Chapter 6
Economics
Chapter Outline
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Ultimate Dictator
Economic Behavior
Allocating Resources
Organizing Labor
Distribution: Systems of Exchange and
Consumption
Bringing it Back Home: Product
Anthropology
Ultimate Dictator
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The notion that human beings are
“economic men” underlies much of
Western economic theory.
The idea that people are capable of
assessing their economic choices and
making decisions that maximize their
wealth and minimize their labor
Ultimate Dictator
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Economists and anthropologists developed
tools to test the degree to which people in
different cultures behave like the “economic
man” of the theory.
Examples:
• Dictator game
• Ultimatum game
Dictator Game
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Two individuals: “proposer” and
“responder.”
The proposer is given a sum of money
and told to split it with the responder.
If people try to maximize their wealth and
minimize their work, we would expect the
proposer to keep the entire sum.
Dictator Game
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In the United States and other wealthy
nations, 30 to 40% of the players take the
whole pot.
Most proposers leave between 20 and
30% for the responders.
Ultimatum Game
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In this game, the proposer offers to split a
sum of money and the responder may
either accept or reject the split.
If the responder accepts the split, the
money is divided and the game is over.
Ultimatum Game
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If the responder rejects the split, neither
player receives any money and the game
ends.
A respondent who behaved like
“economic man” would accept the offer
since accepting the offer involves no
financial cost and even a very low offer is
greater than nothing.
Ultimatum Game
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Anthropologists and economists have played
the ultimatum game with members of many
different cultures.
The results showed large variations.
• Among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian
Amazon, proposers rarely offered more than
15% and offers were almost never rejected.
• American college students offered 42-48%
and responders tended to reject offers of less
than 30%.
Ultimate Dictator
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The results of the dictator and ultimatum games
demonstrate the social and cultural dimensions
of economic decision making.
The fact that a strong majority of proposers give
responders something may show that all people
have a bias toward generosity.
The differences among cultures demonstrate
that decisions are set in cultural contexts that
determine behavior and these are different in
different economic systems.
Economics
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The study of how the choices people
make determine how their society uses
resources to produce and distribute goods
and services
Economic System
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The part of society that deals with
production, distribution, and consumption
of goods and services
The way production is organized has
consequences for the family and the
political system.
Economics is embedded in the social
process and cultural pattern.
Economic Behavior
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Choosing a course of action that pursues
the course of perceived maximum benefit
Allocating Resources
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Each society has rules to regulate access
to resources.
Productive resources are used to create
other goods or information.
• Land, water, tools, and knowledge are
productive resources.
Productive Resources:
Foragers
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Foraging requires people to spread out over a
large area.
Boundaries can be adjusted as the availability
of resources change.
Where resources are scarce and large areas
are needed to support the population,
boundaries are not usually defended.
Where resources are abundant, groups may be
more inclined to defend their territory.
Productive Resources:
Pastoralists
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The most critical resources are livestock
and land.
Livestock are owned and managed by
individuals, land and water are generally
not owned.
Productive Resources:
Pastoralists
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In the rainy season, cattle graze in areas
unsuitable for farming.
In the dry season, they move to areas
occupied by farmers.
Agreements with landowners allow
animals to graze on the stubble from
harvested fields.
Productive Resources:
Horticulturists
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In horticulture societies, land is
communally owned by an extended kin
group.
Designated officials allocate rights to use
land, which may not be sold.
Since almost everyone belongs to a landcontrolling kin group, few are deprived of
access to this basic resource.
Productive Resources:
Horticulturists
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Often involves investing labor in clearing,
cultivating, and maintaining land
The rights to cleared land and its products
are vested in those who work it.
Individuals may die while the land is still
productive, so a system of inheritance is
usually provided.
Productive Resources:
Agriculturists
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Enormous amounts of labor are invested in the
land and large quantities of food are produced.
Control of the land becomes an important
source of wealth and power.
Land ownership moves from the kin group to
the individual or family.
The owner has the right to keep others off the
land and dispose of it as he or she wishes.
Productive Resources:
Intensive Cultivation
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Land and other productive resources are
likely to be owned by an elite group.
Most fieldwork is done by laborers, often
referred to as peasants.
Landowners enjoy relatively high
standards of living, but peasants do not.
Organizing Labor
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In small-scale preindustrial and peasant
economies, the household or some
extended kin group is the basic unit of
production and consumption.
Labor is just one aspect of membership in
a social group such as the family.
Organizing Labor
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In Western society, work has important
social implications.
For many people, particularly members of
the middle classes, work is a source of
self-respect, challenge, growth, and
personal fulfillment.
Households
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In most nonindustrial societies, production
is based around the household.
The household is an economic unit,
people united by kinship or other links
who share a residence and organize
production, consumption, and distribution
among themselves.
Gendered Division of Labor
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In all human societies, some tasks are
considered appropriate for women and others
appropriate for men.
At some level, the sexual division of labor is
biological since only women can bear and
nurse children.
Caring for infants is almost always a female role
and usually central to female identity.
