhaps to society as a whole. Thus the ambivalence of attitudes appears to be based on

ideology of free enterprise. .

conflict between the ideology of class solidarity based on friendship and reciprocity, and the liberal

100 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 This ideology is reflected, among others, in the Code of Civil Law (1855) whose influence in South America has been compared to the Napoleonic Code, and which has changed but little to this day. It expresses the values of the elite, based on the liberal tradition of free enterprise. The middle-class, while outwardly respectful of the law, has little use for those values. It has frankly supported State interventionism in the economy, even though industrial development was initially turned over to private enterprise. On a personal level, the ambivalent attitude of the middle-class grows out of (1) a deep-seated respect for the legal and administrative apparatus of the nation, which has been entrusted to its care; (2) a tendency to put group and personal loyalties before the

impersonal interests of the State.

The history of the Chilean middle-class reflects the same ambivalence. Its accession to political power, its role in creating a powerful bureaucracy as an instrument of industrialization, its creation

of a body of social security legislation, educational and housing projects, and other welfare programs of benefit to the middle class, have all been carried out within the existing liberal framework. Indeed, the ideology of free competition based on individual merit is acknowledged as.

universally valid, yet it is contradicted at every step in actual behavior: friendship and group solidarity take precedence over merit. Naturally, there are always losers who feel that they might have had better chances in direct competition. They have the right to grumble (derecho a pataleo). However, excessive resentment or grievance would be worse than futile: it would be foolish and poor sportsmanship. Protestations that merit ought to take precedence over social connections are

interpreted as “sour grapes.’ Thus a schoolteacher defined the ideal attitude of the loser as follows: “If I fail to get a job on account of someone’s better connections I do not feel bitter. I figure that I too will have friends who will help me as the years go by.”” Competition is viewed as a

necessary evil, caused by the scarcity of resources; it is not valued as a proving-ground for individual worth. Certainly the battle for scarce jobs and priorities is competitive, but it tends to be fought on the terrain of group affiliations and loyalties rather than personalities. Rival cliques within the middle-class tend to stress compadrazgo above individual leadership in the group. The mere fact of losing does not affect feelings of individual worth, as it would if success were viewed as the result of merit alone. The ideology of friendship is equalitarian: ““anybody can have friends.” A striking expression of equalitarianism is the Chilean form of institutionalized envy called chaqueteo, or coattail-grabbing. Ambitious, competitive individuals are held back so that they cannot rise too rapidly on their own merit: they must owe their rise to the consensus of their peers.* The weapons of chaqueteo are chiefly ironical quips known as fallas, recognized as the characteristic form of Chilean humor. The target of this mild form of verbal aggression is supposed to reply with a similar quip at the expense of the aggressor; if he cannot make one he loses face, and the humorous incident makes the rounds among his friends and acquaintances. Ambitious, serious-minded individuals are among the favorite victims of tallas; eventually they may become classified as climbers unless they give up their

individualistic tendencies. , The Chilean ideology of friendship is cultivated from childhood on, and is reinforced

throughout life. Children are encouraged to play and visit with neighbors, classmates, relatives, and children of friends of the family. During adolescence they share confidences with intimate friends; as adults they share every incident of life in the company of friends. In the average Chilean family there is a great deal of social visiting and entertaining; friends are encouraged to call at any time without prior notice. Friends are also a source of prestige: a person with many friends is held in high regard. Chileans abroad tend to be critical of competitive middle-class values in industrial societies, which they view as creating a friendless, dull, herdlike existence. They miss their friends and the

daily game of beating the system which sharpens the wits of the individual within a context of | group solidarity. Very human qualities are attributed to Chilean friends, including readiness to give assistance as required. A good friend is generous in the widest possible sense; he shares the good and the bad, his experiences and private feelings, and is always pleased to do favors. As Gouldner pointed out, “‘there is an altruism in egoism, made possible through reciprocity”

(1960:1783).

Lomnitz ] RECIPROCITY IN URBAN CHILE : 101 Ambivalence about compadrazgo may depend on differences within the middle class. In general I found a more explicit rejection of compadrazgo among the upper fringe (sons of the upper class, and of European middle-class immigrants). One such informant called compadrazgo ‘‘a disgraceful institution” but admitted later that he used it in order to bypass red-tape restrictions because not doing so would be ‘“‘suicidal.’’ The liberal ideology of competition and merit seems more firmly

rooted among this upper fringe who seem to prefer upward mobility to group solidarity. Nevertheless, they too use and accept compadrazgo as a fact of life.

In conclusion, the attitudes and values in compadrazgo relationships reveal an underlying . conflict between the acknowledged liberal ideology of open competition and advancement on merit (the “spirit of the law’’) and the ideology of group solidarity. THEORETICAL DISCUSSION

From the point of view of economic anthropology, the modes of transacting and exchanging resources, labor, goods, and services in a society, may be analyzed in terms of three basic recurrent

patterns: reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange. Each mode is contained in specific

institutions embedded in social fabric (Polanyi 1957:250). Chilean compadrazgo is as an institution of reciprocity, not usually a balanced one-to-one exchange of favors, but rather as relationships of varying social distance having varying exchanges of favors attached to them. These exchanges of favors, moreover, indicate membership in the Chilean middle-class.

A model of varieties of reciprocity was proposed by Sahlins: “At one end of the spectrum stands the assistance freely given, the small currency of everyday kinship, friendship, and neighborly relations, the ‘pure gift’ Malinowski called it, regarding which an open stipulation of

return would be unthinkable and unsociable. At the other pole, selfinterested seizure, appropriation by chicanery or force ... The extremes are notably positive and negative in a moral sense. The intervals between them are not merely so many gradations of material balance in exchange, they are intervals of sociability. The distance between poles of reciprocity is, among other things, social distance” (1965:144). Chilean compadrazgo relationships are first such a spectrum of reciprocities institutionalized in a modern urban society. Figure 4 represents the continuum of social distance as perceived by a Chilean middle-class person. Compadrazgo, i.e., the reciprocal exchange of favors induced by friendship, occurs only along the horizontal axis which represents membership in the middle class. The labels of intra-class social distance (“‘intimate friends,” “friends,” ‘“‘acquaintances,” etc.) are categories used by ego to classify his relations. Individuals may move from one category to another. Acquaintances become “‘friends,” “close friends,” and even relatives (through marriage). Conversely, kinship and friendship relations may cool off or even break off altogether. This horizontal mobility obviously differs from the tribal model proposed by Sahlins, in which a given individual may be classified as belonging to the ‘‘household,” the “lineage sector,” the “village sector,’ and so on. One of several differences between the tribal situation and compadrazgo in urban life is the less tangible, less permanent kind of closeness of confianza. Consider next the services exchanged within the institution of compadrazgo. Here the range of possibilities is so wide that general categories are difficult to set up. Nevertheless a scale of favors is

present in the mind of ego when confronted with his need to solve a particular problem. | Problem-solving through compadrazgo involves matching the diagram of social distance with the type of favor to be requested (Fig. 5). Thus the strategy of ego (which friend shall I approach for what favor?) is definitely influenced by social distance, as suggested by Sahlins. But there is more than a mere static correlation between type of reciprocity and social distance: there is a mutual influence between them. Thus, social distance determines the type of favor to be requested; but the request itself and the quality of the performance, may change the position of alter in ego’s scale of social distance. An acquaintance becomes promoted to being an intimate friend as the result of performing a particularly valued service. Similarly, a friend may become

demoted to an acquaintance because of his failure to perform according to the expectations attached to his position on the scale of social distance.

102 _ STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

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130 | STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 4, /If you have 1500 fish to sell and the price set at the shore at Cape Coast is 15 shillings per 100 fish and buyers have come plentifully and fish have also come plentifully at Kumasi, how much would you charge for 1500 fish?/

Informants would forget some parts of the question. By separating out “background”’ information into a question to be asked first, we could proceed with less difficulty. The

1500 fish to sell./ - |

background question used was: o. /The price for fresh fish at the shore in Cape Coast is 8 shillings per hundred and-you have

charge?/ , 7 -

We then used contrasting questions about the conditions and markets the seller would encounter, for example: 6. /If you find that buyers are many and fish are also many at Kumasi, how much would you

A typical answer would be: /I would get to Kumasi with 1500 fish and I would sell the first 500 for 20 shillings per hundred fish and then I’d have to reduce the price to 18 shillings per hundred to sell the remaining thousand/. Having to “reduce’’ the price (tsew. . .do in Fante) is a part of any bargaining transaction, a reduction in the price the first fish were sold at. Unless the market was so good all fish could be sold at the first price, the amount of the reduction would vary with different

market conditions. ,

To elicit exact monetary amounts of the first and second price reductions, we systematically varied the number of fish the woman had, the original price she paid for them at the shore in Cape Coast, the combination of market condition terms, and the woman’s market choice. We thereby got long lists of questions such as 5 and 6 listed above, paired with answers of the following sort: /I would sell the first 500 fish at 10 shillings per hundred and then J would have to reduce the price to 8 shillings per hundred to sell the final 2000./ The results indicated considerable consistency in answers from informant to informant for the same market. Moreover the same combinations of supply and demand conditions in the markets

would predict approximately the same initial price and the same rate of reduction of prices,

necessary to sell the total supply of fish.

© REDUNDANCIES | a We were then left with the lists of terms given in Table 2. If each term represented a unique market condition, and all three classes of terms could be represented in a sentence describing the market, such as /There are many buyers in the market but few fish and the market is good./, there

would be different descriptions corresponding to all possible combinations of the terms (20x27x23 = 12,420 descriptions). Such a large number of terms would be difficult to analyze. It. also seemed likely that sellers would not make so many profit discriminations in actual practice. We began, therefore, to look for descriptions which would be equivalent (redundant). We found that many terms in the three classes were equivalent in meaning, so that each class

7 could be divided into four or five groups of equivalent terms. The variation in terms for general desirability of market to seller was elicited by asking contrasting questions of the sort noted above.

These terms fell into five groups, each group having an equivalent level of “‘goodness.”? An

) arbitrary number i was assigned to each group, ranging from 1 (most desirable) to 5 (least | desirable), as indicated in Table 2. This grouping scales market terms on a unidimensional scale of desirability. Group 1 means a highly desirable market (sweet) and rapid turnover or high demand (light). After returning from Ghana we looked at terms for the number of fish and number of buyers in the market to see whether they could be arranged into equivalent groups. In Ghana, we had seen that fish terms, price set at the shore, and the size of fish supply were all correlated.° This correlation permitted us to “fix” fish term categories within a range of prices set at the shore in Cape Coast. In a profit-eliciting question (frames 3 & 4), a fish seller’s answer would be the same profit for a specific range of buying prices, all other variables in the question being held constant. For example, if the number of fish a woman had to sell, the market, and the term used for number of buyers were all held constant in the profit-eliciting question, and if the fish _ term was /the fish broke out/, the woman’s answer would be the same profit whether the buying

Gladwin & Gladwin ] MARKETS IN GHANA | 131 price at the shore was N@ .40 or N@ .60. Fish terms and their associated range of buying prices at

the shore could therefore be ranked: - . Buying price at shore Fish term

j=l .30 .60 the fish broke out - j=2 80 =1.00 the fish were plentiful - j=3. 1.20 1.50 the fish were there somewhere j=4 1.80 2.20 , no fish at all We were able thus to condense fish terms into four categories, varying on the dimension of . number of fish and ranked from the highest number of fish (j = 1) to the smallest supply (j = 4). The

buying price at the shore serves as a flexible category boundary for each semantic category — (Torgerson 1958:208). Therefore, if a woman says to her neighbor /the fish broke out/, the neighbor knows she has to pay the men between N€ .30 to N@ 1.00 per hundred fish for that

day’s fish. However, if a woman buys fish for NG 1.00 per hundred, which implies a j = 2 condition of fish supply, and then goes to Kumasi and finds that all the other coastal towns, as well as Cape Coast, have sent fish to Kumasi, she will probably say that /the fish broke out/, aj =1 _ fish condition. The supply term, e.g., /the fish broke out/, refers to the supply at the market where the fish are sold, and not to the supply of fish coming into Cape Coast. Since the two supplies are

not correlated exactly, the buying price at the shore in Cape Coast is not a fixed category boundary, but slides up and down. It gives a rank order which is preserved, even though actual conditions may shift up or down. (Unfortunately, the four fish term categories we assume to exist were not tested in the field; had we done so, we could have scaled them on a unidimensional successive interval scale [Torgerson 1958:208] which would have been more direct.) Once terms indicating different supplies of fish were allocated to four categories we put terms

indicating varying numbers of buyers into categories also. However, as we indicate in the next , section, we were able to show that the entire set of buyers terms is redundant. Informants rarely made statements which included all three kinds of terms, such as /There are many buyers in the market but few fish and the market is good/. Saying that the market is good is redundant because many buyers and few fish imply that the market is good; an informant would not need to say so explicitly. We came to understand that market terms (good, bad) and terms for the number of

buyers (many, few) could be substituted for each other in our questions, but that a fish supply | term was always necessary. From an economic point of view, fish terms always represented supply,

while terms for both buyers and goodness of market represented demand to the sellers. The influence of supply had to be separated from the influence of demand in estimating expected profit, but it was clear that sellers did not need all three terms. In conversations between sellers, moreover, demand in the market was more frequently expressed in market terms (/the market is good/) rather than in buyers terms (/there are many buyers/). Terms for the number of buyers were used less frequently; women often got along without them. We hoped to find frequent enough redundancy in the actual usage of terms so that we could eliminate terms for the number of buyers. Our “‘system” would then have the same characteristics as their system as normally used, and would also be easier to analyze because three classes of terms could be reduced to two

familiar dimensions, supply and demand. |

If we could show that terms for the number of buyers are redundant, we could work with only

twenty profit discriminations instead of 14,420. We put the fish terms into categories (j = 1. . .4), the market terms into categories (i= 1, 2. ..5), and then constructed the matrix G shown in Figure 3. Matrix G shows those markets for which we elicited a profit formula from the specifications of a fish term, a market term, and a range of number of fish to sell (frames 5,6 above). The four categories of supply terms (number of fish) seen in Figure 3, form the columns of the matrix (j = fish terms). The five categories of general market condition terms in Figure 3, form the rows of the matrix (i = market terms). The intersection of a particular row (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) and a particular column (j = 1, 2, 3, or 4) contains all the markets for which expected profit data was collected for

132 ) STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

j = 1 J = 2? J = 3 j = 4 fish broke . fish were fish were fish did not

out, “flooded plentiful. few. come.

the market.

24 G1) Gi2 G13 Gig |

market was Kumasi Ankamadanase Kotokoraba -

) .Kotokoraba Mankessim good and B . ekwal market was . . Mankessim Praso light.

Goq Go2 Go3 Goq

I= 2 Kotokoraba Kumasi Jukwa Praso , Bekwai Kumasi Kumasi

market Mankessim Mankessim Kotokoraba : good. was Kotokoraba Mankessim Ankamadanase Ankamadanase

. G31 G32 G33 G3,

1=3 Kotokoraba Kumasi Jukwa Kumasi market was Mankessim Bekwai Praso Ankamadanase somewhat Ankamadanase | Mankessim Kumasi -

good. Kotokoraba Bekwai Kotokoraba

Gy4 G42 G43 Ga4 . Ankamadanase

1=4 KKumasi Jukwa Kumasi , otokoraba Bekwai K otokoraba . Q-

1=5 ,

market was Mankessim Ankamadanase not good. Kotokoraba Ankamadanase

G51 |Gso G53 G54 |

Jukwa Kumasi Kumasi

k Kumasi Bekwai Kotokoraba ob

ve ted was Bekwai Mankessim spotied. Kotokoraba Praso

Ankamadanase

Figure 3. G, j matrix. Each non-@ cell represents a combination of market and fish terms which describe a unique profit expectation function. 7

that combination of conditions. Thirteen expected profit formulas exist for the Kumasi market because Kumasi appears in 13 cells. If a cell contains five markets, then five expected profit formulas were elicited for that G, ; (supply-demand combination). There are three null (¢) cells. Null means that a particular combination of terms cannot occur.

