ANTH 1150 Lecture 6: Economics and Exchange
2 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Explain how forms of consumption and exchange can help
determine other aspects of social structure.
1.
Outline the meaning of consumption in cultural anthropology
and how it varies across different modes of production.
2.
Distinguish between different kinds of economic systems.
3.
Compare the characteristics of three forms of exchange:
reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange.
4.
Discuss the meaning and uses of money and other specialized
exchange currencies.
5.
Learning Outcomes:
Readings: Chapter 6 (pages 121-147)
They also differ in terms of how these two aspects of the
economy are interrelated
○
This unit pays more attention to systems of exchange in
relation to production
○
Alternative definition of capitalism as a mode of
production as opposed to a system of exchange
○
Anthropologists differ in the way they approach the study of
economic systems, depending on whether they place more
emphasis on production or on exchange
•
We can also use the term form of production
○
Each form of production is characterized by a unique
combination of a certain type of social relationships
among people (also known as a relation of production) as
well as their relationship to the means of production
○
One of the criteria used in classifying human societies is the
predominant economic activity or strategy of adaptation (e.g.
hunting-gathering vs. nomadic pastoralism)
•
In contrasts, for agriculturalists land is the main object of
labour while some animals (e.g. oxen used in ploughing)
constitute instruments of labour
○
In a hunting-gathering society the nets, bows, arrows, and
spears used in hunting are the instruments of labour, while the
animals hunted constitute the object of labour (as do the wild
plants and roots which are gathered)
•
The second set of relationships is known as the relations
of production
○
When comparing different forms of production, it is necessary
to look at the relationship of people to their natural
environment (i.e. their technology); and the relationships
established among people in terms of control over, and
ownership of, different components of both instruments and
objects of labour
•
Forms of Production
Peasants likewise have mainly individual ownership over
their tools (the plough, oxen, pitchfork, etc.)
○
However, unlike cultivators of even ranking tribal
societies, peasants who live in state-level societies
typically have little control or ownership of their most
important means of production (the land), since a
landowner or the representatives of the state can extract a
rent or some form of tax from the people who work the
land
○
Most tribal cultivators, through their membership in kinship
corporations (lineages), collectively own and control land (as
an object of labour), although their tools, or instruments of
labour, are usually individually owned
•
Rent or taxes can take the form of money, a percentage of the
crop or specific labour duties (such as helping look after the
landlord's house and animals)
•
In the latter, the leaders of kinship-based groups (chiefs
or "big men") decide who works on what piece of land,
and any surplus produce they collect is redistributed to
their kinfolk
○
Relations of production in agrarian state-level societies
between landlords and peasants are thus distinct from those in
tribal societies
•
Relations of Production
The label often used to refer for such broad comparisons
is mode of production (first used by Karl Marx)
○
Kin-based: includes both egalitarian and ranked
tribal societies
!
Tributary: includes all state-level societies prior to
the industrial revolution, usually based on more
intensive forms of agriculture
!
Capitalist: form of society whose system of
production is based primarily on wage labour
!
Eric Wold had suggested three principle modes of
production:
○
In feudal systems, landlords tend to have
more power than a king/emperor who
represented the state, even though an
individual landlord may in theory be
considered a vassal (someone who pays
homage) to a monarch
□
Ex. Feudal mode of production is commonly used
to describe a more decentralized form of the
tributary mode of production
!
There are many other labels which constitute variations
on Wolf's three-part typology, or further sub-categories
within each of his modes of production
○
Some anthropologists use the predominant type of relations of
production as criteria for developing an alternative typology
for societies for the purposes of broad historical comparisons
•
Likewise, pastoralists and tribal cultivators in turn
represent two variations of ranking societies
○
Such sub-types are used to distinguish among varying
degrees of complexity (and different levels of hierarchy)
within a broader mode of production, as well as a
different mix in the forms of production
○
Egalitarian bands of hunters and gatherers vs. ranked tribal
societies represent two sub-types of Wolf's kin-based modes of
production.
•
Modes of Production
In any specific society, even ones with a dominant mode of
production, one is bound to find local variation and the co-
existence of different forms of production
•
For example, some nation states which are basically capitalist
industrial societies (e.g. Italy, Mexico, India) may either have
significant agrarian (peasant) enclaves or the remnants of kin-
based modes of production
•
Different forms of production are articulated when one
form of production becomes dependent on (and
sometimes even necessary for) another, usually dominant
form of production
○
Such situations are often found when subordinate sub-
groups or ethnic minorities are involved in non-capitalist
forms of production
○
The technical term articulation refers to the coexistence of
more than one form of production in the same society
•
Rather is refers to a systematic interconnection and
interdependence from the point of the system as a whole
○
The term articulation implies more than just mere coexistence
of more than one form of production (perhaps due to the
survival of a non-capitalist form of production due to the lack
of contact or a result of isolation)
•
Also known as chattel slavery, the relations between
black slaves and plantation owners in the Americas was
part and parcel of the emergence of a single world
economy which included the development of capitalist
forms of production in Europe which employed free
wage labourers (i.e. Proletarians) in sweat shops and
factories
○
A historic example of the articulation of different forms of
production is the development of slavery (also known as the
slave mode of production) in the sugar and cotton plantations
of the New World
•
Slave plantations in the New World can also be used to
illustrate the re-emergence of a slave mode of production
which had long ago disappeared in Europe (after the
decline of the Roman Empire)
○
The treatment of people as property in the context of such
plantations is an example of yet another mode of production
•
The Articulation of Forms of Production
Slavery and slaves (as a legal institution and a component of
social stratification) can take many different forms, and does
not always constitute a form of production
•
Such slaves were second-class citizens who had been
taken captive in raiding exhibitions or who belonged to
weak clans forced to relocate in the territory of people
whom they were not related
○
However, slavery did not constitute the dominant mode
of production in those societies
○
At various points, earlier editions of the textbook make a
passing reference to the existence of slaves among such
ranking tribal societies as the Tiv in Africa or the Kwakitul and
other native peoples on the North Pacific Coast of North
America
•
Although slavery no longer exists as an economic system,
other non-capitalist forms of production can still be found in
many parts of the world today (including Canada and the US)
•
The study of that broader world system itself and how it
originated is usually left to social historians, sociologists
and political scientists
○
Social anthropologists today tend to focus on the nature and
functions of non-capitalist forms of production within the
context of a world-wide system dominated by a capitalist
world system
•
In the language of economic theory, an entrepreneur
mobilizes different factors of production or inputs for the
production process
○
However, in non-capitalist economic systems it is not
possible to buy labour, which can therefore not be
considered a factor of production
○
The term factors of production is used in economic theory to
refer to land, labour and capital within the context of a
capitalist economy
•
In the case of hunters and gatherers, one cannot label land as a
means of production, since it does not constitute the object of
production in such societies (in contrast to the case of tribal
cultivators)
•
Different Forms of Slavery
In economic theory (particularly Marxist economics)
surplus refers to the production of extra goods as a result
of the demands of rulers in state-level societies
○
According to that approach, a surplus refers to the
production of food and other goods above a level
required for mere survival, and non-state societies do not
produce a surplus by definition
○
However, some anthropologists argue that all societies
have to produce surpluses above that which is extracted
by landlords or market mechanism
○
Anthropologists have had many debates about the use of
economic surplus
•
"man does not live by bread alone" -we need to produce
additional food and other items purely to cement social
ties through ceremonies and rituals
○
People need to "put away something for a rainy day" (in
the case of scarcities caused by natural disasters or wars)
○
A proportion of any crop (seeds) must be set aside in
order to be able to sow another crop
○
All societies need to replace manufactured items
necessary for survival (i.e. tools, as well as shelter and
clothing)
○
Surpluses need to be produced for several reasons:
•
Surplus
Three main forms of exchange: reciprocity, redistribution, and
the market principle
•
Meat distribution among Kung
!
