THE NEW ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY

THE NEW ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY

Edited by

JOHN CLAMMER

Selection, editorial matter, Introduction, Chapter I and Postscript© John Clammer 1978

Chapters 2-8 inclusive© The Macmillan Press Limited 1978 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978 978-0-333-19688-5

All rights reserved_ No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

without permission

First published 1978 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD

London and Basingstoke Associated companies in Delhi

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The new economic anthropology L Economics, Primitive L Clammer, John 30L5'1 GN448

This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of theN et Book Agreement

ISBN 978-1-349-02976-1 ISBN 978-1-349-02974-7 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02974-7

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction fohn Clammer

Notes on the Contributors

Concepts and Objects in Economic Anthropology john Clammer

2 Fundamental Economic Concepts and their Application to

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Social Phenomena John Weeks 21

3 Economic Anthropology or Political Economy? (I): the Barotse Social Formation - a Case Study Ronald Frankenberg 31

4 Economic Anthropology or Political Economy? (II): Approaches to the Analysis of Pre-Capitalist Formations in the Maghreb David Seddon 61

5 Marxist Anthropology and Peasant Economics: A Study of the Social Structures of Underdevelopment joel S. Kahn 110

6 Dynamic Tension: Symbiosis and Contradiction in Hmong Social Relations Robert G. Cooper 138

7 Informal Sector, Petty Commodity Production, and the Social Relations of Small-scale Enterprise Norman Long and Paul Richardson 176

·8 Can We Articulate 'Articulation'? Aidan Foster-Carter 210

Postscript fohn Clammer 250

Index 257

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Acknowledgements

The editor and publishers wish to thank the University of Zambia and Mrs Gluckman, who have kindly given their permission to reproduce extracts from the Papers by the late Professor Max Gluckman, published by Manchester University Press, and also Franc;ois Maspero, Editeur, for permission to include English translations of the extracts from Les Alliances de Classes and Colonialisme Neo-Colonialisme et Transition au Capitalism by Pierre-Phillippe Rey.

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Introduction

JOHN CLAMMER

Economic Anthropology has indeed been 'renewed' in recent years, not only in terms of its place and significance within the broader discipline of social anthropology as a whole, but also in its relation­ship to other areas of concern in the contemporary social sciences­political economy, development sociology and economics, the Neo­Marxist theoretical revival and the expansion of Area Studies in the universities. This book is intended as both a monument and a contri­bution to that renewal: a monument in that it represents the fruits of the intense theoretical debates of the last decade; and a contribution in so far as it contains a set of original analyses either of this theoreti­cal tradition from which the authors' impetus has sprung; or of the applications of the increasing conceptual sophistication of economic anthropology in its approaches to its classical problems; or in the reformulation of those problems themselves.

The essential source of this newness has been the major 'paradigm­shift' which has resulted from the rediscovery of Marxism as a fountainhead of inspiration for an area which hitherto Marxism has largely fought shy of- anthropology. Yet this rediscovery is doubly important in that it represents not only the application of Marxist analysis to a theoretically somewhat undernourished area of the social sciences, but also a fundamental rethinking of that very Marxism itself, and its relevance for the Third World, and for the later part of the twentieth century. Much of what is called into question in this collection is not the problematic of the old economic anthropology, but the possibility of founding a new problematic based on a synthesis of Marxist principles and the justifiable concerns of the anthropologists with small-scale societies, non­capitalist socio-economic relations, the effects of colonialism and the nature of the development process in primarily agrarian societies. While this collection cannot claim to provide the definitive solutions to these problems, it can claim to provide an extensive and vigorous analysis of the approaches which the critical anthropologist can adopt, and of the difficulties he encounters, in attempting to define and operationalise the still embryonic conceptual apparatus of the new economic anthropology.

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The papers in this collection do not represent a unified viewpoint, and no attempt has been made to impose such unanimity on the individual authors. If the contributors to this collection can be said to represent a 'school' then this is something which must be decided post factum. Furthermore the authors represented here are all either British or American, and are for the most part members of the younger generation of scholars within their discipline. That none are French is partly deliberate - the collection is intended to represent a concrete advance in debate on the subject, and it was feared that this intention might be compromised if the argument became one of internal issues between economic anthropologists, given that the French economic scholars are still deeply divided within their own camp. Rather two leading ideas are manifested here - the desire to explore, within the tradition of Anglo-American social anthropology, the significance of the theoretical advances in economic anthropology, and the desire to apply these insights to real cases. As a consequence of this the papers are not divided into 'theoretical' versus 'case studies'. On the contrary, with the exception of the first two, one of which is an attempt to orientate the debate, or to provide it with a context, and the other is devoted to points of important conceptual clarification, the contributions are syntheses of theory and practice, and introduce no false dichotomy of the two aspects of the analysis. Each is thus in a sense self-contained, although all contribute to the overall unity and thrust of the collection as a whole.