For example, a market cannot be both flooded with fish (j = 1) and good and light at the same time. Hence G,, = 6. The matrix, moreover, has only two dimensions because the buyers terms are | redundant; we can generate the buyers terms from fish and general market terms.

Gladwin & Gladwin] MARKETS IN GHANA 133 TERMS FOR BUYERS |

three frames: , We can prove the redundancy of buyers’ terms by using data from women’s accounts of actual trips to markets on the few occasions (30 out of 342 trips) when the women responded to these /And the fish in the market—what was it like?/ /And were the buyers there in the market? /

_ {What was the market like?/

were unscaled. . | There were 98 accounts of trips in which market women responded to the first two questions, but not the third (we did not realize the importance of the third question frame then). From these accounts, we compiled 20 different market terms, 32 fish terms, and 32 buyers terms, all of which

The 30 cases from the trip data that reported all three classes of terms, i = market condition terms; j} = amount of fish (supply) terms; and k = number of buyers (demand) terms, were

analyzed to see if any simple rule (relation) could be found among the terms (see Table 2). The fish terms were ranked into 4 categories depending on the quantity of fish. It was obvious that the terms for the number of buyers should be ranked into some similar set of categories, the greatest number of buyers ranked first (k = 1) and the smallest number of buyers ranked last (k = A).

| The following intuitive rule was tried: (= means “‘implies’’)

(1)demand Supply = how good the market is. | For the terms this relationship translated into

(2)a ea terms for number fish | ys | ae = general marketof condition terms terms for number of buyers }

or using the index values:

(3) 4 =; , The rule says the market will be good (i = 2), if the supply of fish (j) is much less than the demand for the fish, demand being the number of buyers (k). The market will be spoiled (i = 5) if the supply of fish (j) is much greater than the demand for the fish (k). The market will be only somewhat good (i = 3) if the supply of fish (j) is just about equal to the demand for the fish (k); i.e., if |] = k. Of course, this is a view of the market through the seller’s eyes rather than the buyer’s. We then applied our rule (j/k = i) to the 30 combinations of fish, buyers, and market condition

terms from the data for actual trips. We assumed that we could use four categories for terms indicating the number of buyers. We then derived the three cases for the rule mentioned above. Case 1. The market will be good (i = 1, 2, or 3) if the supply of fish (j) is less than the demand

for the fish (k). | (3) + >i-kifj>kandj#k.

The reader will notice that } > k seems to contradict the statement that supply of fish (j) is less than demand for the fish (k). This is because the fish terms were ranked from the largest number

of fish (j = 1) to the smallest number of fish (j = 4), in Table 2. Therefore the fish terms in category 2, Table 2 represent a smaller number of fish than the fish terms in category 1. When j > k, there is a smaller supply of fish than there is a demand for the fish, and the market is good.

Example: +" >i=k=1ifj-2&k=1, $= 5 gua mu ye har dew (in Fante)

4) j ,

134 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

abatafo doaso is in category 1. : | Although the English translation of pii and doaso is the same; i.e., plenty, nam pili is in category 2, Case 2. The market will not be good (i = 4) or it will be spoiled (i = 5) if the supply of fish (j) is much greater than the demand for the fish (k).

( ds i=kork+ lifj=kandj#k

Again, the reader must notice that the number of fish is larger with a smaller j, so that |} Myren (1964) believes that the critical factor to offset risk aversion among peasant farmers is

‘“‘adequate information about the new inputs which are proposed. This includes potential adaptability to the farmer’s own land and climate and a vast number of details about the techniques to use with the new crop or practice.”’

lO A great deal is made in the literature regarding the divisibility and complexity of an

innovation and the extent to which it requires major restructuring of the productive process. For

convenience, these attributes will be subsumed under “technically viable.” |

Wharton | RISK AND THE SUBSISTENCE FARMER 173 17 This area is one where I suspect I may differ with my colleagues in economic anthropology (Dalton 1961). While there may be differences as to the goals of production and distribution in such situations, I would argue that the means employed within the firm still follow economizing rules. For further treatment of the issue in a cross-disciplinary context see Wharton (1969:Ch. 14). 18 Despite the extensive debate on the point, I will assume throughout this paper that peasant

farmers behave rationally (Wise and Yotopoulos 1968) and are utility maximizers. The critical _ question then becomes the content of the objective function and the relative weights assigned, especially to such elements as profits (net returns) or security or social prestige.

? Day’s (1965) rigorous study of yields using U.S. data showed that field crop yields were non-normal and that the degree of skewness and kurtosis depended upon the amount of available

nutrients. Similar findings for yields in developing areas have not yet been established, but their apparent significance should not be lost as one observes the necessary increases in fertilizer

application required by the newer varieties. The point is not that increased fertilizer application should be avoided but that its effects upon yield distribution characteristics should be recognized. 29 An interesting question is the extent to which the choice of crop and crop combinations may not be wholly price determined for the semi-subsistence low-income farmer who must first assure an adequate food supply for his family and who is reluctant to be dependent upon market forces. A few economists have argued that maximization in labor use and in farm family own farm inputs may be the primary goal in production in cases of subsistence agriculture (Wharton 1969:Ch. 14). *1 Onate (1967) has some interesting empirical evidence of increased variance to be observed with higher yielding varieties of rice compared with the traditional. *2«Standard” and “level”? are carefully distinguished. The latter refers to the actual, existing | components, whereas the former refers to the desired components. *°"For a variety of reasons, I consider Nakajima’s revision of my equation an improvement

cultural variable. .

(Nakajima 1969). S.. = P. + g (H, C) g = 0 where E = economic well-being variable and C = **Such minima have a long history in the literature. For some recent examples see Mellor (1963), Fei and Ranis (1964), Miracle (1968), and Nakajima (1969). The role of such minima in determining an ‘‘agricultural surplus’? has been the source of debate among anthropologists (Dalton 1960, 1963; Orans 1966). *° For an interesting recent critique of these standards from a nutritional standpoint see Oshima

(1967). |

*° Note similarity to Chayanov’s concept of “‘self-exploitation’’ (Chayanov 1966:Ch. 2). *7 While field trials and farm demonstrations may help to reduce the subjective variance which a peasant farmer may attach to the new technology, some variance still remains. Thus the logic of the argument remains—each farmer must still live with his individual risk. 28 We could use a food staple as rice as the sole product or numeraire. *? This statement is not quite accurate as is shown in my earlier formulation where the current minimum subsistence standard is a function of a number of variables including previous levels of income. It also oversimplifies-in ignoring the obvious effects of the income elasticity of demand for farm produced food which though declining as development proceeds is still quite high for low

income producers (Stevens 1965:55). , | 30 An interesting related observation is the frequent finding that in areas which suffer

occasional droughts the local traditional varieties are often drought resistant at the expense of not providing high yields in good years. The farmers have chosen varieties which offer an insurance

against severe loss or ruin. My colleague, Arthur T. Mosher, has also pointed out another interesting example from North India: where irrigation is not available the farmers follow a practice

of sowing wheat and gram or barely and gram mixed together in the same field. If the season is “good” (adequate rainfall), the wheat or barley will yield well. But if the season is unfavorable, the: gram will still mature and help compensate for poor wheat or barley yield. 31 More correctly, the lower level of the variance associated with a one or a two negative standard deviation.

>? Besides the dearth of information on the basis of which to. formulate his expectations regarding yield and its variance, the farmer recognizes that there is a greater likelihood of his performance being subject to wider error during the early stages of adoption due to unfamiliarity with the variety, its requirements, and the changed practices which may be required by the new

technology in order to realize its potential. >3 Data provided by Dr. Randolph Barker of the International Rice Research Institute. °* One final observation of Behrman’s is that the pattern of rice supply elasticities is highly correlated with the existence of profitable alternatives (Behrman 1966:366-369). °° Promoters of new innovations occasionally fail to recognize the double risks associated with much of the new technology. Where the new technology requires the purchase of a “‘package”’ of associated inputs to achieve maximum returns, the peasant farmer not only subjects himself to risks in production but also in costs which are of a much higher order of magnitude than he has

174 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 previously experienced. If this action also reduces his ability to depend upon traditional forms of security (family or village) due to resentment at his innovative actions, the peasant faces a third | form of risk. Any valuation and summation of all three often results in an extremely high risk factor. Sadly, it is often hesitancy on the part of peasant farmers to incur the full costs required by the

optimal ‘‘package of practices’’ to secure the full benefit of the new varieties which frequently leads to an actual loss. There are several cases where farmers have failed to apply fertilizer at the

higher levels required with the result that traditional varieties outyield the new.

5° My preference is for the third simply because it is easier to estimate, and distribution of average consumption figures for rural samples tend to skew to the left. >7Such food sources may be provided through socio-cultural institutions, viz. extended family, or ecologically, viz. proximate to easily secured wild/non-cultivated food sources such as game, roots, berries. 38 This point can be best seen in reverse. The existence of other economic opportunities for the employment of available resources has often led to rapid innovation and expansion in production.

Study of development under such situations in the past (Burma, West Africa) has led to the

deserves further study.

‘“‘vent-for-surplus”’ theories of development (Myint 1964; Eicher 1967). The influence of generally

limited economic opportunity as it affects innovation is another neglected dimension which

very narrow. agriculture. .

>? Tn a crude sense the farmer’s net worth constitutes his ultimate reserve, either mortgagable or saleable, to cover minimal subsistence in the event of massive production failure. Peasant farmers normally have very narrow capital bases so that the margins for “‘risk experimentation”’ are also

*° The earlier pioneering efforts by Hildreth (1957), Porter (1959), Johnson et al. (1961), Gould (1963), Reutlinger (1963), Wolpert (1964) have a great deal to commend them to future

researchers in this field. +1 My colleague Dr. Albert H. Moseman has pointed out that much of the plant breeding work

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Developing Village India: A Statistical Analysis’

IRMA ADELMAN ,

GEORGE DALTON

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY , The vastness and diversity of India and thé lack of adequate data in many areas make generalization extremely hazardous. But that does not obuiate the need to see cultural and social processes in an all-India perspective if only to locate some of the problems that need to be given priority in future research,

and the areas where information is either totally lacking or-very poor [Srinivas 1969:xiv].

ABOUT EIGHTY PERCENT of the people in today’s developing countries still live in hinterland village communities and still acquire the bulk of their livelihood from agricultural production which they allocate in part for their own consumption and in part for market sale. There ate millions of such small agricultural communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and the Middle East. India alone has 500,000.

There is a large literature about these communities written principally by anthropologists, agricultural economists, and rural sociologists who describe village organization and performance in the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Much valuable work has been done. The present authors have drawn heavily on this literature as we make clear throughout this essay. There are three basic obstacles to be surmounted in studying micro-development. First, the village communities undergoing socio-economic change number in the millions and are widely different. Studies of individual villages based on sustained fieldwork can provide us with insights

into the process for specific communities, but the conclusions reached cannot readily be generalized to large numbers of other villages because of the extraordinary range of variation among them. Second, statistical information on village economic structure and performance is scarce and often of dubious accuracy. Third, there are no theories generating models of long-run sequential change and development at the village level which are theoretically persuasive and

amenable to policy implementation. Agricultural economists, anthropologists, and rural sociologists usually concern themselves with the introduction of innovations piecemeal, and emphasize different aspects of the transformation process, even though they recognize that the effectiveness. of modernization policies is influenced by many disparate, mutually interacting, forces (Myrdal 1957). Unlike those working on national or macro-economic development, planners

who devise policies to apply at the village level often have little knowledge of the crucial

determinants of village-level development. |

Those who analyze village economies and societies with the hope of applying what they learn to

improve or accelerate village development discover that there is little comparable information, particularly statistical data, relating to as many as, say, fifty villages in each developing country.’

This paucity of comparable information forces those who study village communities to concentrate on intensive fieldwork studies gathering their own data in one or two villages either working by themselves (e.g., Epstein 1962), or in teams (e.g., Holmberg et al. 1965). Because of the time-consuming and labor-intensive nature of fieldwork studies, some investigators of village development are forced to analyze a sample of, at most, ten or fifteen villages (e.g., de Wilde et al.

| | 179

180 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 1968) by making short field visits to each, relying on their qualitative assessments plus whatever statistical data they can gather in a short stay. |

, But there is enormous variability among villages. Even within a single country villages differ in

size, extent of commercialization, nearness to towns and transport facilities, quality of technology and soils, access to educational and health services, and frequently in basic cultural dimensions such as language and religion, and in historical events leading up to the present (for example, their varying colonial experiences). It is extremely difficult to judge how representative any one village is, and therefore how generally applicable the analysis and conclusions are when derived from only

one or a small set of villages. A related obstacle to analyzing micro-development is that there is little systematic theory

concerning village change within the context of national development. We do not mean to. deprecate the findings of the many anthropologists, economists, and sociologists who have written — about village-level transformation in Third World countries. We do suggest, however, that much of

it relates to special colonial situations that no longer obtain.’ For example, much of the anthropological literature on acculturation considers ethnic minorities, such as North American Indians, forced to acculturate to the larger, controlling, already developed American society and economy (e.g., see the excellent article by Colson, 1949). Such studies are addressed to essentially

different questions from those that must be answered in order to understand today’s rural development in Africa or India. Much of the literature of applied anthropology (e.g., Spicer 1952), also considers very special

cases that reflect another sort of colonial condition: attempts on the part of visiting experts to introduce into traditional hinterland villages one or a few modern practices, such as malaria prevention or an improved variety of seed, while no regional or national development program existed—dams, flood control, roads, new industry, electricity, provision of agricultural credit—to which villagers could respond. In the post-colonial period especially, much Village-level change and

development goes on for reasons other than the entrepreneurial presence of visiting experts transmitting new skills (see, e.g., Epstein 1962). Finally, introducing innovations piecemeal into isolated villages under colonial conditions was an extremely difficult undertaking for reasons that are now very clear. Most traditional tribes and peasantries experienced sporadic hunger due to their use of poor technology, their great reliance on one or two staple foodstuffs, their relative isolation, and the absence of real alternative ways of securing livelihood aside from the primary activities of hunting, fishing, herding, and farming in ° their local communities. Many innovations, such as irrigation equipment and chemical fertilizers, are both expensive and complicated. That they are expensive means that the people must already

have sufficient cash income to buy them or must be provided with credit (and thus incur debt). That they are complicated means that the successful employment of irrigation and chemical fertilizers requires a complementary set of new skills and usually more labor (for weeding, transplanting, etc.). Difficulties were encountered in harvesting groundnuts because the soil becomes incredibly hard when it dries. Sugar cane suffered from lack of irrigation facilities ... the herbicides presently in use are ineffective in controlling the local weeds; techniques for irrigating wheat are scarcely understood; insecticides are misused ... In 1909 cultivators reportedly gave three

reasons for not transplanting their paddy [rice]: insufficient irrigation, poor soils, and

scattered holdings. Farmers contacted during the 1963-64 farm survey claimed they did not transplant because their draft animals were too weak for puddling, labor was insufficient, and grazing was not controlled (Weaver 1968:194, 199).

Innovation therefore was inherently risky. Even with the cash to buy and the new skills and extra labor, failure meant impoverishment, or, indeed, hunger. In the post-colonial period, national development programs often reduce such risks by providing new, alternative and supplementary sources of income-earning, regionally, or provide credit through cooperatives (as well as the new skills and complementary package of inputs necessary to work the irrigation successfully). . The research reported in this paper draws on comparable data from 108 villages in India and

uses a statistical technique that does not require any pre-existing theory of functional relationships. We do not suggest that statistical analysis is a complete solution to understanding

Adelman & Dalton] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 181 village-level transformations. We do suggest it is a userul instrument to get kinds of empirical insights that are difficult to obtain from single village fieldwork. The complexity of development processes and the diversity of village communities is so great that, inevitably, several approaches must be used. But surely we should welcome any technique that throws light on the underlying

Data /

processes of modernization; a technique, moreover, that can be used anywhere if sufficient and comparable data are collected.

The data for the research described in this paper are taken.from village surveys carried out by the Indian government in representative villages in each of the fifteen states between 1960 and 1962, as part of the overall Census of India for 1961.* The purpose of the village surveys was to . obtain comparable information on the structure and performance of village communities. The published results contain statistics on income, landholdings, educational and transport facilities,

etc., as well as verbal descriptions of village history, caste composition, and styles of life. Of the three hundred village surveys available in the summer of 1967, we chose a representative

sample of 108. The number of villages included from each state is proportional to the rural population of that state. We also chose our sample so as to reflect the full range of variation in village development contained in the original studies.