Family pooling of resources for birthday gifts
!
Usually occurs among close kin
!
Generalized: altruistic transactions in which gifts are
freely given without calculating value or repayment
○
Value of gift is calculate
!
Time of repayment is specified
!
Selling surplus of food
!
One trader gives partner a white armband
□
Expects a red necklace of equal value in
return
□
Promissory gifts are made until return occurs
□
Kula ring:
!
Balanced: direct exchange
○
Hard bargaining or deception
!
Horse raids
!
Selling prepared food to a captive market
!
Usually occurs among unrelated persons
!
Variation: silent trade
!
Negative: an exchange where one party tries to get the
better of the exchange
○
Reciprocity: direct exchange of goods and services (obligation
underlies the principles of reciprocity)
•
Process whereby goods and services flow to a central
authority (king, chief, government) where they are
sorted, counted and reallocated
○
Classic example: Potlatch
○
Historical example: administered trade
○
Central features of command economies
!
Here, men turn the soil with foot plows
while women break of the clods
□
Ethnographic example: Inca labor tax
!
Students from across Latin America at
Cuban medical school
□
Modern example: socialist countries
!
Socialist model:
○
Redistribution: flow of foods and services to central authority,
then returned in different form
•
Exchange of goods among many buyers and sellers
○
Directly by barter, or indirectly by money and pricing
○
Ex. Yoruba market in Nigeria, Haitian market
○
Crowds of buyers and sellers
!
Instant information on prices
!
Freedom of market entry and exit
!
Markets include:
○
Market principle: buying and selling through price mechanism
•
Forms of Exchange **read textbook
Once produced, goods and services must be distributed
○
Three ways by which goods are distributed: reciprocity,
redistribution, and market exchange
○
"when two groups of men meet they may move
away or in the case of mistrust they may resort to
arms or else they may come to terms"
!
Coming to terms can be called "total prestation" or
an obligation that has the force of law in the
absence of law
!
Imperatives of exchange:
○
Obligation to give -to extend social ties to other
person or groups
!
Obligation to receive -to accept the relationship
!
Induces hostilities
□
Refusal is rejection of offered relationship
!
Obligation to replay --> failure to repay renders
one a beggar
!
Obligations of the gift:
○
Big men are headmen with a following
!
Following created by doing a favour (e.g. lending
pigs), which is difficult to repay
!
Individually, exchange is reciprocity
!
Collectively, has appearance of redistribution
!
Cannot enforce the obligations
□
Subject to competition to other big men
□
Exchange feasts every 10 years with another
big man equal in status
□
Power limits:
!
Case Study: Big Man Complex
○
Supplier -willingness to sell is directly
proportional to price increases
□
Purchases -willingness to buy (demand) is
directly proportional to price decreases
□
Interaction leads to price equilibrium (no
profit)
□
Actors are…
!
Entry: seller pay small tax, buyers pay none
□
Price is constant topic of conversation
□
Profit is minimal
□
Regional specialization guarantee buyers for
product
□
Ex. Regional Guatemalan Markets
!
Market Exchange: Actors
○
Economy entails distribution of goods and services
!
Still, economy is embedded in society
!
Big man complex involves politics
!
Maintains power by persuasions, negotiation
!
Kula ring is also embedded in prestige
!
Interconnections will be seen in other topics: social
groups and politics
!
Conclusion:
○
Slideshow: Economic Anthropology -Distribution and
Exchange
•
Likewise, you bring wine or flowers to a dinner
(not money)
!
It would not be considered appropriate to offer cash to a
teacher as a token of appreciation
○
Even the occasional gift of money should be put in
a sealed envelope or take the form of a gift
certificate
!
People in most Western societies are expected to
exchange presents at Christmas time (form of
reciprocity) and not give each other signed cheques (a
purely commercial transaction)
○
Politicians are not suppose to buy votes
!
You can pay to attend a college, but schools cannot
sell diplomas or degrees
!
In North America, you can pay someone money for sex
but you cannot buy a wife or husband
○
Even in urban, industrial societies (where money buys
everything) there are limits or moral barriers to the operation of
the market principle
•
Ex. The idea of people paying money to work for each
other, or of putting a price on a piece of land is
considered morally repugnant, or even unthinkable, in
some societies
○
It might be harder to accept or understand quite different forms
of such barriers to monetary transactions when faced with
cross-cultural examples
•
However, such societies do have other forms of
production and exchange within their own set of rules
and customs
○
In many societies with a kin-based mode of production
there is a kind of marriage market, with its own form of
currency, although the use of such currency is restricted
only to the exchange of spouses
○
Land and labour are not commodities in societies with a
different set of relations of production
•
Despite the restriction on exchanges among such
spheres, some conversions between the separate spheres
of exchange were allowed, but usually with a great deal
of reluctance
○
The presence of such parallel, specialized systems of
transactions or spheres of exchange are also given the label
multicentric exchange systems
•
The co-existence of different forms of exchange is often associated
with the presence of moral barriers against different types of
transactions, including monetary transactions
However, such commercial transactions are often
relegated to a specific location (a marker place)
○
In non-capitalist societies, with different spheres of exchange,
people may still buy or sell items such as certain food items
(including luxury foods), manufactured items (pots and mats),
or medicinal herbs
•
Foreign traders were not allowed to conduct transactions
outside of such cities or specifically designated market
places for fear they might contaminate the social fabric
through their crass commercial transactions
○
Many societies (including complex agrarian states based on the
tributary mode of production, such as ancient China) restricted
such market exchanges to specific sites, usually within urban
centres or ports of trade
•
Market Place vs. Market Principle
For example, in societies with a large sector of peasant
producers and artisans, with a weakly developed
capitalist sector based on the market principle, you will
find many more market places
○
Even where the moral barriers and legal restrictions no
longer exist, the presence of market places are usually
associated with a large group of independent producers
(usually based on a household, largely subsistence-based
economy)
○
There is usually an inverse correlation between the number of
market places (in the old-fashioned sense) and the market
principle
•
Even in the case of larger daily markets, the majority of
customers and vendors (often farmers) travel in from
more remote hamlets or other villages
○
Market places (with stalls and small vendors selling in booths)
are often associated with weekly markets
•
Melanesian Market
Many different items, apart from metal coins and special pieces
of paper printed by the government, have been used as money
or currency
•
For example, cigarettes were used as money in Europe during
the war (in places were other forms of money was not
available) and still constitute a form of currency among
inmates in jails
•
Another example of something functioning as currency is shell
money (among natives in the Americas)
•
It can be means of exchange, a standard value, or simply
a way of paying fines
○
Money serves many economic functions
•
An important distinction in economic anthropology is that of
special purpose vs general purpose money
•
Money
However, what is considered or becomes scarce varies
greatly from society to society
○
The use of any form of money (even special-purpose money,
once ethnocentrically referred to as primitive money) implies
some form of scarcity
•
In contemporary urban-industrial capitalist societies based on
consumerism, most services, as well as food and manufactured
items, are relatively scarce (and hence have a price) because of
what we assume to be unlimited wants and needs
•
People have limited or very specific culturally-defined
needs or wants
○
People produce almost everything they use
○
The reasons most items of consumption (as well as tools) are
not scarce in such societies (except for occasional period of
crop failure) is because:
•
Moreover, because the economy is embedded in society,
exchanges of food and labour take place through a
network of kinship relations
○
Under such circumstances most goods do not have a price and
you don't need money to buy them
•
For example, some young people must spend a long time
(and make lots of visits to other villages) before they find
the right kind of cross cousin
○
In such situation the use of special-purpose money (such
as items used to pay a brideprice) can be analyzed as a
form of currency with value only in the sphere of
exchange of spouses among lineages
○
However, in kin-based societies, with their numerous
restrictions on whom you can marry, prospective spouses are
very scarce
•
Another way of looking at the exchange of wealth (including
special-purpose money) at the time of marriage in many tribal
societies is as a form of insurance payment (in case of divorce)
or a compensation payment for the loss of potential future
members of the kinship corporations when its men or women
have to move elsewhere to produce children
•