The first two papers- those by Clammer and Weeks- provide a conceptual and theoretical introduction to the collection. Clammer's paper examines the sense in which the trends in economic anthro­pology represented in this book can claim to be 'new', examines the background of these trends in Anglo-Saxon and French anthro­pology; provides the outlines of a critique of both these national traditions; extracts and examines some of the main conceptual issues arising from the debates within and between these traditions, and finally relates the new economic anthropology to other contemporary intellectual concerns. The essay by Weeks deepens some of the specifically economic aspects of the theoretical debate, by exploring the cross-cultural validity of standard basic economic concepts, both in terms of their own logic and of their specific application to problems of African underdevelopment. In doing so he provides not only a critique of a great deal of conventional development thinking, but also throws light on the 'sub­stantivist I formalist' argument from the point of view of an economist and suggests fresh perspectives on the problem of 'fact and value' in development studies.

Frankenberg and Seddon in their respective papers both explore

Introduction IX

the relationship between economic anthropology and the once classical, but now revitalised, notion of 'political economy' by way of two theoretico-practical case studies - one of the Barotse, the other of the Maghreb. Both are therefore attempts to concretise the debate. Frankenberg's paper has a number of levels - an analysis of the relations between theory and knowledge; an attempt not to refute the old anthropology from a Marxist perspective, but to 'contextualise' it; a re-analysis of Gluckman's classic works on the Barotse in the light of this; and a consequent rethinking of the problematic of economic anthropology. In pursuit of this multi-level analysis, Frankenberg of necessity raises many of the debating points of the new economic anthropology - the role of a materialist schema, the possibility of a class analysis of pre-capitalist social formations, the concept of the mode of production, and the very concept of 'social formation' itself. A major contribution of his paper is indeed its attempt to re-examine some of the best known products of the English 'Manchester School' of social anthropology in the light of the new, or emerging, paradigm. Seddon's contribution involves a number of cognate issues, and in particular the concept and applica­tions of the concept 'mode of production' and the problem of the articulation of modes of production and in particular capitalist and non-pre-capitalist ones. Seddon's essay also greatly expands the notion of 'political economy' especially as it relates to the question­ing and replacing of the problematic of the old economic anthro­pology. In pursuing this notion he is led into a discussion of the tole of historical and literary sources in the prosecution of anthro­pological fieldwork, a review of the classical Marxist category of non­European social formations- the 'Asiatic Mode of Production',­and the important question of colonial images of the pre-colonial society and the influence of these on conceptions and policies, not only as transmitted by colonial administrators but also as accepted or perpetrated by anthropologists.

The papers by Kahn and Cooper also possess linked themes, as in the essays by Frankenberg and Seddon. Interestingly, both draw their empirical data from South -east Asia, an area not yet influenced to any great degree by the newer forms of anthropological analysis. Both papers also show an increasing sophistication in the use of economic and quantitative concepts on the part of economic anthropologists. Kahn's paper introduces in a systematic way into this collection the concepts of the peasant economy; of underdevelopment as conceived and analysed by an anthropologist; the problem of the penetration of capitalism and the co-existence of pre-capitalist modes of production; and the notion of petty commodity production. Cooper's essay presents a complex synthesis of many of these ideas both as theoretical entities and in their application to a case study,

X The New Economic Anthropology and contains many fruitful suggestions, amongst which may be noted his use of history as something integral to an anthropological analysis, and the links he establishes (which may surprise many) between the substantivist-formalist debate and the fashionable Marxist economic anthropologists. The exploration of this field leads him also into a discussion of the varieties of Marxist anthro­pology, and in particular the distinction between those who hold to a 'single' mode of production model as opposed to those who argue for the co-existence of several modes of production in a single social formation; of the importance of locating tribal economies within the context of the larger-scale economic systems in which they are embedded; and for an awareness of the true objectives of anthro­pology and of the location of the 'new economic anthropology' within the subject.

Long and Richardson's contribution, which is also a blend of theory and case study, also takes up some of the same issues, but from a rather different perspective. They draw attention to the problems involved in analysing and describing multi-structured economies: should these be approached as 'dual economies', as ones in which dominent and subordinate modes of production are found co­existing, or by some third method? They approach this problem through a critique of the existing literature, though the medium of their Peruvian case study, and by way of raising some important issues including the distinction between 'formal' and 'informal' sectors of the economy, social relations and cultural strategies within the small-scale economies, the notion of petty commodity production (also discussed by Kahn), the question of the internal differentiation of economies and the co-existence of non-capitalist with capitalist modes of production, and the question of whether the 'informal sector' represents an impediment to development efforts.