_ We were able to include in our analysis only those variables for which data were given in the published surveys. This is a regrettable shortcoming. We had to leave out an index of ecological conditions, for example, because information on rainfall, soil quality, sub-soil, water, etc., was not reported. An index of household wealth had to be excluded since it would have required data on savings, consumer durables, holdings of jewelry and other real assets which were not consistently reported. Nor were we able to include data on family planning programs or data which would

enable us to evaluate the effectiveness of land reform legislation. ,

Several variables were discarded from the study because they lacked systematic association with , any other included variable. Among these were indicators of peasant indebtedness (the amount of household debt, the ratio of debt to income, and the proportion of debt incurred for productive purposes), and of the quality of health facilities. Finally, we omitted a variable describing the type of religion because it proved impossible to define it in a manner which is both conceptually appropriate and capable of implementation with our data sources. Definition of Variables and Method of Classification

We ranked the 108 villages with regard to each of twenty-one characteristics. Where the information or concept were not specifiable in numerical terms, we grouped the villages into three,

four, or five ranked categories depending on the fineness of the survey data. In those cases, numerical scores were assigned to the ranked groups according to the scale described in I. Adelman

and C. T. Morris, Society, Politics and Economic Development, pp. 14-15. Experiments with alternative scales (logarithmic and squared) indicated that the results were insensitive to the scale

chosen. . |

1. Population. Villages were ranked according to the number of households, which ranges - from 932 to 8, with a mean of 158 households. 2. Number of Castes. This indicator ranks villages into five categories according to the number of named caste groups resident in the village. The top group consisted of villages having more than . fifteen castes (the highest number being twenty-six castes). The second, third and fourth groups contained villages with 12-14, 8-11, and 1-7 castes respectively. The lowest group was composed of

villages with predominantly tribal organization. | 3. Extent of Commercialization. This indicator groups villages into one of three sets (high, medium and low) depending upon the proportion of yearly village produce which is sold to markets. The top group contains villages which sold over 50% of production; villages in the lowest group sold less than 25% of their output. The proportion of total output sold ranged from 100% to 0.

182 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 4. Quality of Agricultural Technology. This composite index ranks villages according to the proportion of arable land which is irrigated and the proportion of farm households which use chemical fertilizer or pesticides. The percent of cultivated land under irrigation ranged from 0-100%, with a mean of 24.3% and a mode of 0%. Villages were also divided into three groups

according to the percent of their households using improved tools, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. The composite index was formed by factor analysis. 5. Location and Access to Transport. This indicator also is a composite of several data series: quantity and quality of village access to transport facilities (all-weather roads, bus service, railway

service), and the distance of the village from towns and cities. Villages were divided into four groups according to the following criteria: in the first group villages were six miles or less from a town, had access to an all-year motorable road and to frequent bus service and were within six miles of a railroad. In the second group, villages were ten miles or less from the nearest town with access to an all-year motorable road, or within five miles of a railroad. Villages in the third group were fifteen miles or less from a town, had no access to an all-year motorable road and no railroad within five miles. In the fourth group the villages were more than fifteen miles from a town and ten miles from a railroad and had no access to an all-year motorable road. 6. Awareness of Social Legislation. One of the very few indicators of social attitudes we could contrive from the survey information was the extent of awareness in the village of legislation on

social issues. This index was based on the percent of villagers who were aware of legislation introduced since independence. prohibiting untouchability. The range was from 100% to 3%, with a mean of 38.1%, and median and mode of 25.0%. 7. Education. This variable is a composite (determined by factor analysis) of four “‘primary”’ variables: (1) the percent of children aged 5 to 14 who attended school, which ranged from 0 to 89% with a mean of 32.5%; (2) the percent of female children aged 5 to 14 in school, which had a mean of 18.3% and a mode of 5% and ranged from 0 to 75%; (3) the number of literate males over 14 expressed as a percentage of all males over 14 (mean 30.6% and range 0 to 81%); and (4) the educational facilities available in and near the village. The type of school (primary or secondary) and proximity to the village were taken into account when dividing villages into four groups for

this last indicator.

8. Family Household Type. This variable ranks villages according to the proportion of simple | households (i.e., containing one married couple with their unmarried children) in the village. This ©

percentage had a mean value of 48 percent and ranged from 92% to 6%. | ,

9. Girls Under 14 Married. This variable ranks villages by the number of married females who are less than 14 years old, expressed as a percentage of the total number of femals under 14 in the village. The percentage ranged from 0 to 37%, with a mean of 3.8%. 10. Percent of Low-Caste Households. The number of people belonging to low castes, expressed

as a percentage of the total village population, ranged from 0-100%, with a mean of 29% and median and mode of 11%.

11. Cooperative Membership. The number of village households which were members of

Rupees.

multi-purpose cooperative societies was expressed as a percentage of all the village households. The range was 0 to 78%, with a mean, median and mode of 20.5, 2.5 and 0. 12. Income. This variable combines two aspects of village income: the average monthly income

per household and a measure of extent of inequality in income distribution. The latter was indicated by the percent of households in the village with average monthly incomes below 950 Average monthly incomes range from 20 to 213 Rupees, with a mean of 80.9 and median of 72. The percent of households in each village earning less than 50 Rupees per month had a mean of 40.7 and ranged from 0-95. 13. Land Per Capita. This indicator classifies villages according to the quantity of arable land per capita (the total amount of land used for farming divided by the village population). The arable land per capita ranged from 0.1 acre to 9.2 acres. The distribution of land holdings has two modes—1.2 and 3.7 acres, and a mean and median of 1.85 and 1.2 respectively. 14. Community Development Activity. Villages were divided into four groups according to the number and size of development projects undertaken by the community. These ranged from

Adelman & Dalton] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 183 villages which had undertaken more than four substantial projects (e.g., building new roads or schools) to villages where no community projects had been undertaken. 15. Employment in Agriculture. For each village, the number of people aged 15 to 59 who were

employed in agriculture was expressed as a percentage of all people in that age group. The

percentage ranged from 0-99, with a mean and a mode of 56.0%. .

16. Percent of Households Owning Land. Villages were classified according to the percentage of households owning some farmland. The percentage varies from 14 to 100 with mean, median and mode of 71.9, 80.0, and 100. (The data were not available to calculate a frequency distribution of land ownership by amounts of land held.) 17. Percent of Tenant Farmers. This variable classifies villages according to the percentage of households who lease land from owners or who work land they do not own, on a sharecropping arrangement. The mean percentage was 20% and ranged from 0 to 100. 18. Health Facilities. The villages were divided into five groups according to their quality of access to health facilities (hospitals, clinics, dispensaries). The distance from the village to such facilities was also taken into account. The top group contained villages having health facilities within the village. In the next highest group, villages had hospitals or clinics within 3 miles. The third group of villages had medical facilities from 3 to 5 miles away. Villages in the fourth group had medical services available 6 to 10 miles away. In the last group villages had no hospitals or dispensaries within 10 miles. The facilities ranged from a hospital and other medical services within the villages, to a village whose nearest medical facilities were 45 miles away.

19. Agricultural Base. This is a composite index which combines four of the individual indicators—all relating to agriculture—described above: land per capita; percent of households owning some land; percent of households that are tenant farmers; and the percent of the village population (aged 15-59) engaged in agriculture. 20. Economic Development: Factor 1. This is a composite index composed of five of the individual indicators that clustered together in a factor analysis of the same data. (See Adelman and Dalton 1971.) (These five are defined above as number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.) The indicators which comprise Factor 1 are size of population, number of castes, extent of commercialization, quality of agricultural technology, and nearness to transport facilities and cities. Villages which scored high on Factor 1 are more developed villages. 21. Family Practices. This is a composite index composed of two of the individual indicators (defined above as numbers 8 and 9): type of family household organization, that is, the proportion of nuclear (as compared to joint) family households, and the frequency of female child marriage (i.e., percent of girls under 14 who are married). Using this composite index allows us to ask what else characterizes villages which are unusual for the extent to which nuclear family households

predominate and in which child marriage is either absent or very infrequent; and what else characterizes more traditional villages where joint family households and early female marriage are still common. The Statistical Technique

A computer is a mechanical slave who does only what it is precisely told to do. Its invaluable attributes are its ability to manipulate great masses of data almost instantly in ways it is instructed to do. The quality of the results depends on the quality of the initial data stored in the computer, the appropriateness of the instructions given to it—the statistical program chosen to order the data in a specific way—and the ability of the human investigators to interpret the results, especially when the results are capable of more than one interpretation. Our analysis can be defective for any of three reasons: the descriptive characteristics of the real-world villages -the raw data which forms

the basis for ranking villages-may have been inaccurately reported by the fieldworkers who gathered the data; a stepwise analysis of variance may not be capable of yielding significant results; or the present authors may interpret the results poorly. The computer is given twenty-one pieces of information about each of 108 villages. Each piece of-information is a ranking of each village with regard to a specific characteristic such as the size of the village population, or the percentage of school-age children in school. Each stepwise analysis

184 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 starts by singling out one of the twenty-one characteristics to be the focus of investigation. Let us

take the proportion of village produce which is sold (extent of commercialization). We first choose, on the basis of the literature and of our own judgment, which of the remaining twenty variables should be allowed to associate with extent of commercialization, discarding those (usually very few, sometimes none) that are not potentially interesting from the viewpoint of economic development and cultural modernization. The stepwise program then instructs the computer to divide the entire set of 108 villages into two sets, a high commercialization and a low commercialization set, and to indicate which other

characteristics (e.g., nearness to towns and transport, size of village population, etc.) are systematically associated with the highly commercialized compared to the less commercialized sets of villages; the program also indicates the weight of such correlations, that is, what percent of the

variance among villages with regard to commercialization is associated with each of the other characteristics that prove to be significantly associated with commercialization. The program continues to split each of the successively high scoring subsets of villages with

regard to commercialization, and the successively low ones. This tells us for the. highly commercialized villages which few other characteristics they also have in common; so too for the low subsets which produce overwhelmingly for subsistence purposes. In this way we get a profile of characteristics closely associated with high and low performance: What is true for villages very close to cities and good transport compared to isolated villages? What is true for villages composed largely of low-caste households compared to villages with few or none? What is true for villages with abundant arable land per capita compared to villages with little land? and so on. AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY

The modernization of agricultural technology is a matter of great importance to the economic development of India. The reasons are both short-run and long-run. Where, as in India, eighty percent of the population continues to rely directly on agriculture for the bulk of its income, broad increases in material welfare can only occur with improvement in agricultural performance. If social overhead capital is necessary for development, the taxable capacity must be enlarged. If.

urbanized industrialization and exports are to grow, food and agricultural raw materials in ever-increasing quantities must be sold by farms to cities. Improvements in agricultural . technology—particularly an increase in irrigation facilities and the use of chemical fertilizers —are the most promising source of increase in agricultural productivity. The several tables which follow, drawn from a recent work on agricultural development in India (Mellor et al. 1968), show that only one-fifth the sown area is irrigated, that yearly output of foodstuffs varies sensitively with weather conditions, that those who earn their income in agriculture pay a much smaller rate of taxation than others, and what a large payoff Japanese farms get from intensive application of labor and fertilizer compared to those in West Bengal. The 108 villages are ranked in accordance with a composite indicator combining the proportion of land which is irrigated together with the extent to which chemical fertilizer and pesticides are used. In. our sample, the percent of cultivated area under irrigation ranged from 0 to 100%, with a

, mean of 24.3% and a mode of 0%. Villages were divided into three groups according to the percent of households using improved tools, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.

We allowed all the variables to be associated with our indicator of the quality of agricultural technology to gauge the extent to which cultural, social, and economic variables impinge upon readiness to adopt modern agricultural techniques. Results of the Statistical Analysis Group 1. The entire set of 108 villages splits into a high set of 71 villages which, on the average, has an index for quality of agricultural technology more than three times as high as the low group

of 37 villages. Twenty-two percent of the variance among villages in the quality of their agricultural technology is associated with the extent of commercialization of production. In the

Adelman & Dalton ] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 185 FOOD GRAIN PRODUCTION, TREND, AND IMPORTS, INDIA, 1949-1950 TO 1965-1966 (IN MILLIONS OF TONS)

Production Difference Adjusted assuming between Year official constant rate . actual Food grain ;

production* increase ofand production ~ 2.5% perofyear** 2.5%imports trend |

58 58 : 0 3.7 ~1949-50 1950-51 52 59 —7 4.7 1951-52 53 60 —7 3.9 1952-53 59 62 — —3 2.0

1953-54 69 63 +6 0.8 1954-55 67 65 +2 0.6 . 1955-56 66 66 0 1.4 1956-57 62 69 70 ] 68—8 +] 3.2 3.6 1957-58

74, | 71 +3 3.8 ~1958-59 1959-60 75 73 _ +2 5.1 1960-61 79 75 +4 3.4 1961-62 83 77 +6. 3.6 1962-63 78 719 —1 4.5 1963-64 80 81. —] 6.2 1964-65 88 85 | : —13 83 +512.0 7.0 1965-66 72

succeeding issues. .

*Government of India, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Bulletin on Food Statistics, Aug. 1961 and ** Because of the large year-to-year fluctuations in production due to changes in weather, it is difficult to estimate the trend in food grain production for India. It appears that the upward trend has been about 2.5

percent a year (see Uma J. Lele and John W. Mellor, Estimates of Change and Causes of Change in Foodgrains ~ Production, India, 1949-50 to 1960-61 (Cornell International Agricultural Development Bulletin No. 2 [Ithaca,

N.Y.: Cornell University, Aug. 1964]). )

During 1963-1964, food grains comprised 46 percent of the value of Indian agricultural production and

occupied about 80 percent of the crop acreage. By definition, food grains include both cereals and pulses. Rice and wheat-represented 46 and 12 percent respectively.of the total food grain production. PERCENTAGE OF NET AREA SOWN WHICH WAS IRRIGATED, FIVE-YEAR AVERAGES, INDIA, 1908—1964

Years averaged net area | sownPercentage which wasofirrigated

British India 1908-09 to 1910-11 19.6

1911-12 to to 1920-21 1915-16 23.0 21.3 1916-17 1921-22toto1930-31 1925-26 22.3 21.8 | 1926-27 1931-32 to 1935-36 23.0 | 1986-37 to 1940-41 24.7 1941-42 to 1945-46 26.1 Modern India . 1947-48 to 1951-52 . 17.3 18.2 1952-53 to 1956-57 1957-58 1962-63 to to 1961-62 1963-64 18.1 19.1 Source: Figures for British India as compiled in George Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India, 1891-1947:

Output, Availability, and Productivity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), pp. 340-341; used by permission. The area covered is roughly that of modern Indian and Pakistan, excluding the former princely states. The comparison shows that British India was more intensively irrigated than modern India. The figures for

modern India are drawn from Agricultural Situation in India, various volumes, and Abstract of Agricultural Statistics, India, issues during the years 1960-1966, both published by the Directorate of Economics and

; Statistics, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Government of India.

186 | STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

| Rice 37 Wheat 33 Barley 49 Maize 13 Jowar 4 . Bajra 3 — Ragi 16 Sugar cane 68 Oilseeds 3 Cotton 13 Tobacco 22 : |.

Croparea — : Percentage of each | crop irrigated | All food grains 22 PERCENTAGE OF AREA IRRIGATED, SELECTED CROPS, INDIA, 1960—1961

Fodder crops | 16 All crops . 18 1961, I (Delhi, 1962). |

Source: Government of India, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Indian Agricultural Statistics, 1960-

TAXES PAID BY UPPER-INCOME* GROUPS IN THE AGRICULTURAL AND NONAGRICULTURAL SECTORS, INDIA, 1950-1951 TO 1960-1961

Taxes as a percentage of income

Year Agricultural sector Nonagricultural sector

1950-51 6.16 20.47 1951-52 | 6.26 17.86 1952-53 6.59 19.02 1953-54 6.47 ; 16.60 1954-55 8.47 16.58 1955-56 7.50 16.68 1956-57 6.95 17.10 1957-58 7.24 17.45 1958-59 6.51 16.72 1959-60 6.84 15.14 1960-61 | 6.56 | 17.80 *U pper-income households are defined as those whose annual incomes are estimated to be over Rs. 3600.