The exchange of slaves (who did not belong to any clan
and thus occupied a subordinate social position), and the
special-purpose money used in such exchanges, was a
way of regulating the flow of men without such kinship
connections
○
Such slaves could even become a form of prestige
money themselves, although people who received such
slaves did not really buy or own them any more than
husbands owned their wives
○
One way of looking at traditional forms of slavery (for
example, as practices in some of the chiefdoms and pre-
capitalist kingdoms of West Africa) is as a kind of male
counterpart of the exchange of women among corporate
kinship groups
•
Some social scientists argue that the use of money as a means
of exchange (especially for land and labour) is typical of
societies with social classes (in a state-level society), where
appropriation of the means of production by a ruling class
creates an artificial scarcity of land or items of consumption
•
This is the case of tribal ranking societies
○
In such societies positions of prestige (e.g. big-man or
chief) are also relatively scare, hence the use of special-
purpose money in the political sphere
○
However, in pre-state societies with no economic classes may
have a different form of social hierarchy (pecking order) based
on differences in prestige and power
•
They would use such general-purpose money for buying
a variety of manufactured items as well as food not
produced at home
○
This same form of currency, circulating among various
tribes in a wider region, may well be used at home, but
again only buying such items for daily use
○
However, these various kin-based societies may also have
some form of general-purpose money, which serves as a means
of exchange, but only for purposes of inter-tribal trading
•
Special-Purpose vs. General-Purpose Money
That depends on how such objects are used in exchange
transactions and whether or not it is for internal purposes
or external purposes
○
One cannot really say that any particular object is general-
purpose or special-purpose money
•
This item may simply be traded by members of a group
of people living near the seacoast in exchange for some
other object brought in by in-land neighbours
○
These neighbours may in turn treat such imported sea
shells as only one denomination of several kinds of
shells which serve as a kind of general-purpose money
for a number of different tribes further inland
○
However, such general-purpose money would only be
used for external exchanges, although it may even reach
more remote communities where the same shell would
no longer function as general-purpose money
○
Consider a sea shell
•
Going further inland, perhaps into a remote mountainous
region, this shell (now rare) might end up serving as a form of
special-purpose money used to pay bridewealth or perhaps as a
special sympathy payment used to express one's grief on the
occasions of the death of an important chief
•
In that case, dollars would not be used as a form of
payment, store of value or means of exchange for any
other service of item
○
In fact, you would not even be able to change or convert
a dollar bill into four American quarters, even though
those coins might be used as a substitute for British
sterling to pay for bananas in the local market place
○
Similarly, a more widely-used general-purpose money in the
international economy (e.g. American dollar bill) might
function as a special-purpose money among a remote group of
people in the Highlands of New Guinea as part of their
bridewealth
•
Such situations are not likely to last long, as the realization that
four quarters can be changed into a dollar bill elsewhere would
result in a rapid increase of the conversion of different forms of
special-purpose money and the breakdown of both the social
system with its different spheres of exchange
•
Ex. External (inter-tribal) use of special-purpose money
is the Kula ring, consisting of the exchange of two types
of ceremonial items (arm bands and necklaces) among
different ethnic groups and communities located in
different islands in the South Pacific
○
Although special-purpose money is generally used for internal
kin-based socities, that is not always the case
•
As they gradually get traded from one important person
to another, one type of ceremonial object always moves
in a clockwise direction while the other moves in a
counter clockwise direction among dozens of islands
○
The institution of the Kula ring involves long canoeing
expeditions in which important chiefs exchange these two
types of ceremonial objects at the same time common villagers
are bartering more mundane goods
•
Internal vs. External Use of Money
One can analyze many aspects of life in Canada today in
terms of specialized spheres of exchange and primitive
money in the way that the appendix of the textbook
examines American popular culture from an
anthropological perspective
○
One could argue that there are functional equivalents of
special-purpose money in our society
•
Although you can buy a ring in a jewellery store using
all-purpose money, the ring itself enters a different
sphere of exchange
○
Indeed, there is even a strong moral barrier about selling
a wedding or engagement ring one has received or
inherited
○
Instead, they become part of family heirlooms, usually
passed on from generation to generation
○
One example of a special-purpose currency in modern society
is the gold and diamond rings which are exchanged among
couples who plan to be married
•
"Primitive" Money in a "Modern" Society
the erosion of different moral barriers between different
spheres of exchange
○
the introduction of the market principle
○
the diffusion of general-purpose money to all sectors of
the economy
○
the concept of unlimited needs based on consumers
○
The process whereby the economy of a kin-based society is
gradually transformed from one based on non-capitalist or
capitalist forms of production also involves:
•
These processes have been studied by anthropologists are are
increasingly becoming the central theme of many ethnographic
films
•
Transformation of Tribal Economies
Economics and Exchange
Sunday,*February*18,*2018
11:24*AM
Explain how forms of consumption and exchange can help
determine other aspects of social structure.
1.
Outline the meaning of consumption in cultural anthropology
and how it varies across different modes of production.
2.
Distinguish between different kinds of economic systems.3.
Compare the characteristics of three forms of exchange:
reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange.
4.
Discuss the meaning and uses of money and other specialized
exchange currencies.
5.
Learning Outcomes:
Readings: Chapter 6 (pages 121-147)
They also differ in terms of how these two aspects of the
economy are interrelated
○
This unit pays more attention to systems of exchange in
relation to production
○
Alternative definition of capitalism as a mode of
production as opposed to a system of exchange
○
Anthropologists differ in the way they approach the study of
economic systems, depending on whether they place more
emphasis on production or on exchange
•
We can also use the term form of production
○
Each form of production is characterized by a unique
combination of a certain type of social relationships
among people (also known as a relation of production) as
well as their relationship to the means of production
○
One of the criteria used in classifying human societies is the
predominant economic activity or strategy of adaptation (e.g.
hunting-gathering vs. nomadic pastoralism)
•
In contrasts, for agriculturalists land is the main object of
labour while some animals (e.g. oxen used in ploughing)
constitute instruments of labour
○
In a hunting-gathering society the nets, bows, arrows, and
spears used in hunting are the instruments of labour, while the
animals hunted constitute the object of labour (as do the wild
plants and roots which are gathered)
•
The second set of relationships is known as the relations
of production
○
When comparing different forms of production, it is necessary
to look at the relationship of people to their natural
environment (i.e. their technology); and the relationships
established among people in terms of control over, and
ownership of, different components of both instruments and
objects of labour
•
Forms of Production
Peasants likewise have mainly individual ownership over
their tools (the plough, oxen, pitchfork, etc.)
○
However, unlike cultivators of even ranking tribal
societies, peasants who live in state-level societies
typically have little control or ownership of their most
important means of production (the land), since a
landowner or the representatives of the state can extract a
rent or some form of tax from the people who work the
land
○
Most tribal cultivators, through their membership in kinship
corporations (lineages), collectively own and control land (as
an object of labour), although their tools, or instruments of
labour, are usually individually owned
•
Rent or taxes can take the form of money, a percentage of the
crop or specific labour duties (such as helping look after the
landlord's house and animals)
•
In the latter, the leaders of kinship-based groups (chiefs
or "big men") decide who works on what piece of land,
and any surplus produce they collect is redistributed to
their kinfolk
○
Relations of production in agrarian state-level societies
between landlords and peasants are thus distinct from those in
tribal societies
•
Relations of Production
The label often used to refer for such broad comparisons
is mode of production (first used by Karl Marx)
○
Kin-based: includes both egalitarian and ranked
tribal societies
!
Tributary: includes all state-level societies prior to
the industrial revolution, usually based on more
intensive forms of agriculture
!