Finally Foster-Carter's paper addresses itself to the basic problem of the concept of 'underdevelopment' in itself, to the controversy surrounding it, and to the crucial question of the 'articulation' of modes of production and the distinctions between this approach and the 'dependency' school. In particular this paper examines the influence of Althusser and Balibar and focuses on the works of Rey, the most theoretically advanced of the 'articulation school', but whose works are mostly unavailable in English. Foster-Carter's account of Rey is thus valuable as an exposition and commentary, as well as being the vehicle for his wider survey and critique of the concept of articulation and its implications for development thinking in general, as well as for economic anthropology specifically.

In conclusion some general features of this collection can be pointed out. Firstly the 'new economic anthropology' as conceived of

Introduction Xl

in this volume is not iconoclastic: it does not attempt to simply tear down the endeavours and achievements of the past and replace them by something radically different. Rather it accepts the solid advances of past work in economic anthropology, but at the same time wishes to build on those advances, to transcend them, and by way of constructive critique to put forward a new problematic upon which further advances can be based, since we do not claim to have exhausted the subject or its possibilities. The word 'new' should also be used with caution, for many of the ideas of the 'new economic anthropology' are actually very old. The newness lies not necessarily in the ideas themselves, but in their application, refinement and reformulation. Secondly, the debate represented here is part of a wider 'paradigm shift' in anthropology, the impetus for which stems variously from the recognition of the colonial or neo-colonial context of much anthropological work of the past or present, from the recognition of the close affinities between economic anthro­pology and development studies, from dissatisfaction with the con­ventional subdivisions within anthropology and from a desire to enter into a wider dialogue with those other branches of the social sciences which collectively contribute to the reformulated discipline of political economy. Thirdly, this collection represents an attempt to reinstate economic anthropology in what many of us see as its rightful place in the hierarchy of social anthropology's subdivisions. Far from being a marginal topic the study of economic anthropology is, as we argue throughout this volume, central to the achievement of the aims of anthropology as a whole, and furthermore represents an area of inquiry that is intellectually exciting and involves an engage­ment with the concerns of the real world and of social change at both a theoretical and a practical level.

It is our hope therefore that this volume will be read not only as a collection of statements on the~e topics, but also as a contribution to this continuing dialectic, rather than as a conclusion to it. Indeed if our prognosis is correct we hope to see this collection as an impetus to a great deal more work in this field, since the channels in which the renewal of economic anthropology will finally run cannot be fore­seen at this stage.

Notes on the Contributors

JOHN CLAMMER has been Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Hull since 1971 and is at present Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, University of Singapore. He did research at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, 1970-1, and in 1975 was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of S.E. Asian Studies, Singapore He is the author of Literacy and Social Change: A Case Study of Fiji and of a monograph on the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, and is the editor of The Pacific: Polynesia and Micronesia. ROBERT G. COOPER has recently completed a Ph.D at the University of Hull on the economic anthropology of the Hmong people of northern Thailand, and has now joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Singapore, where he teaches the anthropology of S.E. Asia and the sociology of education from a development studies perspective. AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Leeds. He has previously taught at the Universities of Hull and Dar-es-Salaam. Educated at Oxford and Hull, his main interests are in the sociology of development. RONALD FRANKENBERG is Professor of Sociology at the University of Keele. He has previously taught at the Universities of Manchester and Zambia, and is the author of Village on the Border and Communities in Britain, as well as an editor of African Social Research and the Sociological Review. He is currently interested in medical sociology and the relationships between Marxism and Anthropology. JOEL s. KAHN teaches in the Department of Anthropology at University College, London. His interests lie mainly in the areas of economic anthropology, peasant societies and the relationships between anthropology and development studies. His region of interest is S.E. Asia, where he has carried out fieldwork in Sumatra and Malaysia. NORMAN LONG is Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Durham. He is the author of Social Change and the Individual and other monographs and papers on economic and political anthro-

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pology and kinship. He has recently been engaged in fieldwork in Mexico and has worked elsewhere in Latin America, in Zambia and in Tanzania. PAUL RICHARDSON is a graduate student in Latin American studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where his interests lie in develop­ment sociology and economic anthropology. DA vm SEDDON lectures in Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of East Anglia, where he is attached to the School of Development Studies. He taught previously at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London and has conducted fieldwork in Morocco and Nepal. JOHN WEEKS is now at the University of Wisconsin and has previously taught in the Department of Economics at Birkbeck College, London. His interests are mainly in the field of Development Economics, with particular reference to Africa, a subject on which he has published a number of papers, and in the critique of conven­tional economic theory.