Source: Ved P. Gandhi, Tax Burden on Indian Agriculture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Law School

International Tax Program, 1966), p. 132, Table 30; p. 137, Table 32.

high villages 20% to 100% of village output is sold; in the low villages, less than 11%. (See Group 2 and 3.) The first finding should be underscored because of its analytical and policy implications. With

very few exceptions, improvements in agricultural technology require purchased inputs from outside the village (e.g., irrigation pumps, chemical fertilizers), which in turn requires cash income (or access to credit) with which to purchase them. It should not be surprising therefore to finda |

, substantial correlation between extent of commercialization and the quality of agricultural technology.

Several other characteristics are almost as closely associated as commercialization with differences in the quality of agricultural technology used. The number of castes in a village, which, as a discriminator would have split the 108 villages in high and low sets of almost equal size, is associated with 21% of the variance in the quality of agricultural technology. Villages with a relatively large number of castes also typically have better agricultural technology. The analytical

Adelman & Dalton] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 187 - AVERAGE TAX RATES IN THE AGRICULTURAL AND NONAGRICULTURAL SECTORS,

INDIA, 1950-1951 to 1961-1962 |

Agricultural sector , _ . Nonagricultural sector |

per Income per Taxes per Income per YearTaxes capita Ratio capita(rupees) capita Ratio (rupees)capita (rupees) (rupees)

1950-51 7.7 212 3.63 36.2 Ald 8.81 1951-52 8.0 210 3.81 41.8 440 9.50 1952-53 8.2 199 4.03 37.7 422 8.93 1953-54 8.6 215 4.00 37.4 428 8.74 1954-55 8.9 175 5.08 39.0 427 9.13 1955-56 9.5 177 0.37 .. 388.4 434 8.85

1956-57 12.4 10.6 198 210 6.27 5.05 |- 53.2 44.6 478 451 11.37 9.89 7 1957-58 1958-59 13.2 12.5 221 228 5.98 5.48 62.8 05.7 489 578 12.85 11.65 1959-60 1960-61 13.02 1961-62 13.4 13.7239 2272.61 5.9068.9 75.2) D29 567 13.21 Source: Ved P. Gandhi, Tax Burden on Indian Agriculture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Law School

International Tax Program, 1966), p. 56, Table 2. |

) Labor per |

COMPARISONS OF FARM INPUT STRUCTURE, WEST BENGAL, INDIA, AND KINKI DISTRICT, JAPAN

Average holding Labor avail- Labor

Region size of available __ able for farm utilization holding for farm work work per acre per acre

(acres) (man-months) (man-months) (man-months)

West Bengal, 2937.0 — 24.0 8.0 7.2 1.9 Kinki, JapanIndia a 3.0 12.0

Labor , , age of : per acre per availability | acre per acre

utilization Operating Value ofoutput Gross Region as percent-_~expenses fertilizer

West India 23 -$132.00 17.30 $34.90 2.70 $448.30 45.80 Kinki,Bengal, Japan — «BB Source: John W. Mellor, “Increasing Agricultural Production in Early Stages of Economic Development:

Relationships, Problems, and Prospects,’’ Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics XVII (Apr.-June 1962), 42.

point here is that irrigated crops require significantly more labor than unirrigated crops (Epstein 1962; Mellor 1968). The larger the number of castes the larger the labor force and the greater the likelihood that there will be a local supply of wage labor available to service the needs of irrigated

crops. , ,

Our first two discriminators between high and low villages with respect to agricultural. technology are economic, the first being extent of commercialization and the second a proxy for . the size and composition of the labor force. The next is cultural. The awareness of national social legislation, our simple indicator of awareness of external events, accounted for 19% of the variance

in quality of agricultural technology.°

Nearness to towns and transport facilities is another significant characteristic associated with differences in quality of agricultural technology (.18). Once again we see a connection between superior economic opportunity—access to markets—and superior economic performance. A far higher proportion of villagers used improved agricultural techniques in villages which are within

about six miles of a town and five miles of transport than in the more isolated villages.’ ;

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196 . STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7

Education y) *Land per Capita , 1 SUMMARY OF STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS

Average Monthly Income, four splits

*Location and Transportation 2 Employment in Agriculture 12 *Extent of Commercialization *Cooperative Membership 1

Quality of Household Agricultural Technology 1 Family Type “1 Family Practices 1

Agricultural Base 1 *Denotes principal discriminator in a split households and villages. a

community development activities reflect the impetus to improve the economic well being of

The level of income cannot be analyzed satisfactorily without taking the distribution of income into account. The percent of households earning below 50 Rupees a month, an indicator of the distribution of income at the lower end of the village income scale, was therefore also included in

the analysis of level of income.

Statistical Analysis Diagram 3 presents the results of the analysis. Group 1. The full set of 108 villages splits initially into a high group of 41 villages whose incomes average one-third higher than the low cohort of 65 villages (94 compared to 69 Rupees). The systematic differences between the high and low income villages are relatively weak, but all are aspects of importance related directly to development and modernization: extent of commercialization (.11), quality of agricultural technology (.08), and educational achievement (.07). It is reassuring to find that these are the gross indicators of differences between high and low income villages since these

aspects of village life are subject to policy manipulation. The results also confirm findings _ elsewhere on the importance for economic development of displacing subsistence production by production for market sale and of replacing traditional with modern technology. That the numerical loadings are so small tells us either that there are frequent inaccuracies in the basic data on income (which would not be surprising given peasant suspicion of the uses to which income data might be put), or that differences in income among villages are not as striking as other differences, which our Factor analysis confirms (see Adelman and Dalton 1971). Because the weights are so low, the successive splits are likely to be more revealing than the first split; that is, more interesting information is likely to be revealed about the extreme subsets of relatively high and relatively low income villages. High Income Villages

| Group 3, the initially high group of 41 villages, splits into a higher group of 33 villages whose average income is almost twice that of its low cohort containing 8 villages. The single best discriminator between high and low income is extent of membership in co-operatives, which alone is associated with 20% of the variance between high and low. What is puzzling is that 13% of the

variance between high and low income is associated with the strength of traditional family practices, in a retrogressive direction: villages with relatively high frequency of joint family households and child marriage have higher incomes. This is almost certainly due to the presence in the higher income groups of the dozen low caste villages having unusually high membership in co-operatives’ 1 as well as to the relationship between more joint families and more land ownership

and less frequent land fragmentation. :

Adelman & Dalton ] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 197 Group 6 splits once again, into Group 9, the subset of 16 villages with the highest average income, and its low cohort, Group 8, containing 17 villages, averaging only 60% of the income of the very high group. The discriminators at this high extreme are land per capita (.20), agricultural

base (.15), employment in agriculture (.14), and location and access to transport (.11). These indicators tell us that villages with very high incomes have more arable land per capita, better access to towns and transport, and few alternatives outside of agriculture.

Low Income Villages . Group 2, the low set of 65 villages in the first split, is capable of only one further split. It divides into a high group of 20 villages whose incomes are one-third higher than its low cohort (Group 4) of 45 villages. The systematic discriminators between these groups are nearness to towns

and transport (.10) and extent of education (.08). The numerical loadings are weak, but as with the other splits, it is economic, technological, and educational criteria which principally distinguish _

between high and low income villages. ,

Conclusion .

The numerical loadings associated with systematic differences between high and low income villages are weak, signifying that, by and large, differences in income between villages are not as pronounced as other differences. This is confirmed by another statistical analysis (Adelman and Dalton 1971) in which income appeared in Factor 4 (out of 5 factors). In all the splits, high and low, it was principally economic and technological characteristics that

were associated with income ‘differences. The principal discriminants in each split were, successively, extent of commercialization, extent of membership in co-operatives, arable land per capita, and nearness to cities and transport facilities.

. MEMBERSHIP IN CO-OPERATIVES The co-operative movement was initiated under British rule. Since independence the government has continued to support the movement. Most co-operative societies at present are governmentally administered and financed.’* The main functions of the societies are to supply credit and assist farmers to store and market their output. The co-operative societies probably could not continue to exist without governmental support which is substantial; some economists are critical of what they regard as an uneconomical allocation of governmental resources. ° Co-operatives in India are not only economic institutions in the sense of providing factor resources, technology, and services for agricultural development, they are also a new kind of voluntary assocation and modernizing institution. The propensity to joint co-operatives, therefore, may reflect attitudinal differences towards modernization in a larger sense than the economic alone.

In order to indicate the strength of the co-operation movement we calculated the number of village households which were members of multi-purpose co-operatives as a percentage of all village — households. Membership ranged from zero to 78%, with a mean, median and mode of 20.5, 2.5, and 0 respectively. Eighteen variables were allowed to associate with co-operative membership. All the economic

variables were included as potentially influential. In addition, the variables characterizing aspects ” of village social organization, attitudes toward modernization, and-extent of education were also included.

Results of the Statistical Analysis

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202 | STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 SUMMARY OF STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS

** Family Practices 4. | **Rxtent of Commercialization 3 Size of Population : 3 *Land per Capita 2 *Number of Castes 2 Employment in Agriculture, six splits

Education 2

Location and Transportation 2 Economic Development (F, ) | a *Denotes a principal discriminator in a split . High Employment in Agriculture Group 3. The 85 villages of Group 3 with relatively high employment in agriculture split into a very high group of 19 villages which average about one-third more agricultural employment than its lower cohort group of 66 villages. The single characteristic associated with the split is relatively slight: number of castes (.13). There is a weak tendency for villages with greater employment in | agriculture to have fewer castes. _ Group 4. The 19 highly agricultural villages split once more into a very high set of 15 villages averaging 84% of the adult population engaged in agriculture and a lower cohort group of 4 villages averaging 68 percent in agriculture. The 15 very highly agricultural villages have more modern family practices (more nuclear households and later female marriage); there is a slight tendency for them to have smaller village populations (11 percent of variance).

Group 5. The 66 villages in Group 5 with an average of 60% of the villagers employed in agriculture, which are intermediate in agricultural specialization, are divided according to family practices (.13). Villages with a large proportion of joint family households and a high frequency of child marriage, have a slightly higher average percentage of employment in agriculture (see Groups 6 and 7). The only other variable which helps to account for the differences in proportions of agricultural employment is the economic development factor (.12). Villages with low scores for. | the economic development factor have fewer people engaged in agriculture than villages with higher scores. But so few villages have low scores (only 7) that no conclusions can be drawn from this division. Group 7. The 44 villages which are intermediate with regard to employment in agriculture split again. The 37 villages in Group 9 have 60% more employment in agriculture than the 7 villages in

Group 8. The highly agricultural villages are more commercialized (.19), have larger populations (.17), and score higher on the indices for economic development (Factor 1). Low Employment in Agriculture

Group 2. We turn now to the other extreme, villages with unusually low employment in

. agriculture. Group 2 contains 23 villages which, on the average, had less than half as much employment in agriculture as the remaining 86 villages in the entire set. These villages which do not specialize in agriculture differ markedly from the others in having much less land per capita, (.33) and in having poorer access to transport and cities (.14), a greater number of castes (.12), better access to educational facilities (.10), and more nuclear family households (.09). Forty-five percent of the variance in agricultural employment between upper and lower villages is associated with differences in frequency of nuclear family households and age of females of marriage. The 18 villages in which under 16% of adults are in agriculture have a high proportion of nuclear family households and very little early marriage for females.’ ° The low villages are traditional in their economic organization as well as being more frequently subsistence producers rather than producers for commercial sale. Almost one-third of the variance

Adelman & Dalton] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 203 between upper and lower villages with regard to agricultural employment is associated with variance in extent of commercialization of village produce. There are also some weaker associations with extremely low employment in agriculture: larger

capita (.12).!7 | EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES

average population (.23), good access to transport facilities and towns (.22), and less land per

The economic value of primary education is a debated issue in the literature on development planning. Most countries have advanced significantly without universally literate populations. Economists frequently complain that too many resources are being devoted to universal primary

education, producing a mass of semi-literate people who are not employable at greater productivity than the illiterates in any sphere of the economy. Bauer (1961:51) points out that

this is not the case in India, where investment in heavy industry has been given primary. consideration. Even though the declared aim of the Indian government is compulsory education for children between 6 and 12, in fact rather little expenditure was allocated to education. The second five year plan states that: As regards school buildings, it is inevitable that at the present stage austere standards should be

adopted. Much of the work may be done out of doors, while the minimum covered

1961:52]. |

accommodation needed is provided by the local community with some assistance from public

authorities ... A school could be started under whatever arrangements are immediately

possible in a locality, and common buildings like village temples and ‘‘panchayat ghars’’ could also be used. Once a school is actually functioning, the provision of a building can be taken in hand as soon as circumstances are favorable and local contributions are forthcoming [Bauer

During the second five year plan, 1956-61, the growth of educational facilities was to depend on grass roots efforts (and possibly some missionary activity). The facilities existing in a village at

the time of our. study reflect mostly the past provision and, in part, the more recent desire for education. An analysis of the educational facilities in our 108 villages should help to answer two kinds of questions: first what economic and cultural characteristics are associated with villages having easy

access to educational facilities compared to those with poor access? Second (because of lack of central government provision of education), what determines the demand for educational facilities, i.e., are there underlying reasons for the differential placement of schools? The villages in our sample were divided into three groups according to the educational facilities available in and near the village. The highest group consists of 18 villages with both primary and secondary schools in the village. The 75 villages in the middle group had primary education available in the village (some had secondary schools in nearby villages). Fifteen villages with no schools (whether or not primary schooling was available nearby) were included in the lowest group. Education and economic status and activities are mutually dependent. Increased education may affect the village’s economic development, provided the skills learned are directly applicable in the village situation (which frequently is not the case as indicated by the high level of unemployment among those with primary education). Villagers with a secure economic status will be able to spare

their children from production activities and send them to school, thereby increasing the demand

for school facilities. In order to allow for these interactions the following economic variables were included in the analysis of educational facilities: Income and its distribution, the level of economic development, land per capita and percent employed in agriculture, and the factor representing the Agricultural Base (by combining the latter two variables with features of land tenure).’® The more dynamic indicators of economic activity in the village were also included, specifically the extent of commercial production, the percent of membership in multipurpose co-operatives and the extent. of community development activities undertaken. The demand for education is likely to depend on the location of the village and its access to transport facilities. Villages in contact with larger towns will probably demand more education

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Adelman & Dalton] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 219 | ; SUMMARY OF STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS Girls Under 14 Married, five splits

** Family Household Type - -44 Awareness of National Social Legislation

** Girls in School 3 *Location and Transportation | |3 2 Employment in Agriculture Land Ownership 2 Percent Low Caste 2 ~Economic Income . | 2 Development (F, ) ‘1 Extent of Commercialization 1

* Denotes principal discriminator in a split

married female children; Group 5, a less traditional set of 44 villages, has more than 37 percent of simple households, and an average of 6 percent of the girls were married. Group 4 contains the 15 most traditional villages in our study—a high proportion of married children, a small proportion of

simple households, and very infrequent formal education for girls. , The extent of the awareness of national social legislation and access to transport and towns are

also associated with the age of females at marriage in Group 2. Where fewer than 66% of the villagers were aware of the law concerning untouchability, an average of 10% of girls under 14 were married; but only 3% of the girls were married in villages where more than 66 percent of the population were aware of national social legislation. “‘Awareness of national social legislation”’ is almost certainly a proxy for deeper and more complicated attitudinal changes we were not able to

capture with our data sources. The more isolated villages with poor access to transport facilities still tend to practice traditional early marriages (they have an average of over 12% female child marriage). When the village is exposed to outside influences through better transport facilities and access to towns, the |

average percent of girls married drops to 5. Group 5, which may be regarded as a set of 44 ‘intermediate’ villages with regard to child

marriage, divides into Groups 6 and 7 according to nearness to towns and access to transport facilities (.16), the extent of commercialization of productive activity (.13) and awareness of national social legislation (.11). In villages with good transport facilities only 4% of the female children are married; but where the village has poor transport facilities and access to towns, the percentage of. married girls increases to 11. Only 3% of females under 14 were married in villages which marketed over 25% of their agricultural output; but 8% of girls in villages with less commercialization were married. The less isolated and the more economically developed villages were therefore also the less traditional. As would be expected, those villages where the inhabitants were fequently aware of the national social legislation had a lower percentage of child marriage

Modern Villages | than villages where there was less awareness of the national legislation. .