Capitalist: form of society whose system of
production is based primarily on wage labour
!
Eric Wold had suggested three principle modes of
production:
○
In feudal systems, landlords tend to have
more power than a king/emperor who
represented the state, even though an
individual landlord may in theory be
considered a vassal (someone who pays
homage) to a monarch
□
Ex. Feudal mode of production is commonly used
to describe a more decentralized form of the
tributary mode of production
!
There are many other labels which constitute variations
on Wolf's three-part typology, or further sub-categories
within each of his modes of production
○
Some anthropologists use the predominant type of relations of
production as criteria for developing an alternative typology
for societies for the purposes of broad historical comparisons
•
Likewise, pastoralists and tribal cultivators in turn
represent two variations of ranking societies
○
Such sub-types are used to distinguish among varying
degrees of complexity (and different levels of hierarchy)
within a broader mode of production, as well as a
different mix in the forms of production
○
Egalitarian bands of hunters and gatherers vs. ranked tribal
societies represent two sub-types of Wolf's kin-based modes of
production.
•
Modes of Production
In any specific society, even ones with a dominant mode of
production, one is bound to find local variation and the co-
existence of different forms of production
•
For example, some nation states which are basically capitalist
industrial societies (e.g. Italy, Mexico, India) may either have
significant agrarian (peasant) enclaves or the remnants of kin-
based modes of production
•
Different forms of production are articulated when one
form of production becomes dependent on (and
sometimes even necessary for) another, usually dominant
form of production
○
Such situations are often found when subordinate sub-
groups or ethnic minorities are involved in non-capitalist
forms of production
○
The technical term articulation refers to the coexistence of
more than one form of production in the same society
•
Rather is refers to a systematic interconnection and
interdependence from the point of the system as a whole
○
The term articulation implies more than just mere coexistence
of more than one form of production (perhaps due to the
survival of a non-capitalist form of production due to the lack
of contact or a result of isolation)
•
Also known as chattel slavery, the relations between
black slaves and plantation owners in the Americas was
part and parcel of the emergence of a single world
economy which included the development of capitalist
forms of production in Europe which employed free
wage labourers (i.e. Proletarians) in sweat shops and
factories
○
A historic example of the articulation of different forms of
production is the development of slavery (also known as the
slave mode of production) in the sugar and cotton plantations
of the New World
•
Slave plantations in the New World can also be used to
illustrate the re-emergence of a slave mode of production
which had long ago disappeared in Europe (after the
decline of the Roman Empire)
○
The treatment of people as property in the context of such
plantations is an example of yet another mode of production
•
The Articulation of Forms of Production
Slavery and slaves (as a legal institution and a component of
social stratification) can take many different forms, and does
not always constitute a form of production
•
Such slaves were second-class citizens who had been
taken captive in raiding exhibitions or who belonged to
weak clans forced to relocate in the territory of people
whom they were not related
○
However, slavery did not constitute the dominant mode
of production in those societies
○
At various points, earlier editions of the textbook make a
passing reference to the existence of slaves among such
ranking tribal societies as the Tiv in Africa or the Kwakitul and
other native peoples on the North Pacific Coast of North
America
•
Although slavery no longer exists as an economic system,
other non-capitalist forms of production can still be found in
many parts of the world today (including Canada and the US)
•
The study of that broader world system itself and how it
originated is usually left to social historians, sociologists
and political scientists
○
Social anthropologists today tend to focus on the nature and
functions of non-capitalist forms of production within the
context of a world-wide system dominated by a capitalist
world system
•
In the language of economic theory, an entrepreneur
mobilizes different factors of production or inputs for the
production process
○
However, in non-capitalist economic systems it is not
possible to buy labour, which can therefore not be
considered a factor of production
○
The term factors of production is used in economic theory to
refer to land, labour and capital within the context of a
capitalist economy
•
In the case of hunters and gatherers, one cannot label land as a
means of production, since it does not constitute the object of
production in such societies (in contrast to the case of tribal
cultivators)
•
Different Forms of Slavery
In economic theory (particularly Marxist economics)
surplus refers to the production of extra goods as a result
of the demands of rulers in state-level societies
○
According to that approach, a surplus refers to the
production of food and other goods above a level
required for mere survival, and non-state societies do not
produce a surplus by definition
○
However, some anthropologists argue that all societies
have to produce surpluses above that which is extracted
by landlords or market mechanism
○
Anthropologists have had many debates about the use of
economic surplus
•
"man does not live by bread alone" -we need to produce
additional food and other items purely to cement social
ties through ceremonies and rituals
○
People need to "put away something for a rainy day" (in
the case of scarcities caused by natural disasters or wars)
○
A proportion of any crop (seeds) must be set aside in
order to be able to sow another crop
○
All societies need to replace manufactured items
necessary for survival (i.e. tools, as well as shelter and
clothing)
○
Surpluses need to be produced for several reasons:
•
Surplus
Three main forms of exchange: reciprocity, redistribution, and
the market principle
•
Meat distribution among Kung
!
Family pooling of resources for birthday gifts
!
Usually occurs among close kin
!
Generalized: altruistic transactions in which gifts are
freely given without calculating value or repayment
○
Value of gift is calculate
!
Time of repayment is specified
!
Selling surplus of food
!
One trader gives partner a white armband
□
Expects a red necklace of equal value in
return
□
Promissory gifts are made until return occurs
□
Kula ring:
!
Balanced: direct exchange
○
Hard bargaining or deception
!
Horse raids
!
Selling prepared food to a captive market
!
Usually occurs among unrelated persons
!
Variation: silent trade
!
Negative: an exchange where one party tries to get the
better of the exchange
○
Reciprocity: direct exchange of goods and services (obligation
underlies the principles of reciprocity)
•
Process whereby goods and services flow to a central
authority (king, chief, government) where they are
sorted, counted and reallocated
○
Classic example: Potlatch
○
Historical example: administered trade
○
Central features of command economies
!
Here, men turn the soil with foot plows
while women break of the clods
□
Ethnographic example: Inca labor tax
!
Students from across Latin America at
Cuban medical school
□
Modern example: socialist countries
!
Socialist model:
○
Redistribution: flow of foods and services to central authority,
then returned in different form
•
Exchange of goods among many buyers and sellers
○
Directly by barter, or indirectly by money and pricing
○
Ex. Yoruba market in Nigeria, Haitian market
○
Crowds of buyers and sellers
!
Instant information on prices
!
Freedom of market entry and exit
!
Markets include:
○
Market principle: buying and selling through price mechanism
•
Forms of Exchange **read textbook
Once produced, goods and services must be distributed
○
Three ways by which goods are distributed: reciprocity,
redistribution, and market exchange
○
"when two groups of men meet they may move
away or in the case of mistrust they may resort to
arms or else they may come to terms"
!
Coming to terms can be called "total prestation" or
an obligation that has the force of law in the
absence of law
!
Imperatives of exchange:
○
Obligation to give -to extend social ties to other
person or groups
!
Obligation to receive -to accept the relationship
!
Induces hostilities
□
Refusal is rejection of offered relationship
!
Obligation to replay --> failure to repay renders
one a beggar
!
Obligations of the gift:
○
Big men are headmen with a following
!
Following created by doing a favour (e.g. lending
pigs), which is difficult to repay
!
Individually, exchange is reciprocity
!
Collectively, has appearance of redistribution
!
Cannot enforce the obligations
□
Subject to competition to other big men
□
Exchange feasts every 10 years with another
big man equal in status
□
Power limits:
!
Case Study: Big Man Complex
○
Supplier -willingness to sell is directly
proportional to price increases
□
Purchases -willingness to buy (demand) is
directly proportional to price decreases
□
Interaction leads to price equilibrium (no
profit)
□
Actors are…
!