Specialization in Complex
Societies
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The division of labor becomes more specialized
as the population increases and agricultural
production intensifies.
Occupational specialization spreads as
individuals are able to exchange services or
products for food and wealth.
Specialists are likely to include soldiers,
government officials, and members of the
priesthood as well as artisans, craftsmen and
merchants.
Specialized Labor
How does this work in a sneaker factory in
Mexico differ from that of a forager?
Patterns of Exchange
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Reciprocity
Redistribution
Market
Types of Reciprocity
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Generalized – Distribution of goods with
no specific return expected
Balanced – Exchange of goods of equal
value, with an obligation to return them.
Negative – Exchange conducted for
material advantage
Generalized Reciprocity
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Generalized reciprocity involving food is
an important social mechanism among
foraging peoples.
Hunters distribute meat among members
of the kin group or camp.
Each person or family gets an equal
share or a share dependent on its kinship
relationship to the hunter.
Generalized Reciprocity
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Hunters gain satisfaction from
accomplishing a highly skilled and difficult
task.
Because all people in the society are
bound by the same rules, the system
gives them all opportunity to give and
receive.
Balanced Reciprocity
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Involves greater social distance and
includes the obligation to return, within a
reasonable time limit, goods of nearly
equal value to those given
Characteristic of trading relations among
non-industrialized peoples without market
economies
Kula Ring
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Pattern of exchange among trading partners in
the Trobriands and other South Pacific islands
The kula trade moves two types of prestige
goods from island to island around the Kula
circle.
• Soulava, necklaces of red shell, move in a
clockwise direction.
• Mwali, bracelets of white shell, move
counterclockwise.
Kula Ring
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Although Kula items can be owned and
may be taken out of circulation, people
generally hold them for a while and
then pass them on.
Kula Ring
Kula trading
partnerships
are lifelong
affairs, and
their details
are fixed by
tradition.
Redistribution
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Exchange in which goods are collected
from members of the group and then
redistributed to the group
Leveling Mechanism
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A practice, value, or form of social
organization that evens out wealth in a
society
If generosity rather than the accumulation
of wealth is the basis for prestige, those
who desire prestige will distribute much of
their wealth.
Potlatch
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A form of redistribution involving
competitive feasting practiced among
Northwest Coast Native Americans
Cargo System
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A ritual system common in Central and
South America in which wealthy people
are required to hold a series of costly
ceremonial offices
Market Exchange
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Economic system in which goods and
services are bought and sold at a price
determined by supply and demand
Impersonal and occurs without regard to
the social position of the participants
When this is the key economic institution,
social and political goals are less
important than financial goals.
Capitalism
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Economic system in which:
• people work for wages.
• land and goods are privately owned.
• capital is invested for individual profit.
A small part of the population owns most
of the resources or capital goods.
Bringing it Back Home:
Product Anthropology
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New product ethnography is a way of
turning the techniques and theories of
anthropology into a resource for the
corporate world.
Those who promote it argue that
anthropologists should provide
information that helps corporations design
and market products.
Bringing it Back Home:
Product Anthropology
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The involvement of anthropologists in
these fields raises ethical problems.
If corporations profit from information that
anthropologists received from informants,
is payment owed to the informants?
Should anthropology be a way to help
corporations make more money?
Bringing it Back Home:
Product Anthropology
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You decide:
• Historically the introduction of cheap, mass
produced goods has undercut existing
economies and drawn people in as
consumers of low quality merchandise and
low paid wage earners.
• Given this, should anthropologists be
involved in the design and marketing of
products to groups about which they have
expertise?
Bringing it Back Home:
Product Anthropology
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You decide:
• With the aid of anthropologists, corporations
can produce products that meet local needs
and are marketed in culturally appropriate
ways.
• The alternative is often inappropriate, poorly
designed, and poorly marketed products.
• Given this, can anthropologists justifiably
refuse to work with corporations?
Quick Quiz
1. When you pay your taxes to the U. S.
Government, you are part of a system
of
a) negative reciprocity.
b) redistribution.
c) balanced reciprocity.
d) generalized reciprocity.
e) exchange similar to the Kula
Ring.
Answer: b
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When you pay your taxes to the U. S.
Government, you are part of a system of
redistribution.
2. A tradition of hosting redistributive
community feasts or distributing gifts
as a way of gaining prestige and often
power by those who have more wealth
than others is known as
a) balanced reciprocity.
b) a leveling mechanism.
c) penny capitalism.
d) charity.
Answer: b
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A tradition of hosting redistributive
community feasts or distributing gifts as
a way of gaining prestige and often
power by those who have more wealth
than others is known as a leveling
mechanism.
3. A farmer's access to or ownership of land,
water, and knowledge necessary for
successful farming are referred to in
economics as:
a) goods and services.
b) a negative resource base.
c) raw materials.
d) investments.
e) productive resources.
Answer: e
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A farmer's access to or ownership of
land, water, and knowledge necessary
for successful farming are referred to in
economics as productive resources.