Group 8 consists of 49 villages with very infrequent child marriage, also characterized by more

girls in school, more frequent nuclear family households, and less land ownership than the 59 villages in Group 2. Excluding two of the 49 villages in Group 3, the group divides according to the percent of girls in school. On the average, as the percent of girls in school increases, the frequency

of child marriage decreases. Of the girls under 14 in the 27 villages in Group 8, an average of 2.5% : were married and between 8 and 36% were attending schools; while in Group 9, less than 1% of the girls were married and between 37 and 65% were in school.

Family household type (.19) is also closely related to the percent of girls married in this “culturally more advanced” group. The higher the proportion of simple households the lower the

proportion of traditional early marriages. These findings confirm the point that traditional

220 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 marriage practices weaken as villagers become more educated and as traditional economic and

family structures weaken. Many institutions in traditional societies lose their functions as modernization proceeds.

Groups & and 9. The twenty villages in Group 9 have moved farthest away from traditional — early marriage. Less than 1% of the girls under 14 are married and over 37% of the girls are in school. Group 8 containing 27 villages with relatively infrequent child marriage divides according to the

family household type (.386). The percent of children married is less (almost zero) where the proportion of simple households is large (between 60 and 79%). Group 10 consists of the more traditional villages where less than 57.5% of the households are simple families and an average of over 3% of the girls are married. Conclusion

Several aspects of cultural modernization tend to occur together. Where the traditional practice of early marriage for girls has been largely abandoned, we also find a high proportien of girls in school and a high proportion of simple nuclear households (few joint family households); so too,

development. :

we find greater awareness of national legislation, higher incomes, and greater economic GIRLS IN SCHOOL

In village India, as in most traditional societies, the female’s primary functions are to be housewife, mother, and sometimes agricultural worker. Formal schooling is not designed to train women for traditional life. Young girls are therefore instructed primarily in the home by the older | women in their families. However, as the village society and attitudes change, home instruction of females gives way to formal education. Variations in the proportion of female children in school should tell us something about receptivity to modern innovations. For each village the number of girls aged 5 to 14 who were attending schools was expressed as a percentage of the total female population of the same age. The percentage ranged from 0 to 75

with a mean and mode of 18 and 5% respectively. .

Increased formal education of females may have demographic and economic consequences. — Educated girls will probably marry later (certainly after they are 14) and later marriage will reduce birth and death rates, as well as infant mortality, particularly if school instruction includes hygiene

and first aid. Where girls are used as agricultural workers, increased schooling may affect agricultural techniques to compensate for the reduction in available labor. Because female education has strong cultural implications our two other indicators of cultural practice, frequency of early female marriage and extent of awareness of social legislation were included. One would think that where the villages have progressive attitudes toward marriage and greater awareness of national events they will also tend to be more willing to educate their girls. Outside influences are important in breaking down old cultural practices. ‘Therefore the location of the village and its access to transport facilities were considered potentially important influences on frequency of educating girls. The proportion of girls receiving formal education is probably also affected by the household

and caste structures in the village. The indicators of type of family household, the factor combining household type and early female marriage, and percent of low castes were therefore included.

Villagers who have a secure income and do not depend on their children to assist with production activities will be able to afford to educate their children.*° In addition, extreme dependence on an agriculture characterized by a low level of technology will reduce the incentive to educate girls if the farmer has to rely on his entire family for labor, particularly during peak

demand periods (planting and harvesting). In order to allow for these effects the factor representing the extent of economic development, the percent employed in agriculture, and the agricultural base factor were included in the analysis of female education.

. GROUP 6 ~ (0-25)

Adelman & Dalton ] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 221

N = 22 a

- y = 41.4 0=142

GROUP 5 7

(14-63) _ , GROUP 7 ees N= 47 Quality of Agricultural N= 11 N = 33

Y = 35.0 O= 18.4 Cooperative Membership (.24)

GROUP 2

y¥ 28.4 o=20.4 Techrolegy (.25) ~0= . 01)= echnology (.2§ y = 22.4

19.4 . _ GROUP 4 ; (27-67) . N= 14

0=158 :) GROUP 1y =~126(0-6)

a : --N = 7

Schoo! GROUP 9 | GROUP 3 GROUP 11 Girls under 14 Married (.23)

Y = 26.4 G0=17.2 . (97)

: (2-37) (63-97) _ , GROUP 8

, ™, -CO “ N= 41 . a (10-60) Location _ “ y¥ = 10.5 0=12.0and y =Access 16.6 0=11.8 to Transport (.23)

Development | y- -=Community 8&5 0=9.4 N = 54

GROUP 10

y = 59 0=66

*Less than 10% of average variance in group

Diagram 11. SUMMARY OF STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS

Girls in School, five splits ; *Quality of Agricultural Technology oo3.4 *Location and Transportation

Employment in14 Agriculture | 32 **Community Girls Under Married | Development Activities i2> Percent of Low Caste 2 Agricultural Base a 2 Family Practices : 2 *Cooperative Membership 11 Extent of Commercialization Awareness of National Social Legislation 1 Income (factor) 1 Economic Development (F, ) | 1

* Denotes principal discriminator in split ,

2220 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 We also included four additional indicators of village economic activities: the quality of agricultural technology, the extent of commercialization, cooperative membership, and extent of

community development activities undertaken. : Results of the Statistical Analysis Diagram 11 shows that both cultural and economic characteristics are important in explaining different levels of female education in the villages.

Group 1. On the first split 23% of the variation in female education between villages is associated with differences in the percent of females under 14 who are married. Where less than 1% of the girls were married an average of 28% were in school, but this percentage dropped to an average of only 10% of girls in school] where female child marriage was between 2 and 37%. Two economic variables, the agricultural base and the quality of agricultural technology, were also associated with the differences between villages in sending girls to school. Villages which were

largely dependent on agriculture—indicated by a high score (34 to 63) on the factor representing the agricultural base’ 4 —educated, on the average, only 13% of their girls. Where there was less dependence on agriculture (factor scores below 34) an average of 25% of the girls were in school. An average of 17% of the girls were being educated in villages with a higher level of agricultural

technology (score of over 14); only 8% of girls were in school where the level of agricultural technology was low (under 14). It is difficult to say precisely what accounts for this association. Where improved technology is labor saving, child labor is less necessary in farming. But most agricultural innovations such as irrigation facilities are labor-intensive—requiring many more hours of labor per acre. The most likely explanation is therefore that where more modern agricultural practices have taken hold, more modern social practices are also growing, despite economic

incentives to the contrary.

High Villages

Group 2. The 47 high scoring villages in Group 2 were further divided according to the quality of agricultural technology which accounted for 25% of the intervillage variance (between Groups 4 and 5). A higher quality of agricultural technology (a score of 14-63) was associated with a higher

proportion of girls in school (an average of 35%). Where agricultural methods were more traditional (scores below 14) an average of only 12% of the girls were in school.

Differences in extent of awareness of national social legislation accounts for 12% of the intervillage variance in female education. When over 95% of the villagers are aware of the untouchability law as many as 42% of the girls are in school. The extent of dependence on agriculture is also associated with the proportion of girls who are in school. When the score on the agricultural base factor is below 13, 34% of the girls are being educated. However, when the score on the agricultural base factor is over 13, indicating that there

is more dependence on agriculture, only 21% of the girls are in school. ‘ Group 5. Group 5, the set of 35 villages with the highest average number of girls in school so far identified (35%), is capable of further split. It divides into Group 6, 22 villages where slightly more than 40% of the girls are in school, and a lower set of 11 villages where roughly half as many girls,

| on the average, are in school. Here we get an odd association: the strongest discriminator (24%) is cooperative membership, but in the opposite direction to that expected. Where female education is high ( > 40% of girls in school) co-op membership is low ( < 25% of households are members). This result probably arises because of the positive association between co-op membership and low caste.

Low Villages

Group 3. Group 3, 61 villages with a comparatively low average number of girls in school and high proportion of female child marriage, divides according to location and access to transport facilities (23% of intervillage variance being associated). The 7 villages of Group 9 with good

Adelman & Dalton] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 223 locations and access to transport facilities have an average of 26% of their girls in school. The lower cohort group of 54 villages are not as well located and have only 8% of their girls in school. Access to outside influence seems to affect the proportion of females in school. Cultural practices indicated by the percent of girls under 14 who are married, accounts for 14% of the intervillage variance in Group 3. The less frequent is early female marriage, the greater the

proportion of females receiving an education.°> | :

The economic characteristic accounting for most of the difference (15%) in Group 3 is quality of agricultural technology. Where agricultural practices are still mostly traditional, only 5% of the |

in school rises to 16. a

girls are in school, but where more advanced techniques are used in agriculture the percent of girls

Group 8. Group 8, 54 of the more isolated villages having a low percent of girls in school, |

divides according to the extent of community development activities in the villages. Where not many community development projects had been undertaken an average of only 6% of the girls

were in school. In villages participating in more community development projects a higher _ proportion (17%) of the girls were educated.°° The level of agricultural technology accounted for 15% of the differences in proportions of girls in school in the villages in Group 8. As previously discussed, where agricultural technology is more

practiced. Conclusion |

developed a greater proportion of the girls are educated than where traditional agriculture is

The proportion of school age girls in school in rural Indian villages seems to vary in understandable ways. That educating girls is a departure from traditional social life and attitudes is . shown by its association with later female marriage and awareness of national social legislation. That sending girls to school varies with economic forces is shown by frequent association (in 4 out of 5 splits) with the quality of agricultural technology. Where technology is better, there too, more girls are in school.

| HEALTH FACILITIES There has been much discussion about the importance of improving health in order to reduce human waste. We were unable to get a consistent direct measure of illness or malnutrition, but used instead an indirect measure—the health facilities available to the villagers. The villages were divided into five groups according to the type of health facilities (hospitals, clinics, dispensaries) available in and near the villages. The distance from each village to these facilities was also taken into account in the classification. The top group contained villages with dispensaries or hospitals in

the village. Villages in the next group had no facilities of their own but had hospitals or dispensaries within three miles. The third group consisted of villages with medical services available 3 to 5 miles away. Villages in the fourth group had medical services available only 6 to 10 miles away. In the last group villages had no hospitals or dispensaries within 10 miles. (At the lowest end of the range was a village 45 miles from the nearest medical facilities). _ Medical services have both social and economic consequences. The demand for medical services will depend both on the villagers’ attitude towards modern medicine and on their ability to pay for

treatment. Therefore both cultural and economic variables were included in the analysis of health — . facilities. The caste system was represented by the number of castes and by the percent of low castes in the village. The strength of traditional social practices in the village was represented by the factors combining family type with female child marriage, and was represented by the extent of contact with the outside world, the location and transport variable. The economic situation in the villages was indicated by the economic development factor, by

-the combination of average income and low income, by the amount of land per capita, by the percent employed in agriculture, by the factor representing the agricultural base, and by the extent

of commercialization.

224 . STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY — [AS7 * GROUP 5

N= 18 GROUP 9 yY = 86.7 0=9.9 (90-97) N = 18 _.

_ (32-100)

GROUP 3 . _ , Y = 73.6 0=18.5 N = 68 / Location and Accéss — " ° y = 68.7 0=22.8 to Transport (.22) Low Caste Households (.14)

(35-97) _ ~ N = 50 _ne .;

. GROUP 4 , . GROUPS |

(35-67) || GROUP 1 _— | Health Location and Access to N = 15 ; N = 32

y . = 22. (0-27)

GROUP 11. oo .

Facilities Transport (.31)GROUP , . y = 60 o= 15.1 6 (2-10)

¥ = 47.5 0=28 | N = 20 Low Caste Households (24) - |

N = 40 (17-58) ) (25-100) N = 20 _.. ¥Y = 25 6=2.3

y = 35.7 0= 26.0 Agricultural Base (.21) eens — (3-28)

GROUP 13

N=7

GROUP 7 y = 39.3 0=13.5

yY = 23.9 O=15.3

(43-63) Low Caste Households (.55)

: ~ GROUP 12 N=13 . |.

; y = 15.6 O=8.1 (0-20)

Diagram 1 2.

SUMMARY OF STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS

Health Facilities, six splits .

***Percent ofinLow Caste _.9) 6 Employment Agriculture

. **Tocation and Transportation 3 * Agricultural Base 3 | Economic Development (F,.)23 Number of Castes Cooperative Membership22 Extent of Commercialization

Income 2

Land per Capita 2 Family Practices 1

* Denotes principal discriminator in a split

Adelman & Dalton ] DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 225

Statistical Analysis | Diagram 12 indicates the results of the analysis. .

Group 1. The location of the village and its access to transport facilities seems to make a substantial difference to the health facilities available.’ ’ The less isolated villages (Group 3) have far better health facilities than those villages which are more than 10 miles from railway, road, or town (Group 2). It is easier to establish hospitals and clinics in areas well served by roads and

railways. Supplies can be brought in and ill people moved out. Villagers in contact with towns | moreover, are more likely to appreciate the advantages of modern medicine compared to those _who associate mainly with traditional healers. There also may be problems in attracting medical

personnel to live in remote villages. _ Of secondary importance in accounting for the differences in health facilities are the economic development factor (19%), and the percentage of low-caste households (15%). Generally, the villages with diversified sources of income and more integrated into the regional or national _ economy have better health facilities than those villages which score low on this factor. The provision of health facilities is probably influenced by the ability of the villagers to pay for medical services; the demand for such facilities will probably increase as the village becomes integrated with the larger economy. Villages with. more frequent membership in co-operative societies have better health facilities than villages in which less than 2% of the people are members of multi-purpose co-operatives.

Villages in which more than 20% of the households are low caste tend to be better provided

| with medical facilities than villages with fewer low-caste families. This may be the result of government policy to improve the position of scheduled castes and tribes. Medically Well-Served Villages

Group 8, the villages with medical facilities on the average within 3 miles of the village, further

subdivides according to location and access to transport (22%). As with the first split, villages . which are less than 6 miles from a town, railway, or road have good services (usually a hospital or clinic in the village), while villages between 6 and 15 miles from towns and transport facilities do

not have such good medical facilities. On the average those villages are within 3 miles of the nearest clinic or hospital. Villages in Group 3 which have over 23% low castes on the average have better medical services than those with fewer low castes. A possible explanation for this has already been given.’ ® Also of

secondary importance in this split is the percent employed in agriculture. Villages which predominantly depend on agriculture tend to be less well provided with medical facilities than

villages with a more diversified economic base. :

Group 4. The 50 villages between 6 and 15 miles away from towns and transport (Group 4) | divide further into Groups 8 and 9. Villages in Group 9 have over 32% low-caste households and |

health facilities an average of 3 to 5 miles away. . | Villages With Poor Medical Facilities

Groups 6 and 7 are distinguished from Group 2 according to the nature of the agricultural base.

The 20 villages in Group 6 score below 42 on the agricultural base factor and are on the average . about 5 miles from medical services. Group 7 contains villages more than 5 miles from hospitals and clinics and with agricultural base scores over 43. It is surprising to find that villages with poor agricultural bases have better health services than those with more land per capita and larger proportion of landowners, and with a greater proportion of the people employed in agriculture. No explanation suggests itself. Of secondary importance in explaining the differences between health facilities available to villages in Group 2 are the’ percent of low-caste households (19%), and the level and distribution of income (9%). As was the case in the previously discussed splits, villages with over 25% low-caste

226 | STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 households have health services more readily available than villages with fewer low-caste households. Villages with higher, more evenly distributed incomes, are on the average closer to health services than villages with lower income factor scores. This might be because higher income

more income.

villages can afford to pay for treatment and therefore hospitals and clinics are established near them, or perhaps, better health (associated with closer health facilities) may enable people to earn

Group 6 divides according to the percent of low-caste households, which accounts for 24 |

percent of the difference between these villages..As with previous splits, the larger the proportion

of low-caste households the closer the nearest medical facilities.