Entry: seller pay small tax, buyers pay none
□
Price is constant topic of conversation
□
Profit is minimal
□
Regional specialization guarantee buyers for
product
□
Ex. Regional Guatemalan Markets
!
Market Exchange: Actors
○
Economy entails distribution of goods and services
!
Still, economy is embedded in society
!
Big man complex involves politics
!
Maintains power by persuasions, negotiation
!
Kula ring is also embedded in prestige
!
Interconnections will be seen in other topics: social
groups and politics
!
Conclusion:
○
Slideshow: Economic Anthropology -Distribution and
Exchange
•
Likewise, you bring wine or flowers to a dinner
(not money)
!
It would not be considered appropriate to offer cash to a
teacher as a token of appreciation
○
Even the occasional gift of money should be put in
a sealed envelope or take the form of a gift
certificate
!
People in most Western societies are expected to
exchange presents at Christmas time (form of
reciprocity) and not give each other signed cheques (a
purely commercial transaction)
○
Politicians are not suppose to buy votes
!
You can pay to attend a college, but schools cannot
sell diplomas or degrees
!
In North America, you can pay someone money for sex
but you cannot buy a wife or husband
○
Even in urban, industrial societies (where money buys
everything) there are limits or moral barriers to the operation of
the market principle
•
Ex. The idea of people paying money to work for each
other, or of putting a price on a piece of land is
considered morally repugnant, or even unthinkable, in
some societies
○
It might be harder to accept or understand quite different forms
of such barriers to monetary transactions when faced with
cross-cultural examples
•
However, such societies do have other forms of
production and exchange within their own set of rules
and customs
○
In many societies with a kin-based mode of production
there is a kind of marriage market, with its own form of
currency, although the use of such currency is restricted
only to the exchange of spouses
○
Land and labour are not commodities in societies with a
different set of relations of production
•
Despite the restriction on exchanges among such
spheres, some conversions between the separate spheres
of exchange were allowed, but usually with a great deal
of reluctance
○
The presence of such parallel, specialized systems of
transactions or spheres of exchange are also given the label
multicentric exchange systems
•
The co-existence of different forms of exchange is often associated
with the presence of moral barriers against different types of
transactions, including monetary transactions
However, such commercial transactions are often
relegated to a specific location (a marker place)
○
In non-capitalist societies, with different spheres of exchange,
people may still buy or sell items such as certain food items
(including luxury foods), manufactured items (pots and mats),
or medicinal herbs
•
Foreign traders were not allowed to conduct transactions
outside of such cities or specifically designated market
places for fear they might contaminate the social fabric
through their crass commercial transactions
○
Many societies (including complex agrarian states based on the
tributary mode of production, such as ancient China) restricted
such market exchanges to specific sites, usually within urban
centres or ports of trade
•
Market Place vs. Market Principle
For example, in societies with a large sector of peasant
producers and artisans, with a weakly developed
capitalist sector based on the market principle, you will
find many more market places
○
Even where the moral barriers and legal restrictions no
longer exist, the presence of market places are usually
associated with a large group of independent producers
(usually based on a household, largely subsistence-based
economy)
○
There is usually an inverse correlation between the number of
market places (in the old-fashioned sense) and the market
principle
•
Even in the case of larger daily markets, the majority of
customers and vendors (often farmers) travel in from
more remote hamlets or other villages
○
Market places (with stalls and small vendors selling in booths)
are often associated with weekly markets
•
Melanesian Market
Many different items, apart from metal coins and special pieces
of paper printed by the government, have been used as money
or currency
•
For example, cigarettes were used as money in Europe during
the war (in places were other forms of money was not
available) and still constitute a form of currency among
inmates in jails
•
Another example of something functioning as currency is shell
money (among natives in the Americas)
•
It can be means of exchange, a standard value, or simply
a way of paying fines
○
Money serves many economic functions
•
An important distinction in economic anthropology is that of
special purpose vs general purpose money
•
Money
However, what is considered or becomes scarce varies
greatly from society to society
○
The use of any form of money (even special-purpose money,
once ethnocentrically referred to as primitive money) implies
some form of scarcity
•
In contemporary urban-industrial capitalist societies based on
consumerism, most services, as well as food and manufactured
items, are relatively scarce (and hence have a price) because of
what we assume to be unlimited wants and needs
•
People have limited or very specific culturally-defined
needs or wants
○
People produce almost everything they use
○
The reasons most items of consumption (as well as tools) are
not scarce in such societies (except for occasional period of
crop failure) is because:
•
Moreover, because the economy is embedded in society,
exchanges of food and labour take place through a
network of kinship relations
○
Under such circumstances most goods do not have a price and
you don't need money to buy them
•
For example, some young people must spend a long time
(and make lots of visits to other villages) before they find
the right kind of cross cousin
○
In such situation the use of special-purpose money (such
as items used to pay a brideprice) can be analyzed as a
form of currency with value only in the sphere of
exchange of spouses among lineages
○
However, in kin-based societies, with their numerous
restrictions on whom you can marry, prospective spouses are
very scarce
•
Another way of looking at the exchange of wealth (including
special-purpose money) at the time of marriage in many tribal
societies is as a form of insurance payment (in case of divorce)
or a compensation payment for the loss of potential future
members of the kinship corporations when its men or women
have to move elsewhere to produce children
•
The exchange of slaves (who did not belong to any clan
and thus occupied a subordinate social position), and the
special-purpose money used in such exchanges, was a
way of regulating the flow of men without such kinship
connections
○
Such slaves could even become a form of prestige
money themselves, although people who received such
slaves did not really buy or own them any more than
husbands owned their wives
○
One way of looking at traditional forms of slavery (for
example, as practices in some of the chiefdoms and pre-
capitalist kingdoms of West Africa) is as a kind of male
counterpart of the exchange of women among corporate
kinship groups
•
Some social scientists argue that the use of money as a means
of exchange (especially for land and labour) is typical of
societies with social classes (in a state-level society), where
appropriation of the means of production by a ruling class
creates an artificial scarcity of land or items of consumption
•
This is the case of tribal ranking societies
○
In such societies positions of prestige (e.g. big-man or
chief) are also relatively scare, hence the use of special-
purpose money in the political sphere
○
However, in pre-state societies with no economic classes may
have a different form of social hierarchy (pecking order) based
on differences in prestige and power
•
They would use such general-purpose money for buying
a variety of manufactured items as well as food not
produced at home
○
This same form of currency, circulating among various
tribes in a wider region, may well be used at home, but
again only buying such items for daily use
○
However, these various kin-based societies may also have
some form of general-purpose money, which serves as a means
of exchange, but only for purposes of inter-tribal trading
•
Special-Purpose vs. General-Purpose Money
That depends on how such objects are used in exchange
transactions and whether or not it is for internal purposes
or external purposes
○
One cannot really say that any particular object is general-
purpose or special-purpose money
•
This item may simply be traded by members of a group
of people living near the seacoast in exchange for some
other object brought in by in-land neighbours
○
These neighbours may in turn treat such imported sea
shells as only one denomination of several kinds of
shells which serve as a kind of general-purpose money
for a number of different tribes further inland
○
However, such general-purpose money would only be
used for external exchanges, although it may even reach
more remote communities where the same shell would
no longer function as general-purpose money
○
Consider a sea shell
•
Going further inland, perhaps into a remote mountainous
region, this shell (now rare) might end up serving as a form of
special-purpose money used to pay bridewealth or perhaps as a
special sympathy payment used to express one's grief on the
occasions of the death of an important chief
•
In that case, dollars would not be used as a form of
payment, store of value or means of exchange for any
other service of item
○
In fact, you would not even be able to change or convert
a dollar bill into four American quarters, even though
those coins might be used as a substitute for British
sterling to pay for bananas in the local market place
○
Similarly, a more widely-used general-purpose money in the
international economy (e.g. American dollar bill) might
function as a special-purpose money among a remote group of
people in the Highlands of New Guinea as part of their
bridewealth
•
Such situations are not likely to last long, as the realization that
four quarters can be changed into a dollar bill elsewhere would
result in a rapid increase of the conversion of different forms of
special-purpose money and the breakdown of both the social
system with its different spheres of exchange
•
Ex. External (inter-tribal) use of special-purpose money
is the Kula ring, consisting of the exchange of two types
of ceremonial items (arm bands and necklaces) among
different ethnic groups and communities located in
different islands in the South Pacific
○
Although special-purpose money is generally used for internal
kin-based socities, that is not always the case
•
As they gradually get traded from one important person
to another, one type of ceremonial object always moves
in a clockwise direction while the other moves in a
counter clockwise direction among dozens of islands
○
The institution of the Kula ring involves long canoeing
expeditions in which important chiefs exchange these two
types of ceremonial objects at the same time common villagers
are bartering more mundane goods
•
Internal vs. External Use of Money
One can analyze many aspects of life in Canada today in
terms of specialized spheres of exchange and primitive
money in the way that the appendix of the textbook
examines American popular culture from an
anthropological perspective
○
One could argue that there are functional equivalents of
special-purpose money in our society
•
Although you can buy a ring in a jewellery store using
all-purpose money, the ring itself enters a different
sphere of exchange
○
Indeed, there is even a strong moral barrier about selling
a wedding or engagement ring one has received or
inherited
○
Instead, they become part of family heirlooms, usually
passed on from generation to generation
○
One example of a special-purpose currency in modern society
is the gold and diamond rings which are exchanged among
couples who plan to be married
•
"Primitive" Money in a "Modern" Society
the erosion of different moral barriers between different
spheres of exchange
○
the introduction of the market principle
○
the diffusion of general-purpose money to all sectors of
the economy
○
the concept of unlimited needs based on consumers
○
The process whereby the economy of a kin-based society is
gradually transformed from one based on non-capitalist or
capitalist forms of production also involves:
•
These processes have been studied by anthropologists are are
increasingly becoming the central theme of many ethnographic
films
•
Transformation of Tribal Economies
Economics and Exchange
Sunday,*February*18,*2018 11:24*AM
Explain how forms of consumption and exchange can help
determine other aspects of social structure.