Group 7. The percent of low-caste households is also important in discriminating between the villages in Group 7.°’ Villages with over 25% low-caste families are on the average between 5 and 10 miles from medical facilities; while villages with 20% or less low-caste households usually do © not have a hospital or clinic within 10 miles. The secondary relationships within Group 7 indicate that villages which are more than 10 miles from the nearest hospital or clinic sell almost none of their output. Commercialization is greater, however, in villages which are within 10 miles of medical facilities. Also, small, isolated villages ) with very few castes, are further from health facilities than villages in which there are more caste groups (and which are probably larger).*°

Summary | |

The quality of village access to health facilities is systematically associated with other aspects of modernization, and with cultural attributes such as caste.

Villages close to towns and transport facilities, having high incomes, high membership in co-operatives, selling a large proportion of their produce also have good access to medical facilities, as do villages with high proportions of low castes, and villages less dependent on agriculture.

: AWARENESS OF NATIONAL SOCIAL LEGISLATION The village surveys which provided the basic data for this set of stepwise analyses of variance

(and for the related essay on factor analysis), had very little information on the attitudes of

villagers toward the nation-wide changes and policies that had been forthcoming since Independence, or information on their participation in events external to the village. We would like to have had data on attitudes toward birth control! and land reform, indicators of political activity, and information on many other changes, to see what correlations existed between changes in attitude, action, and participation. ;

The only bit of information consistently reported in the village surveys of a semi-attitudinal sort was what percentage of the household heads were aware of national legislation concerning — untouchability. All this tells us is something about village people’s awareness of an external social happening. It tells us nothing about whether villagers approve of the legislative change, or whether it is actively being implemented in caste practices.

It seemed to us worthwhile to see what correlated with high and low awareness of the legislation because this crude indicator might serve as a proxy for deeper awarenesses and attitudes

. that we could not capture with our data sources. _ We included in the analysis of this variable social and cultural characteristics relating to caste,

age at marriage, type of household organization; indicators of educational achievement, community development activities, access to transport and towns, level of economic development,

and the quality of agricultural resources. : Statistical Analysis _ ,

Group 1. The results of our analysis are summarized in Diagram 13. Of all the variables included in the analysis, the educational attainment in the village is associated with most of the difference

in the percent of villagers who are aware of the untouchability law. Educational attainment

Adelman & Dalton | DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 227

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228 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7. SUMMARY OF STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS

Awareness of National Social Legislation, three splits

Family Practices 3 *Education 2 *Low Caste | 2

Extent of Commercialization Economic Development (F, ) 33 | *Cooperative Membership 22 Location and Transportation Employment in Agriculture Se

* Denotes principal discriminator in a split

accounts for 29% of the inter-village variation. In a small group of 10 villages (Group 3) in which educational attainment is high (scores between 58 and 63) an average of 88 percent of the villagers know about the social legislation. In the remaining 98 villages of Group 2, fewer people are aware

of the untouchability law and educational attainment is less (scores of 0 to 57). Three other characteristics also associate with significant differences in awareness of the national law: membertship in cooperatives (27%), commercialization of agricultural production, and location and access to transport (both associate with 19% of inter-village variance). On the average few people

are aware of the legislation in villages which are isolated from towns and transport, or where

membership in cooperatives is small, or where there is little production for commercial purposes.” Group 2. The villages in Group 2 divide according to the proportions of the heads and households which are members of multi-purpose co-operatives. Where membership in co-operatives is very low, knowledge of the untouchability law drops to only 20%; an average of 43% of the villagers are aware of the legislation where co-operative membership is over 2%. Nearness to towns and transport facilities associates with 19% of the inter-village difference in Group 2. In the less isolated villages as many as 51% of the population are aware of the legislation. — Commercialization of production also provides contacts outside the village; commercialization accounts for 16% of inter-village variance. Where less than 50% of production is marketed only — 23% of the village population know about the legislation, whereas 43% of the villagers are aware of

the law when over 50% of production is sold. :

Little Awareness of Social Legislation

Group 4. The 43 villages in Group 4, with a very low average awareness of the national legislation, divide according to the percent of low castes (22%).* * Unsurpisingly, where there is a large low caste group in the village, they are aware of the national legislation. Where there are no low castes only 11% are aware of the legislation, but where there are up to 75% low castes as many as 19% are aware of the legislation. The educational attainment (17%) and the level of economic development (16%) help explain the difference in awareness of social legislation in this group. On

. the average knowledge of the law is greater where there is higher educational attainment and the

Conclusion ,

village scores higher on the economic development factor.

Our crude indicator, awareness of a piece of national legislation, seems to vary in understandable ways. High frequency of awareness of the untouchability law is consistently associated with better than average economic development and cultural modernization. Where there is markedly less awareness of the untouchability law, there is less economic development, less education, less access to towns and transport, and no low castes present.

Adelman & Dalton | DEVELOPING VILLAGE INDIA 229 CONCLUDING REMARKS

We undertook the research described in this paper for methodological and analytical reasons. We wanted to see whether statistical analyses of variance which yielded illuminating insights into national economic development and cultural modernization (Adelman and Morris 1967) could yield useful results when applied to village-level data. Along with others who have worked in development (e.g., Hill 1966; Stolper 1966), we also felt the need for more systematic analysis of

village-level transformation within the context of post-colonial national development. Finally, our long-standing interest in the ways in which social organization and culture interact with modern economic activities in the transformational sequences of development, also led us to undertake this work.

Our first discovery was that it was easier to collect comparable data on seventy-four Third World nations than on seventy-four villages in any one of them. We were forced to confine our statistical analysis to villages in India alone, because no other nation (to our knowledge) has collected comparable information on as many as fifty of its villages. We were fortunate that the Indian village surveys contained data on matters of obvious importance to development and modernization—commercialization, income, access to transport and towns, caste composition,

etc.—although we would have preferred the data to relate to a later period in the 1960s. } We were forced to use crude proxies—awareness of national legislation, percent of households owning some land—where insufficient data were available, and, more regrettably, ignore entirely matters of potential importance where no data at all existed from which to construct indicators and rank villages. And so we are silent on quality of land, reliability of rainfall, distribution of land ownership, effects of land-reform legislation, holdings of assets and savings, extent of usage of purchased factors of production, fertility rates, birth control, political participation, effectiveness

of agricultural extension services, and so on. |

We think we have shown how statistical analyses of variance can simplify a mass of data relating

to more than one hundred villages in ways which reveal underlying regularities and the interdependence of economic and social change. In showing what is systematically true for villages

with above average and below average achievement, the statistical technique is an aid in

, : NOTES

formulating theories of micro-development and policy guidelines which at present do not exist.

‘We are grateful to the National Science Foundation for supporting this research under grant GS1235 and to the Council of Intersocietal Studies of Northwestern University for financing a trip to India to check out the results of the statistical analysis. We are indebted to Clarence Gulick,

Robert Edminster, David Hopper, Wolf Ladijinsky, John Mellor, Ronald Ridker, Abraham Weisblat, and Clifton Wharton, Jr., for their constructive comments, and to Dylis Rennie and Joyce Nussbaum for their research assistance. (Additional statistical information on the same set

of villages appears in Adelman and Dalton (1971), in which a factor analysis is applied to the same set of data.) We dedicate this work to our dear colleague, Robert H. Strotz. *See Hill (1966) and Stolper (1966). The present authors began their statistical work in 1967

with the hope of analyzing village communities in three countries at different levels of

development. We chose Mexico as the high, India as the intermediate, and Nigeria as the low country. To our great regret we had to abandon this-scheme because comparable information on as many as 50 villages was available only for India. We hope that the results of this statistical study, together with its companion essay drawn from the same data (Adelman and Dalton 1971), are regarded as sufficiently promising to encourage other developing countries to gather the necessary

village-level information to duplicate these kinds of statistical analyses. ” For a comparison of studies of ‘‘acculturation,’’ ‘‘applied anthropology,” and

‘“micro-development,”’ see Dalton (1971a,1971b). * Census of India, 1961, Part VI, Village Survey Monographs (Monographs on Selected Villages)

and District Census Handbooks. .

>To give a technical description of the procedure used: The statistical technique used in the

present study is based on an analysis of variance. It employs an assymmetrical branching process to subdivide the original sample into a series of subgroups constructed so as to enable one to predict the value of the dependent variable with the least error. At each step of the analysis, and for each candidate independent variable, one forms all possible mutually exclusive partitions of the parent

230 . STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY | [AS7 group into two subgroups. Each subgroup includes all observations which correspond to particular, usually successive, sets of values of the independent variable. The means of the two subgroups and the variances of the group means from the grand mean are calculated for every partition. For each

variable, that partition is selected which maximizes the fraction of the total variance of the

dependent variable accounted for by the means of the subgroups (i.e., which maximizes the sum of the squared deviations of the group means from the grand mean). At each step in the branching process, the results of the above calculation are compared for all the independent variables included in the analysis. That variable for which the best split accounts for the greatest portion of the overall variance of the dependent variable is chosen. The corresponding partition is then

actually carried out.

For example, if the independent variable X assumes r distinct values X, then the parent group is arranged initially so that all observations which have values KX, < X,, are in Group 1, and all observations which have values X,,..., X, are in Group 2. One then calculates the means of the two subgroups, and the variance from the overall sample mean which is due to the group means (the “regression”? sum of squares); this latter variance is equivalent to the variance attributable to (or “explained’’ by) the partition. Next, the partition which places the values of x SX, in Group 1 and the remaining data in the parent group in group 2, is tried and the same calculations are carried out. The process is then repeated for X, SX, ; Si See Bauer (1961:76-77). i

14 The factor analysis shows only the strong relationship between co-operative membership and density of low-castes, the same relationship indicated in this first split. 1° This strong association between low-caste and co-op membership registered in the factor

co-operatives. _

analysis, and accounted for our pessimistic conclusion with regard to the effectiveness of 1©When the scores for the family practices factor are above 34 there is a much lower

proportion of agricultural employment than in the more traditional villages with low scores on this factor. 7 Factor 1, the composite we call the indicator for economic development, gives us a slightly peculiar result. It shows a positive correlation with very low employment in agriculture (.22). Itis .

probably caused by several of the villages of the 18 in Group 12 being highly modern,

are described. )

commercialized, near cities, etc., mixed with others having opposite characteristics. See the opening remarks to this section where the mixed implications of low employment in agriculture 18tTand tenure is indicated by the percentages of land owners and of tenant farmers in the

village.

1? Most of the villages with no schools have factor scores below 15. 20 Three villages with a poor agricultural base and no education facilities, one with over 8 acres of land per capita and excellent education facilities, and two villages with good education facilities but low scores on the social structure factor, were excluded from this analysis. a1 Disregarding 4 villages with an average of only .77 acres of land per capita, with a primary school in the village, and higher education close by. *? The Indian Census (1961) defines a literate person as one who can read and write, though it is not clear what standard was required to classify as literate. 23 Where the score for transport and location is 35 or less, only 23% of the adult males are literate, but 37% are literate where the transport and location score is over 35. 24°37 percent of the intervillage variance is explained by this factor. > Villages with 48-93% employment in agriculture have only 35% literate males. © Seventeen percent of the difference between the villages is accounted for by this composite variable, we call Economic Development (Factor 1). *7This variable accounts for 28% of the difference between the villages with regard to children inschool. | 28 This variable explains 23% of the inter-village variance.

2° One village with a high proportion of membership in co-operatives but only 21% simple households was excluded from this analysis. 3 ° Righteen percent of the difference in the proportions of simple households in this group was explained by the extent of commercialization.

31 Villages which sell less than 50% of their output, have less than 50% employment in agriculture, and have an average of 53% simple households, are included in this group. ) 3?-The average of simple households is 51% where the education score is 17 and below and

generally when the score is over 17 there are only 37% nuclear families. |

33 The group with the highest school attendance includes those with the most economic security ... it also includes occupational groups ... whose work does not demand the help of

children in the 5-14 age bracket” (Lewis 1965:43). | . 3* Villages which rank high on this factor have a relatively large amount of land per capita, a

high proportion of households owning land (and therefore relatively few tenant farmers) and many people employed full time in agriculture. °° Where fewer than 7% of the girls under 14 are married an average of 15% are in school, but an average of only 6% are in school where more than 7% of the girls are married. °° Many community projects of course consist of school buildings. >’ This variable accounts for 31% of the difference between the villages. 38 Twelve percent of the difference between these villages is explained by differences in the proportions of low-caste households. .

232 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 |

in Group 7. |

Group 7.

°° This variable accounts for 55% of the difference between health facilities available to villages

*° The extent of commercialization, percent of low-caste households, and location and access to

transport account for 52%, 24%, and 21% (respectively) of the difference between the villages in *! Where less than 7% of the heads of households are members of co-operatives, an average of only 12% are aware of the legislation, but 51% are aware of the legislation where co-operative membership is more than 7%. Similarly, where commercialization is less than 40%, average awareness of legislation is only 24; it rises to 50% where commercialization is more than 40%; the difference in awareness between well-located and poorly located villages is 838% to17%. 42 Four villages which are well located and have good transport facilities, and therefore a great deal of contact with outside influences and an average of 45% of the population aware of the legislation, were excluded from Group 4 before this split was calculated.

REFERENCES CITED Adelman, Irma, and George Dalton

(Reprinted in Dalton 1971a.) .

1971 A Factor Analysis of Modernization in Village India. The Economic Journal, Sept.

Adelman, Irma, and Cynthia Taft Morris

1967 Society, Politics, and Economic Development. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bauer, P. T. . 1961 Indian Economic Policy and Development. London: Allen and Unwin. Colson, Elizabeth 1949 Assimilation of an American Indian Group. Rhodes-Livingstone Journal 5:1-13. Dalton, George 1971a Introduction. In Economic Development and Social Change. G. Dalton, ed. New York: Natural History Press, Doubleday.

1971b Peasantries in Anthropology and History. In Economic Anthropology and

Development. New York: Basic Books. ”

1971c Economic Anthropology and Development. New York: Basic Books. De Wilde, John C.

Epstein, T. Scarlett .

1967 Experiences with Agricultural Development in Tropical Africa. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press. :

1962 Economic Development and Social Change in South India. Manchester: Manchester

University Press. Holmberg, A. R., and H. F. Dobyns et al. 1965 The Changing Values and Institutions of Vicos in the Context of National Development. American Behavioral Scientist 8:1-27. Hill, Polly

1966 A Plea for Indigenous Economics. Economic Development and Cultural Change

15:10-20. .

Lewis, Oscar

1965 Village Life in Northern India. New York: Random House. Mellor, John, et al. 1968 Developing Rural India. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Myrdal, Gunnar 1957 Rich Lands and Poor. New York: Harper. Smith, Thomas C. 1959 The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Stolper, W. F. 1966 Planning Without Facts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Press.

Sorokin, P., C. C. Zimmerman, and C. Galpin

1930 A Systematic Sourcebook in Rural Sociology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Spicer, Edward 1952 Human Problems in Technological Change. New York: Russell Sage. Srinivas, M.N. 1969 Social Change in Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weaver, Thomas F.

1968 The Farmers of Raipur. In Developing rural India, by J. W. Mellor, T. F. Weaver, U. J. Lele, and S. R. Simon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

- GENERAL |

Economic anthropology is now well served by reference works in the form of books of readings, symposium volumes, and other collections of essays on its various topics. All the volumes to be mentioned in this general section include both theoretical analyses and works of empirical description. R. Firth, Themes in Economic Anthropology, Tavistock, 1967. R. Firth and

B. Yamey, Capital, Credit and Saving in Peasant Societies, Aldine, 1964. K. Polanyi, C. M. Arensberg, and H. W. Pearson, Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Free Press, 1957. K. Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, Doubleday, 1968 (2nd edition, Beacon Press, 1971). P. Bohannan and G. Dalton, Markets in Africa, Northwestern University Press, 1962. M.

Sahlins, Essays in Stone-Age Economics, Aldine, 1972. E. E. LeClair and H. S. Schneider, Eeonomic Anthropology, Holt, Rinehart, 1968. R. F. Gray and P. H. Gulliver, The Family Estate in Africa, Boston University Press, 1964. G. Dalton, Tribal and Peasant Economies, Doubleday, 1967. Economic Development and Social Change, Doubleday, 1971. Economic Anthropology and Development, Basic Books, 1971. An older volume of essays is M. Mead, Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples, McGraw-Hill, 1937.

There is an excellent. and comprehensive three volume set of readings in economic anthropology in French, edited by M. Godelier, containing essays translated from English and German, as well, of course, as essays originally published in French. (It is to be published in 1971.) There is also to be published in 1971 a volume of readings in economic anthropology in Italian, edited by T. Tentori, containing essays translated from English, French, and German. Several other books of readings exist which include some writings on topics in economic anthropology. J. Potter, M. Diaz, and G. Foster, Peasant Society, Little Brown, 1967. A. Vayda,

Environment and Cultural Behavior, Doubleday, 1969. There are collections of essays on geographical areas of the world which include writings on traditional and modernizing economies. See the books edited by A. Vayda, Cultures of the Pacific, NHP, 1969, and T. Harding, Peoples

and Cultures of the Pacific, Free Press, 1970, P. Van den Berghe, Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict, Chandler, 1965; and L. Sweet, Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East,

Doubleday, 1970. | TEXTBOOKS

Two recent brief textbook surveys are C. Belshaw, Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets, Prentice-Hall, 1965, and M. Nash, Primitive and Peasant Economic Systems, Chandler, 1966. Two

older and longer books are R. Thurnwald, Economics in Primitive Communities, Oxford University Press, 1932, and M. J. Herskovits, Economic Anthropology, Knopf, 1952. Thurnwald’s bibliography refers to many early works in German, Herskovits’, to many in English. Several

related works are D. Forde, Habitat, Economy, and Society, Methuen, 1934, E. Service, The Hunters, Prentice-Hall, 1966. M. Shalins, Tribesmen, Prentice-Hall, 1968. S. Udy, Work in Traditional and Modern Society, Prentice-Hall, 1970. C. Gabel, Analysis of Prehistoric Economic Patterns, Holt, Rinehart, 1967. SURVEY CHAPTERS

There are some very good single articles and chapters which either survey economic. anthropology as a subject or describe the economic characteristics of traditional bands, tribes, and 233

234 | STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 — peasantries, or do both. D. Forde and M. Douglas, ‘“‘Primitive Economics,” in Man, Culture, and

Society, Oxford University Press, 1956. M. Nash, “The Organization of Economic Life” in Horizons of Anthropology, Aldine, 1964. M. Sahlins, “Tribal Economics,” in Tribesmen, Prentice-Hall, 1968. P. Cohen, “Economic Analysis and Economic Man,” in Themes in Economic

Anthropology (R. Firth, ed.), Tavistock, 1967. There are several by Firth: ‘‘The Social Framework of Economic Organization,” in Elements of Social Organization, Watts and Co., 1951. “Work and Wealth of Primitive Communities,’ in Human Types, Mentor Books, 1958. “Problems of Economic Anthropology,” in Primitive Polynesian Economy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939;. revised extensively for 1966 edition. “Themes in Economic Anthropology: A General Comment,”

in Themes in Economic Anthropology, Tavistock, 1967. J. Beattie, “Economic and Property Relations,” in Other Cultures, Free Press, 1964. The new International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences has many brief survey articles on topics in economic anthropology, each

Economy,” “Modernization.” Oo containing bibliography. E.g., the articles on “‘Economic Anthropology,” ‘‘Peasants,” ‘““Manorial | SCOPE AND CONTENT OF ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY

There has been much contention—regrettably, rather heated—over the best theoretical framework for analyzing tribal and peasant economies. Much of it has centered around the question of the relevance of conventional economics to the analysis of the small traditional economies anthropologists study. This literature is linked chronologically in the sense that later writers were reacting to the positions put forth by earlier writers. There are four sets of writings.

(Undergraduates should be warned off some of these as being rather esoteric.) , Early Writings

R. Firth, “Problems of Primitive Economics,” in Primitive Polynesian Economy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939, rev. ed. 1966. D. M. Goodfellow, “‘The Applicability of Economic Theory to so-called Primitive Communities,” in Principles of Economic Sociology, Routledge, 1939. C. DuBois, ““The Wealth Concept as an Integrative Factor in Tolowa-Tututni Culture,” in Essays in

Anthropology Presented to A. L. Koreber (R. H. Lowie, ed.), 1936. M. J. Herskovits, — “Anthropology and Economics,” in The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples, Knopf, 1940; “Eeconomizing and Rational Behavior,’ “Before the Machine,’ and ‘Anthropology and Economics,” in Economic Anthropology, Knopf, 1952. Also, M. J. Herskovits and F. Knight, “Deduction and Induction in Economics,” in Economic Anthropology (1952). R. Firth, “The Place of Malinowski in the History of Economic Anthropology,” in Man and Culture, Harper Torchbooks, 1957. G. C. Homans, “‘Social Behavior as Exchange,” in The American Journal of

Sociology, 1958. - , The Polanyi Group (Substantivists)

K. Polanyi, “Societies and Economic Systems,” “‘The Self-regulating Market and the Fictitious

Commodities: Land, Labor, and Money,” in The Great Transformation, 1944. “Our Obsolete Market Mentality,” Commentary, 1947. “Aristotle Discovers the Economy,” ‘‘The Economy as ) Instituted Process” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Free Press, 1957. Dahomey and the Slave Trade, University of Washington Press, 1966. D. Fusfeld, “Economic Theory Misplaced: Livelihood in Primitive Society,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires (1957). W. Neale, “The Market in Theory and History,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires (1957). P.

Bohannan, “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment Among the Tiv,” American Anthropologist (1955). M. Sahlins, ‘“‘Political Power and the Economy in Primitive Society,” in Essays in the Science of Culture in Honor of Leslie White, Crowell, 1960. “‘On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange,” in The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, Tavistock, 1965. G. Dalton, “Economic Theory and Primitive Society,” American Anthropologist, 1961. ‘“Traditional Production in Primitive African Economies,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (1962). “Primitive

} BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 235 Money,” American Anthropologist, 1965. All three are reprinted in Dalton, Economic Anthropology and Development, 1971. Additional essays by Polanyi appear in his Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies; and in Dalton, Economic Development and Social Change, Doubleday, 1971. “

The Anti-Polanyi Group (Formalists) .

E. LeClair, ““Economic Theory and Economic Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, 1962. , R. Burling, “Maximization Theories and the Study of Economic Anthropology,’ American Anthropologist, 1962. S. Cook, “The Obsolete Anti-Market Mentality: A Critique,’’ American Anthropologist, 1966. All three are reprinted in a book of readings edited by E. LeClair and H. -Schneider, Economic Anthropology, Holt, Rinehart, 1968, a book largely devoted to the formalist-substantivist controversy. L. Robbins, Nature and Significance of Economic Science, Macmillian, 1932, contains an elementary account of neo-classical economic theory (on “‘scarcity,” ‘“‘maximizing,”’ and ‘‘economizing’’) that is important to the formalists. Two ethnographies which

apply the market approach of the formalists are L. Pospisil, Kapauku Papuan Economy, Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 67, 1963, and R. Salisbury, From Stone to Steel,

Cambridge University Press, 1962. a

Clarifications and Recent Assessments N. Smelser, ““A Comparative View of Exchange Systems,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 1959. R. Firth, “Problems of Economic Anthropology,” Primitive Polynesian Economy, revised ed. 1966. “Themes in Economic Anthropology,” in Themes in Economic Anthropology

(1967). P. Cohen, “Economic Analysis and Economic Man,” in Themes in Economic Anthropology (R. Firth, ed., 1967). G. Dalton, “Introduction,” in Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies (1968). “Economics, Economic Development and Economic Anthropology,” Journal

of Economic Issues (1968). “Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology,’ Current Anthropology (1969). Further comments on this article are to be found in Current Anthropology (1970 and 1971) by A. Frank, D. Hymes, and H. Dobyns. Polanyi, “Carl Menger’s Two Meanings

of ‘Economic’,’ in Studies in Economic Anthropology (1971). S. C. Humphreys, “History, Economics, and Anthropology: The Work of Karl Polanyi” History and Theory (1969). R. Frankenberg, ““Economic Anthropology: One Anthropologist’s View,” in Themes in Economic Anthropology (R. Firth, ed.), Tavistock, 1967. L. Joy, ““One Economist’s View of the Relationship between Economics and Anthropology,’ in Themes in Economic Anthropology (R. Firth, ed.)

Tavistock, 1967. F. Cancian, ‘“Maximization as Norm, Strategy, and Theory,” American Anthropologist (1966). D. Kaplan, “The Formal Substantive Controversy in Economic _ Anthropology,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (1968). M. Edel, “Economic Analysis in an Anthropological Setting,’ American Anthropologist (1969). R. Salisbury, ‘““Anthropology and

Economics,” (and comments by Dalton, Belshaw, and Kasden) in Anthropology and the Behavioral and Health Sciences (von Mering and Kasden, eds.), University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970.

: TRADITIONAL TRIBAL ECONOMIES There are several important books and articles that should be read by any serious student of economic anthropology. M. Mauss, The Gift, Cohen and West, 1954. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Routledge, 1922. Coral Gardens and their Magic, (volume 1), American Book Co., 1935. Crime and Custom in Savage Society, Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1959. (See also the

excellent book on Malinowski’s work by J. P. Singh Uberoi, Politics of the Kula Ring, Manchester University Press, 1962.) R. Firth, Economics of the New Zealand Maori, second edition (revised), R. E. Owen, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand, 1959. Primitive Polynesian Economy,

Routledge and Kegan Paul, rev. ed. 1966. P. Bohannan and L. Bohannan, Tiv Economy,

236 . STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 Northwestern University Press, 1968. Some short essays of unusually high quality are P. Bohannan, “Africa’s Land,” in Tribal and Peasant Economies, Doubleday, 1967. M. Douglas, ‘Lele Economy Compared with the Bushong: A Study of Economic Backwardness,”’ in Markets in Africa, Northwestern University Press, 1962. M. Sahlins, ‘““The Sociology of Primitive Exchange,” in The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology (M. Banton, ed.), Tavistock, 1965. P. Worsley, “The Kinship System of the Tallensi,”’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1956.

TRADITIONAL LAND TENURE AND AGRICULTURE These are very important topics. I can mention only a few works from what is a very large literature. C. K. Meek, Land, Law and Custom in the Colonies, Frank Cass, 1968. I. Hogbin and P. Lawrence, Studies in New Guinea Land Tenure, Sydney University Press, 1967. S. Van Bath, The — Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850, Arnold, 1963. R. Dumont, Types of Rural Economy, Methuen, 1957. D. Biebuyck, African Agrarian Systems, Oxford University Press, 1963. | C. Geertz, Agricultural Involution, University of California Press, 1963. W. Allan, The African Husbandman, Oliver and Boyd, 1965. P. Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law, Oxford University Press, 1962.

H. H. Mann, The Social Framework of Agriculture, Frank Cass, 1968. . EARLY EXTERNAL TRADE

As is true for several other topics in economic anthropology, there are writings on early external trade by archeologists, historians, and anthropologists. C. Renfrew, “Trade and Culture Process in European Prehistory,” in Current Anthropology, 1969. C. Gabel, Analysis of Prehistoric Economic Patterns, Holt, Rinehart, 1967. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Routledge, 1922. E. E. Hoyt, Primitive Trade, Augustus M. Kelley, 1968. P. J. H. Grierson, Silent Trade, Edinburgh, 1903. A. Vayda, ‘““Pomo Trade Feasts,” in Tribal and Peasant Economies (G. Dalton, ed.), Doubleday, 1967. E. W. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors, Oxford University Press, 1958. R. Gray and D. Birmingham, Pre-Colonial African Trade, Oxford University Press, 1970. On “‘ports of trade,” see the following: K. Polanyi, “‘Ports of Trade in Early Societies,’ in | his Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, Doubleday, 1968 (2nd edition, Beacon Press, 1971). Dahomey and the Slave Trade, University of Washington Press, 1966. “‘Sortings and the ‘Ounce Trade’ in the West African Slave Trade,” in his Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, Doubleday, 1968. R. Arnold, “A Port of Trade: Whydah on the Guinea Coast,” in Trade and

Market in the Early Empires, (Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson, eds.), Free Press, 1957. A. Chapman, “Port of Trade Enclaves in Aztec and Maya Civilizations,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson, eds.), Free Press, 1957. A. Leeds, “The Port of Trade in Pre-European India and as an Ecological and Evolutionary Type,” paper presented at the American Ethnological Society meetings, 1961. MARKETS AND MARKET PLACES

W. Neale, ‘“The Market in Theory and History,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, (Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson, eds.), Free Press, 1957. P. Bohannan and G. Dalton, Markets in Africa, Northwestern University Press, 1962. A. Dewey, Peasant Marketing in Java, Free Press, 1962. C. Geertz, Peddlers and Princes, University of Chicago Press, 1963. F. Benet, “Explosive Markets: The Berber Highlands.” R. Amold, “Separation of [External] Trade and [ Local] Market

[place]. Great Market of Whydah,” both in Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson, eds.), Free Press, 1957. G. W. Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,” in Peasant Society (Potter, Diaz and Foster, eds.), Little Brown, 1967. M. Bloch, “Natural Economy or Money Economy: A Pseudo-Dilemma,” in his Land and Work in Medieval Europe, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. On markets in the Caribbean, see the extensive work of

Sidney Mintz, including ‘‘The Role of Middleman in the Internal Distribution System of a

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 237 Caribbean Peasant Economy,” Human Organization, 1956, 15:18-23; “Internal Market Systems as

203:112-122.

Mechanisms of Social Articulation,’ Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, 1959, pp. 20-30; Peasant Markets, “Scientific American,” 1960,

PRESTIGE ECONOMY, INCLUDING BRIDEWEALTH AND PRIMITIVE MONEY , General. C. DuBois, “The Wealth Concept as an Integrative Factor in Tolowa-Tututni Culture,” ‘in Essays in Anthropology Presented to A. L. Kroeber, University of California Press, 1936. M. Mauss, The Gift, Cohen and West, 1954. K Polanyi, ““The Economy as Instituted Process,” in

Trade and Market in the Early Empires . -

Kula. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Routledge, 1922.

(1966). :

Potlatch. H. Codere, Fighting with Property, J. J. Augustin, 1951. P. Drucker, ‘“‘The Potlatch,”

in his Cultures of the North Pacific Coast, Chandler, 1965. “Rank, Wealth, and Kinship in Northwest Coast Society,” in American Anthropologist (1939). S$. Piddocke, “The Potlatch System of the Southern Kwakiutl: A New Perspective,” in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology

| Primitive money. P. Bohannan, ‘‘The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy,” Journal of Economic History (1959). G. Dalton, “‘Primitive Money,” in Tribal and Peasant Economies, Doubleday, 1967. “Currency, Primitive,’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1970. K. Polanyi, “The Semantics of Money-Uses,” “Archaic Economic Institutions: Cowrie Money,” both in his Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies. M. Douglas, “‘Raffia Cloth Distribution in the Lele Economy,” Africa, 1958. “‘Primitive Rationing: A Study in Controlled Exchange,” in Themes in Economic Anthropology, Tavistock. 1967. H. Codere, ““Money-Exchange Systems and a Theory of Money,” Man, 1969. L. Sharp, “Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians,” in E. H. Spicer, Human Problems in Technological Change, Russell Sage, 1952. P. Einzig, Primitive Money, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948. A. H. Quiggin, A Survey of Primitive Money, Methuen, 1949. Bridewealth. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “‘Bride-price, Earnest or Indemnity?” in Man, 1929. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ‘““An Alternative Term.for ‘Bride-Price’,” in Man, 1931. “Social Character of Bridewealth with Special Reference to the Azande,”’ Man, 1934. “Zande Bridewealth,” Africa,

1969. R. Gray, ‘“Sonjo Brideprice and the Question of African ‘Wife Purchase’,”? American _ Anthropologist, 1960. P. H. Gulliver, “Bridewealth: The Economic vs. the Non-Economic Interpretation,’ American Anthropologist, 1961. G. Dalton, “Bridewealth vs. Brideprice,”

Prentice-Hall, 1969. |

American Anthropologist, 1966. R. M. Glasse and M. J. Meggitt, Pigs, Pearlshells and Women,

STATE SYSTEMS, KINGDOMS, AND EMPIRES | A good deal more analytical work needs to be done on the economic sectors of pre-industrial

state systems. Some good source material is: S. F. Nadel, A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of . Nupe in Nigeria, Oxford University Press, 1942. S. F. Moore, Power and Property in Inca, Peru,

Columbia University Press, 1958. J. Maquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda, Oxford University Press, 1961. K. Polanyi, Dahomey and the Slave Trade, University of Washington Press, 1966. M. J. Herskovits, Dahomey, Northwestern University Press, 1967. A. Richards, Fast African

Chiefs, Faber and Faber, 1960. J. Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna, University of Wisconsin Press, 1966. D. Forde and P. M. Kaberry, West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, 1967. G. Balandier, Daily Life in the Kingdom of the Kongo, Meridian

Books, 1969. |

238 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 TRADITIONAL PEASANTRIES OF LONG SETTLEMENT

Bearing in mind that the literature on traditional peasantries includes Europe, China, Japan, — India, the rest of Asia, and the Middle East, and, moreover, is an old subject in history as well as a recent one in anthropology, there is indeed a great deal in print. A useful general source (which

translates into English old works in several languages) is P. Sorokin et al., A Systematic Sourcebook in Rural Sociology, University of Minnesota Press, 1930. Another is J. Potter, M. Diaz, and G. Foster, Peasant Society , Little Brown, 1967. A third is B. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Beacon Press, 1967. Two survey articles are C. Geertz, ‘‘Studies in Peasant Life,” in Biennial Review of Anthropology for 1961, Stanford University Press, 1962. G. Dalton, “Peasantries in Anthropology and History,’ Current Anthropology, 1971 (reprinted in Dalton, Economic Anthropology and Development, Basic Books, 1971.)