1.
Outline the meaning of consumption in cultural anthropology
and how it varies across different modes of production.
2.
Distinguish between different kinds of economic systems.3.
Compare the characteristics of three forms of exchange:
reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange.
4.
Discuss the meaning and uses of money and other specialized
exchange currencies.
5.
Learning Outcomes:
Readings: Chapter 6 (pages 121-147)
They also differ in terms of how these two aspects of the
economy are interrelated
○
This unit pays more attention to systems of exchange in
relation to production
○
Alternative definition of capitalism as a mode of
production as opposed to a system of exchange
○
Anthropologists differ in the way they approach the study of
economic systems, depending on whether they place more
emphasis on production or on exchange
•
We can also use the term form of production
○
Each form of production is characterized by a unique
combination of a certain type of social relationships
among people (also known as a relation of production) as
well as their relationship to the means of production
○
One of the criteria used in classifying human societies is the
predominant economic activity or strategy of adaptation (e.g.
hunting-gathering vs. nomadic pastoralism)
•
In contrasts, for agriculturalists land is the main object of
labour while some animals (e.g. oxen used in ploughing)
constitute instruments of labour
○
In a hunting-gathering society the nets, bows, arrows, and
spears used in hunting are the instruments of labour, while the
animals hunted constitute the object of labour (as do the wild
plants and roots which are gathered)
•
The second set of relationships is known as the relations
of production
○
When comparing different forms of production, it is necessary
to look at the relationship of people to their natural
environment (i.e. their technology); and the relationships
established among people in terms of control over, and
ownership of, different components of both instruments and
objects of labour
•
Forms of Production
Peasants likewise have mainly individual ownership over
their tools (the plough, oxen, pitchfork, etc.)
○
However, unlike cultivators of even ranking tribal
societies, peasants who live in state-level societies
typically have little control or ownership of their most
important means of production (the land), since a
landowner or the representatives of the state can extract a
rent or some form of tax from the people who work the
land
○
Most tribal cultivators, through their membership in kinship
corporations (lineages), collectively own and control land (as
an object of labour), although their tools, or instruments of
labour, are usually individually owned
•
Rent or taxes can take the form of money, a percentage of the
crop or specific labour duties (such as helping look after the
landlord's house and animals)
•
In the latter, the leaders of kinship-based groups (chiefs
or "big men") decide who works on what piece of land,
and any surplus produce they collect is redistributed to
their kinfolk
○
Relations of production in agrarian state-level societies
between landlords and peasants are thus distinct from those in
tribal societies
•
Relations of Production
The label often used to refer for such broad comparisons
is mode of production (first used by Karl Marx)
○
Kin-based: includes both egalitarian and ranked
tribal societies
!
Tributary: includes all state-level societies prior to
the industrial revolution, usually based on more
intensive forms of agriculture
!
Capitalist: form of society whose system of
production is based primarily on wage labour
!
Eric Wold had suggested three principle modes of
production:
○
In feudal systems, landlords tend to have
more power than a king/emperor who
represented the state, even though an
individual landlord may in theory be
considered a vassal (someone who pays
homage) to a monarch
□
Ex. Feudal mode of production is commonly used
to describe a more decentralized form of the
tributary mode of production
!
There are many other labels which constitute variations
on Wolf's three-part typology, or further sub-categories
within each of his modes of production
○
Some anthropologists use the predominant type of relations of
production as criteria for developing an alternative typology
for societies for the purposes of broad historical comparisons
•
Likewise, pastoralists and tribal cultivators in turn
represent two variations of ranking societies
○
Such sub-types are used to distinguish among varying
degrees of complexity (and different levels of hierarchy)
within a broader mode of production, as well as a
different mix in the forms of production
○
Egalitarian bands of hunters and gatherers vs. ranked tribal
societies represent two sub-types of Wolf's kin-based modes of
production.
•
Modes of Production
In any specific society, even ones with a dominant mode of
production, one is bound to find local variation and the co-
existence of different forms of production
•
For example, some nation states which are basically capitalist
industrial societies (e.g. Italy, Mexico, India) may either have
significant agrarian (peasant) enclaves or the remnants of kin-
based modes of production
•
Different forms of production are articulated when one
form of production becomes dependent on (and
sometimes even necessary for) another, usually dominant
form of production
○
Such situations are often found when subordinate sub-
groups or ethnic minorities are involved in non-capitalist
forms of production
○
The technical term articulation refers to the coexistence of
more than one form of production in the same society
•
Rather is refers to a systematic interconnection and
interdependence from the point of the system as a whole
○
The term articulation implies more than just mere coexistence
of more than one form of production (perhaps due to the
survival of a non-capitalist form of production due to the lack
of contact or a result of isolation)
•
Also known as chattel slavery, the relations between
black slaves and plantation owners in the Americas was
part and parcel of the emergence of a single world
economy which included the development of capitalist
forms of production in Europe which employed free
wage labourers (i.e. Proletarians) in sweat shops and
factories
○
A historic example of the articulation of different forms of
production is the development of slavery (also known as the
slave mode of production) in the sugar and cotton plantations
of the New World
•
Slave plantations in the New World can also be used to
illustrate the re-emergence of a slave mode of production
which had long ago disappeared in Europe (after the
decline of the Roman Empire)
○
The treatment of people as property in the context of such
plantations is an example of yet another mode of production
•
The Articulation of Forms of Production
Slavery and slaves (as a legal institution and a component of
social stratification) can take many different forms, and does
not always constitute a form of production
•
Such slaves were second-class citizens who had been
taken captive in raiding exhibitions or who belonged to
weak clans forced to relocate in the territory of people
whom they were not related
○
However, slavery did not constitute the dominant mode
of production in those societies
○
At various points, earlier editions of the textbook make a
passing reference to the existence of slaves among such
ranking tribal societies as the Tiv in Africa or the Kwakitul and
other native peoples on the North Pacific Coast of North
America
•
Although slavery no longer exists as an economic system,
other non-capitalist forms of production can still be found in
many parts of the world today (including Canada and the US)
•
The study of that broader world system itself and how it
originated is usually left to social historians, sociologists
and political scientists
○
Social anthropologists today tend to focus on the nature and
functions of non-capitalist forms of production within the
context of a world-wide system dominated by a capitalist
world system
•
In the language of economic theory, an entrepreneur
mobilizes different factors of production or inputs for the
production process
○
However, in non-capitalist economic systems it is not
possible to buy labour, which can therefore not be
considered a factor of production
○
The term factors of production is used in economic theory to
refer to land, labour and capital within the context of a
capitalist economy
•
In the case of hunters and gatherers, one cannot label land as a
means of production, since it does not constitute the object of
production in such societies (in contrast to the case of tribal
cultivators)
•
Different Forms of Slavery
In economic theory (particularly Marxist economics)
surplus refers to the production of extra goods as a result
of the demands of rulers in state-level societies
○
According to that approach, a surplus refers to the
production of food and other goods above a level
required for mere survival, and non-state societies do not
produce a surplus by definition
○
However, some anthropologists argue that all societies
have to produce surpluses above that which is extracted
by landlords or market mechanism
○
Anthropologists have had many debates about the use of
economic surplus
•
"man does not live by bread alone" -we need to produce
additional food and other items purely to cement social
ties through ceremonies and rituals
○
People need to "put away something for a rainy day" (in
the case of scarcities caused by natural disasters or wars)
○
A proportion of any crop (seeds) must be set aside in
order to be able to sow another crop
○
All societies need to replace manufactured items
necessary for survival (i.e. tools, as well as shelter and
clothing)
○
Surpluses need to be produced for several reasons:
•
Surplus
Three main forms of exchange: reciprocity, redistribution, and
the market principle
•
Meat distribution among Kung
!
Family pooling of resources for birthday gifts
!
Usually occurs among close kin
!
Generalized: altruistic transactions in which gifts are
freely given without calculating value or repayment
○
Value of gift is calculate
!
Time of repayment is specified
!
Selling surplus of food
!
One trader gives partner a white armband
□
Expects a red necklace of equal value in
return
□
Promissory gifts are made until return occurs
□
Kula ring:
!
Balanced: direct exchange
○
Hard bargaining or deception
!
Horse raids
!
Selling prepared food to a captive market
!
Usually occurs among unrelated persons
!
Variation: silent trade
!
Negative: an exchange where one party tries to get the
better of the exchange
○
Reciprocity: direct exchange of goods and services (obligation
underlies the principles of reciprocity)
•
Process whereby goods and services flow to a central
authority (king, chief, government) where they are
sorted, counted and reallocated
○
Classic example: Potlatch
○
Historical example: administered trade
○
Central features of command economies
!
Here, men turn the soil with foot plows
while women break of the clods
□
Ethnographic example: Inca labor tax
!
Students from across Latin America at
Cuban medical school
□
Modern example: socialist countries
!
Socialist model:
○
Redistribution: flow of foods and services to central authority,
then returned in different form
•
Exchange of goods among many buyers and sellers
○
Directly by barter, or indirectly by money and pricing
○
Ex. Yoruba market in Nigeria, Haitian market
○
Crowds of buyers and sellers
!
Instant information on prices
!
Freedom of market entry and exit
!
Markets include:
○
Market principle: buying and selling through price mechanism
•
Forms of Exchange **read textbook
Once produced, goods and services must be distributed
○
Three ways by which goods are distributed: reciprocity,
redistribution, and market exchange
○
"when two groups of men meet they may move
away or in the case of mistrust they may resort to
arms or else they may come to terms"
!
Coming to terms can be called "total prestation" or
an obligation that has the force of law in the
absence of law
!
Imperatives of exchange:
○
Obligation to give -to extend social ties to other
person or groups
!
Obligation to receive -to accept the relationship
!
Induces hostilities
□
Refusal is rejection of offered relationship
!
Obligation to replay --> failure to repay renders
one a beggar
!
Obligations of the gift:
○
Big men are headmen with a following
!
Following created by doing a favour (e.g. lending
pigs), which is difficult to repay
!
Individually, exchange is reciprocity
!
Collectively, has appearance of redistribution
!
Cannot enforce the obligations
□
Subject to competition to other big men
□
Exchange feasts every 10 years with another
big man equal in status
□
Power limits:
!
Case Study: Big Man Complex
○
Supplier -willingness to sell is directly
proportional to price increases
□
Purchases -willingness to buy (demand) is
directly proportional to price decreases
□
Interaction leads to price equilibrium (no
profit)
□
Actors are…
!
Entry: seller pay small tax, buyers pay none
□
Price is constant topic of conversation
□
Profit is minimal
□
Regional specialization guarantee buyers for
product
□
Ex. Regional Guatemalan Markets
!
Market Exchange: Actors
○
Economy entails distribution of goods and services
!
Still, economy is embedded in society
!
Big man complex involves politics
!
Maintains power by persuasions, negotiation
!
Kula ring is also embedded in prestige
!
Interconnections will be seen in other topics: social
groups and politics
!
Conclusion:
○
Slideshow: Economic Anthropology -Distribution and
Exchange
•
Likewise, you bring wine or flowers to a dinner
(not money)
!
It would not be considered appropriate to offer cash to a
teacher as a token of appreciation
○
Even the occasional gift of money should be put in
a sealed envelope or take the form of a gift
certificate
!
People in most Western societies are expected to
exchange presents at Christmas time (form of
reciprocity) and not give each other signed cheques (a
purely commercial transaction)
○
Politicians are not suppose to buy votes
!
You can pay to attend a college, but schools cannot
sell diplomas or degrees
!