Western Europe. M. Boch, French Rural History, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. H. S. Van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, Arnold, 19638. R. Latouche, The Birth of Western Economy, Harper Torchbooks, 1966. M. M. Postan, The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages (The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 1), second edition, Cambridge University Press, 1966. G. Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, Edward Arnold, 1968.

England. F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, The Fontana Library, 1960. G. C. Homans, English Villagers in the Thirteenth Century, Harper Torchbooks, 1970.

Hastern Europe. G. T. Robinson, Rural Russia under the Old Regime, University of California

Press, 1969. A. V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy, Irwin, 1966. D. Warriner,

Contrasts in Emerging Societies, Indiana University Press, 1965. , China and Japan. H. Fei, Peasant Life in China, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939. T. C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan, Stanford University Press, 1959. India. W. C. Neale, ‘Reciprocity and Redistribution in the Indian Village,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Free Press, 1957. P. M. Kolenda, ‘“Toward a Model of the Hindu Jajmani .

System,’ Human Organization, 1963. T. S. Epstein, “Productive Efficiency and Customary Systems of Rewards in Rural South India,” in Themes in Economic Anthropology (R. Firth, ed.), Tavistock, 1967. T. O. Beidelman, A Comparative Analysis of the Jajmani System, J. J. Augustin, 1959. W. H. Wiser, The Hindu Jamani System, Lucknow Publishing House, 1958. An excellent work on post-World War II modernization of European peasantry, is S. H. Franklin, The European Peasantry, Methuen, 1969.

; LATIN AMERICAN PEASANTRIES It is particularly important to read about Latin American peasantries in historical sequence, that is, (1) The pre-conquest civilizations of Aztec, Maya, and Inca, as well as aboriginal hunting

. and gathering bands. (2) The three hundred years of Spanish (and Portuguese) conquest and colonization. (3) The post-colonial period of the last one hundred and fifty years, bearing in mind that field work studies by anthropologists have been undertaken only within the last forty years. Again, there is a very large literature, particularly for the period of the Spanish conquest and since. 5S. F. Moore, Power and Property in Inca, Peru, Columbia University Press, 1958. See also the

several works of J. Murra on the Inca: “The Economic Organization of the Inca State,” Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1956. “On Inca Political Structure,” in V. F. Ray, ed., Systems of Political Control and Bureaucracy in Human Societies (Seattle: University

of Washington Press, 1958). L. B. Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain, University of California Press, 1950. F. Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico, University of California Press, 1963. G. Foster, Culture and Conquest, Wenner-Gren Foundation, 1960. L. Hanke, History

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 239 of Latin American Civilization, Vol. 1, The Colonial Experience, Little Brown, 1967. C. Gibson, Spain in America, Harper Torchbooks, 1966. There are now a dozen or more English translations of early works about the Spanish conquest: A. de Zarate, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, Penguin Books. B. Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain, Penguin Books, 1963. F. L. de Gomara.

Cortes, University of California Press, 1966. |

The ideas of R. Redfield have been very influential; see his Peasant Society and Culture,

University of Chicago Press, 1956 (and his empirical works). A good general summary of the period since the conquest is E. Wolf, Sons of the Shaking Earth, University of Chicago Press, 1959, chapters 8-11. Some ethnographic works concentrating on economy are C. Wagley, Economics of a Guatemalan Village, American Anthropological Association Memoir No. 58, 1941. S. Tax, Penny Capitalism, University of Chicago Press, 1953. M. Nash, Machine Age Maya, University of Chicago

Press, 1958. G. Foster, A Primitive Mexican Economy, University of Washington Press, 1942. Some excellent journal articles are E. Wolf, “Types of Latin American Peasantry,’ American Anthropologist, 1955. C. Wagley and M. Harris, ‘““A Typology of Latin American Subcultures,” American Anthropologist, 1955. C. Erasmus, “‘Culture Structure and Process: The Occurrence and Disappearance of Reciprocal Farm Labor,’ Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 1956. “Upper Limits of Peasantry and Agrarian Reform: Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico Compared,” Ethnology, 1967. -

RELATED WORKS

Graduate students in particular who have a specialist’s interest in economic anthropology should read a number of works written in the 19th and early 20th centuries that have greatly influenced our ideas about economy and society. K. Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, Lawrence and Wishart, 1964. H. Maine, Ancient Law, John Murray, 1906 (especially Ch. 5, ““Law in Primitive Society,” on the movement from status to contract, and Ch. 8, “‘The Early History of Property”); Village Communities in the East and West, Henry Holt and Co., 1889 (especially his Rede Lecture, ““The Effects of Observation of India on Modern European Thought’’). M. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Free Press, 1948. General Economic History, Free Press, 1950. E. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, Free Press, 1949. F. Tonnies,

Community and Association (on Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft), Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955. C. Biicher, Industrial Evolution, Burt Franklin, 1967. Also, the eminent historians of Greece, Rome, and feudal Europe: M. Rostovsteff, F. De Coulanges, F. W. Maitland, H. Pirenne, M. Bloch

and M. I. Finley. OO

Works on comparative economic systems (written by economists) tell us about the structure of 19th century capitalism, its transformation into welfare states, and about Soviet-type economies:

K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Rinehart, 1944. A. Sievers, Has Market Capitalism Collapsed?, Columbia University Press, 1949, is a detailed critique of Polanyi’s book. E. H. Carr, The New Society, McMillan, 1951. G. Myrdal, Beyond the Welfare State, Yale University Press, 1960.

A. Nove, Soviet Economy, Praeger, 1962. For the views of two eminent economic theorists on pre-industrial economies, see J. Robinson, Freedom and Necessity, Allen and Unwin, 1970. J. Hicks, A Theory of Economic History, Oxford University Press, 1969.

Aside from modernization, there are at least two other sets of topics of common interest to anthropologists and economic and social historians. One is economic institutions existing widely in

both pre-industrial and post-industrial economies, such as money, markets, and external trade. The . second consists of socio-economic institutions widely existing over long periods of time which do not survive into advanced industrialization, economic development, and cultural modernization: slavery, feudalism, and peasantry. I have already referred to peasantry. On slavery, see M. I. Finley, Slavery in Classical Antiquity, W. Heffer, 1960. S. Elkins, Slavery, University of Chicago Press, 1959. Feudalism is a particularly interesting subject, and one about which there is (as with slavery and peasantry) a massive amount of literature. For works of historians, see R. Coulborn, Feudalism in History, Princeton University Press, 1956. M. Bloch, Feudal Society, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961 (and his chapter in vol. 1 of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe). For works of

240 | STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 . anthropologists, see J. Maquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda, Oxford University Press, 1961. J. Goody, “Feudalism in Africa?,” Journal of African History, 1963. ‘““Economy and

Feudalism in Africa,’ Economic History Review, 1970. J. Beattie, “Bunyoro: An African Feudality?” Journal of African History, 1964. S. F. Nadel, A Black Byzantium, the Kingdom of — Nupe in Nigeria, Oxford University Press, 1942. An interesting note by K. Polanyi attempts to combine an historical and an anthropological perspective: ‘“‘Primitive Feudalism and the Feudalism of Decay,” in Economic Development and Social Change (G. Dalton, ed.) Doubleday, 1971.

Finally, literature on utopian communities reveals a great deal about the larger systems the utopians were escaping from, as well as the difficulties in deliberately fabricating a Gemeinschaft,

to be organized on radically different principles from the contemporary larger society of the utopians. A closely related topic, which also has affinities with economic anthropology, is the very interesting literature on ‘“‘meaningfulness in work.” See D. Beli, Work and Its Discontents, 1956,

and “‘Meaning in Work,”’ Dissent, 1956. Both are reprinted in his The End of Ideology. | CHANGE, DEVELOPMENT, AND MODERNIZATION

The literature on socio-economic change in the Third World has exploded in the last ten years. I

shall have to be very selective. Two bibliographical sources are J. Brode, The Process of Modernization: An Annotated Bibliography on the Sociocultural Aspects of Development, Harvard University Press, 1969. The Agricultural Development Council (630 Fifth Avenue, New York) publishes a useful series of bibliographies on agricultural development research in various parts of the developing world. ACCULTURATION AND THE IMPACT OF COLONIZATION

An excellent collection of readings is P. Bohannan and F. Plog, Beyond the Frontier, Doubleday, 1967. Another is E. Wallerstein, Social Change: The Colonial Situation, Wiley, 1966. For anthropological accounts of acculturation, see B. J. Siegel, Acculturation: Critical Abstracts, North America, Stanford University Press, 1955. G. Foster, Culture and Conquest, America’s Spanish Heritage, Wenner-Gren Foundation, 1960. Good works on English-speaking Africa are M. Hunter, Reaction to Conquest, Oxford University Press, 1961. I. Schapera, Western Civilization and the Natives of South Africa, Routledge, 1937. For a sensitive account of everyday life of a European in the East Africa of the 1920s, see Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa, Random House, 1937. Also, her Shadows in the Grass, Random House, 1958. (Other sensitive evocations are C. Laye, An African Child, Fontana Books, 1959. C. Turnbull, The Forest People, Simon and Schuster, 1961. L. Bohannan, Return to Laughter, Doubleday, 1966.) Psychological approaches to the impact of colonialism are K. E. Hagen. On the Theory of Social Change, Dorsey Press, 1962. O. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, Praeger, 1964. Also the celebrated works

of F. Fanon, e.g:, The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press, 1966. C. Geertz, Agricultural Involution, University of California Press, 1963, is an excellent account of colonial impact in Indonesia. On Oceania, see W. Rivers, Essays on the Depopulation of Melanesia, Cambridge University Press, 1922. The literature on cargo cults is now very large: see P. Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound, MacGibbon and Kee, 1957. On that kind of colonial impact called “growth

without development,’ see W. Watson, Tribal Cohesion in a Money Economy, Manchester University Press, 1958. P. Bohannan and L. Bohannan, Tiv Economy, Northwestern University Press, 1968. L. Mair, Studies in Applied Anthropology, Athlone Press, 1957. Unesco, Social Implications of Industrialization and Urbanization South of the Sahara, 1956. P. Bohannan and G. Dalton, Markets in Africa, Northwestern University Press, 1962. — INTRODUCTORY SURVEYS ON MODERNIZATION

G. Hunter, Modernizing Peasant Societies, Oxford University Press, 1969, is an excellent book.

There are also several written by anthropologists: I. Hogbin, Social Change, Watts, 1958. P.

1964. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 241

Worsley, The Third World, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964. P. Lloyd, Africa in Social Change, Penguin Books, 1967. L. Mair, The New Nations, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963. A book of readings is G. Dalton, fconomic Development and Social Change, Doubleday, 1971. See also the symposium volumes, R. Firth and B. Yamey, Capital, Saving, and Credit in Peasant Societies, Aldine, 1964. M. J. Herskovits, Economic Transition in Africa, Northwestern University Press,

| INTRODUCTORY WORKS ON MACRO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Economists who write on national economic development in such a way as to illuminate matters of interest to other social scientists are: G. Myrdal, Rich Lands and Poor, Harper, 1957. Asian Drama, Pantheon, 1968. W. A. Lewis, The Theory of Economic Growth, Allen and Unwin, 1955. H. Singer, International Development, McGraw-Hill, 1964. (See especially the essays, ‘“The Distribution of Gains between Borrowing and Lending Countries,’ and ‘““The Mechanics of Development.”) A. Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development, Yale University Press, 1958. E. E. Hagen, On the Theory of Social Change, Dorsey Press, 1962. I. Adelman and C. T. Morris, Society, Politics, and Economic Development, Johns Hopkins Press, 1967. See K. Martin and J. Knapp, The Teaching of Development Economics, Aldine, 1967, for asymposium discussion of the relevance and adequancy of formal economics to the processes and problems of economic development in the Third World; this discussion is quite similar to the debate between formalists and substantivists in economic anthropology. A good book of readings in economic development is by G. Meier, Leading Issues in Economic Development, Oxford University Press, 1970. Some good textbooks are those of H. Myint, The Economics of Developing Countries, Hutchinson, 1964, and RE. E. Hagen, The Economics of Development, Irwin, 1968. An excellent collection of essays on African development is P. Robson and D. A. Lury, The Economies of Africa, Allen and Unwin, 1969. An older collection is E.A.G. Robinson, Economic Development for Africa South of the Sahara, Macmillan, 1956. Some good books on problems and methods of quantification and statistical measurement are P. Deane, Colonial Social Accounting, Cambridge University Press, 1953. L. H. Samuels, African Studies in Income and Wealth, Quadrangle, 1963. B. Van Arkadie and C. Frank, Economic Accounting and Development Planning, Oxford University Press, 1966. APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY

The journal Human Organization is almost entirely devoted to applied anthropology. Some good general works are those of G. Foster, Applied Anthropology, Little Brown, 1969; Traditional Cultures: and the Impact of Technological Change, Harper & Row, 1962; C. Erasmus, Man Takes

Control, University of Minnesota Press, 1961; and W. Goodenough, Cooperation in Change, Russell Sage Foundation, 1963. Symposium volumes and books of case studies are those by E. Spicer, Human Problems in Technological Change, Russell Sage Foundation, 1952, and A. Niehoff, A Casebook of Social Change, Aldine, 1966. A book that should be better known (it is in English but was published in Holland) is P. Ruopp, Approaches to Community Development, Van Heuve, 1953. The literature on Vicos is very good indeed. See the six articles, ‘The Vicos Case’’ in The American Behavioral Scientist, March 1965, which also gives an extensive bibliography on Vicos.

MICRO-DE VELOPMENT . These are works on post-colonial village development and modernization written from an anthropological perspective; but are not descriptions of vising experts transmitting innovations. The best of these is T. S. Epstein, Economic Development and Social Change in South India, Manchester University Press, 1962. See also, her Capitalism, Primitive and Modern, Michigan State

University Press, 1968. R. Firth, Social Change in Tikopia, Allen and Unwin, 1959. Malay Fishermen, Routledge and’ Kegan Paul, 2nd ed. 1966. S. C. Dube, India’s Changing Villages, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958. There is a growing number of informative works on agricultural

242 STUDIES IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY [AS7 development: C. Wharton, Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Development, Aldine, 1970. L. R. Brown. Seeds of Change: The Green Revolution and Development, Praeger, 1970. J. Mellor et

al., Developing Rural India, Cornell University Press, 1968. P. McLoughlin, African Food Production Systems, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970.