In North America, you can pay someone money for sex
but you cannot buy a wife or husband
○
Even in urban, industrial societies (where money buys
everything) there are limits or moral barriers to the operation of
the market principle
•
Ex. The idea of people paying money to work for each
other, or of putting a price on a piece of land is
considered morally repugnant, or even unthinkable, in
some societies
○
It might be harder to accept or understand quite different forms
of such barriers to monetary transactions when faced with
cross-cultural examples
•
However, such societies do have other forms of
production and exchange within their own set of rules
and customs
○
In many societies with a kin-based mode of production
there is a kind of marriage market, with its own form of
currency, although the use of such currency is restricted
only to the exchange of spouses
○
Land and labour are not commodities in societies with a
different set of relations of production
•
Despite the restriction on exchanges among such
spheres, some conversions between the separate spheres
of exchange were allowed, but usually with a great deal
of reluctance
○
The presence of such parallel, specialized systems of
transactions or spheres of exchange are also given the label
multicentric exchange systems
•
The co-existence of different forms of exchange is often associated
with the presence of moral barriers against different types of
transactions, including monetary transactions
However, such commercial transactions are often
relegated to a specific location (a marker place)
○
In non-capitalist societies, with different spheres of exchange,
people may still buy or sell items such as certain food items
(including luxury foods), manufactured items (pots and mats),
or medicinal herbs
•
Foreign traders were not allowed to conduct transactions
outside of such cities or specifically designated market
places for fear they might contaminate the social fabric
through their crass commercial transactions
○
Many societies (including complex agrarian states based on the
tributary mode of production, such as ancient China) restricted
such market exchanges to specific sites, usually within urban
centres or ports of trade
•
Market Place vs. Market Principle
For example, in societies with a large sector of peasant
producers and artisans, with a weakly developed
capitalist sector based on the market principle, you will
find many more market places
○
Even where the moral barriers and legal restrictions no
longer exist, the presence of market places are usually
associated with a large group of independent producers
(usually based on a household, largely subsistence-based
economy)
○
There is usually an inverse correlation between the number of
market places (in the old-fashioned sense) and the market
principle
•
Even in the case of larger daily markets, the majority of
customers and vendors (often farmers) travel in from
more remote hamlets or other villages
○
Market places (with stalls and small vendors selling in booths)
are often associated with weekly markets
•
Melanesian Market
Many different items, apart from metal coins and special pieces
of paper printed by the government, have been used as money
or currency
•
For example, cigarettes were used as money in Europe during
the war (in places were other forms of money was not
available) and still constitute a form of currency among
inmates in jails
•
Another example of something functioning as currency is shell
money (among natives in the Americas)
•
It can be means of exchange, a standard value, or simply
a way of paying fines
○
Money serves many economic functions
•
An important distinction in economic anthropology is that of
special purpose vs general purpose money
•
Money
However, what is considered or becomes scarce varies
greatly from society to society
○
The use of any form of money (even special-purpose money,
once ethnocentrically referred to as primitive money) implies
some form of scarcity
•
In contemporary urban-industrial capitalist societies based on
consumerism, most services, as well as food and manufactured
items, are relatively scarce (and hence have a price) because of
what we assume to be unlimited wants and needs
•
People have limited or very specific culturally-defined
needs or wants
○
People produce almost everything they use
○
The reasons most items of consumption (as well as tools) are
not scarce in such societies (except for occasional period of
crop failure) is because:
•
Moreover, because the economy is embedded in society,
exchanges of food and labour take place through a
network of kinship relations
○
Under such circumstances most goods do not have a price and
you don't need money to buy them
•
For example, some young people must spend a long time
(and make lots of visits to other villages) before they find
the right kind of cross cousin
○
In such situation the use of special-purpose money (such
as items used to pay a brideprice) can be analyzed as a
form of currency with value only in the sphere of
exchange of spouses among lineages
○
However, in kin-based societies, with their numerous
restrictions on whom you can marry, prospective spouses are
very scarce
•
Another way of looking at the exchange of wealth (including
special-purpose money) at the time of marriage in many tribal
societies is as a form of insurance payment (in case of divorce)
or a compensation payment for the loss of potential future
members of the kinship corporations when its men or women
have to move elsewhere to produce children
•
The exchange of slaves (who did not belong to any clan
and thus occupied a subordinate social position), and the
special-purpose money used in such exchanges, was a
way of regulating the flow of men without such kinship
connections
○
Such slaves could even become a form of prestige
money themselves, although people who received such
slaves did not really buy or own them any more than
husbands owned their wives
○
One way of looking at traditional forms of slavery (for
example, as practices in some of the chiefdoms and pre-
capitalist kingdoms of West Africa) is as a kind of male
counterpart of the exchange of women among corporate
kinship groups
•
Some social scientists argue that the use of money as a means
of exchange (especially for land and labour) is typical of
societies with social classes (in a state-level society), where
appropriation of the means of production by a ruling class
creates an artificial scarcity of land or items of consumption
•
This is the case of tribal ranking societies
○
In such societies positions of prestige (e.g. big-man or
chief) are also relatively scare, hence the use of special-
purpose money in the political sphere
○
However, in pre-state societies with no economic classes may
have a different form of social hierarchy (pecking order) based
on differences in prestige and power
•
They would use such general-purpose money for buying
a variety of manufactured items as well as food not
produced at home
○
This same form of currency, circulating among various
tribes in a wider region, may well be used at home, but
again only buying such items for daily use
○
However, these various kin-based societies may also have
some form of general-purpose money, which serves as a means
of exchange, but only for purposes of inter-tribal trading
•
Special-Purpose vs. General-Purpose Money
That depends on how such objects are used in exchange
transactions and whether or not it is for internal purposes
or external purposes
○
One cannot really say that any particular object is general-
purpose or special-purpose money
•
This item may simply be traded by members of a group
of people living near the seacoast in exchange for some
other object brought in by in-land neighbours
○
These neighbours may in turn treat such imported sea
shells as only one denomination of several kinds of
shells which serve as a kind of general-purpose money
for a number of different tribes further inland
○
However, such general-purpose money would only be
used for external exchanges, although it may even reach
more remote communities where the same shell would
no longer function as general-purpose money
○
Consider a sea shell
•
Going further inland, perhaps into a remote mountainous
region, this shell (now rare) might end up serving as a form of
special-purpose money used to pay bridewealth or perhaps as a
special sympathy payment used to express one's grief on the
occasions of the death of an important chief
•
In that case, dollars would not be used as a form of
payment, store of value or means of exchange for any
other service of item
○
In fact, you would not even be able to change or convert
a dollar bill into four American quarters, even though
those coins might be used as a substitute for British
sterling to pay for bananas in the local market place
○
Similarly, a more widely-used general-purpose money in the
international economy (e.g. American dollar bill) might
function as a special-purpose money among a remote group of
people in the Highlands of New Guinea as part of their
bridewealth
•
Such situations are not likely to last long, as the realization that
four quarters can be changed into a dollar bill elsewhere would
result in a rapid increase of the conversion of different forms of
special-purpose money and the breakdown of both the social
system with its different spheres of exchange
•
Ex. External (inter-tribal) use of special-purpose money
is the Kula ring, consisting of the exchange of two types
of ceremonial items (arm bands and necklaces) among
different ethnic groups and communities located in
different islands in the South Pacific
○
Although special-purpose money is generally used for internal
kin-based socities, that is not always the case
•
As they gradually get traded from one important person
to another, one type of ceremonial object always moves
in a clockwise direction while the other moves in a
counter clockwise direction among dozens of islands
○
The institution of the Kula ring involves long canoeing
expeditions in which important chiefs exchange these two
types of ceremonial objects at the same time common villagers
are bartering more mundane goods
•
Internal vs. External Use of Money
One can analyze many aspects of life in Canada today in
terms of specialized spheres of exchange and primitive
money in the way that the appendix of the textbook
examines American popular culture from an
anthropological perspective
○
One could argue that there are functional equivalents of
special-purpose money in our society
•
Although you can buy a ring in a jewellery store using
all-purpose money, the ring itself enters a different
sphere of exchange
○
Indeed, there is even a strong moral barrier about selling
a wedding or engagement ring one has received or
inherited
○
Instead, they become part of family heirlooms, usually
passed on from generation to generation
○
One example of a special-purpose currency in modern society
is the gold and diamond rings which are exchanged among
couples who plan to be married
•
"Primitive" Money in a "Modern" Society
the erosion of different moral barriers between different
spheres of exchange
○
the introduction of the market principle
○
the diffusion of general-purpose money to all sectors of
the economy
○
the concept of unlimited needs based on consumers
○
The process whereby the economy of a kin-based society is
gradually transformed from one based on non-capitalist or
capitalist forms of production also involves:
•
These processes have been studied by anthropologists are are
increasingly becoming the central theme of many ethnographic
films
•
Transformation of Tribal Economies
Economics and Exchange
Sunday,*February*18,*2018 11:24*AM
Document Summary
Explain how forms of consumption and exchange can help determine other aspects of social structure. Outline the meaning of consumption in cultural anthropology and how it varies across different modes of production. Compare the characteristics of three forms of exchange: reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange. Discuss the meaning and uses of money and other specialized exchange currencies. Anthropologists differ in the way they approach the study of economic systems, depending on whether they place more emphasis on production or on exchange. They also differ in terms of how these two aspects of the economy are interrelated. This unit pays more attention to systems of exchange in relation to production. Alternative definition of capitalism as a mode of production as opposed to a system of exchange. One of the criteria used in classifying human societies is the predominant economic activity or strategy of adaptation (e. g. hunting-gathering vs. nomadic pastoralism) We can also use the term form of production.
