Economic Anthropology History, Ethnography, Critique Chris Hann and Keith Hart polity Economic Anthropology also historians and sociologists (and many varieties under each of those labels) - must join forces. Some economists 1 claim a special status for their discipline and locate it closer to the 'hard' sciences than to 'soft' disciplines in the humanities. We take a critical and historical view of such claims, but it is Introduction: Economic not our intention to offer a romantic, utopian alternative to Anthropology economics. We are aware that economics is in some ways as diverse as anthropology. Our aim is to bring the two closer together and this makes us critical of mainstream positions on both sides. Previous accounts of economic anthropology linked it to the founding fathers of modern social theory - notably Marx, Weber and Durkheim. Occasionally the history was Anthropologists aim to discover the principles of · social traced back to the political economists of the Enlightenment. organization at every level from the most particular to the We argue that the core questions are much older than this. universal. The purpose of economic anthropology in the nine­ Ultimately, economic anthropology addresses questions of teenth century, even before it took shape as 'the economics of human nature and well-being, questions that have preoc­ primitive man', was to test the claim that a world economic cupied every society's philosophers from the beginning. We order must be founded on the principles that underpinned make a case for an economic anthropology that is able to a Western industrial society striving for universality. The investigate this 'human economy' anywhere in time and search was on for alternatives that might support a more just space, as a creation of all humanity. But there have been economy, whether liberal, socialist, anarchist or communist. tremendous changes in the world economy over the last Hence the interest in origins and evolution, since society half-century, especially since the end of the Cold War, and was understood to be in movement and had not yet reached we therefore give the highest priority to addressing these on­ its final form. Anthropology was the most inclusive way of going transformations. thinking about economic possibilities. For the sake of readability, we have tried to avoid clutter­ In the twentieth century, knowledge was compartmental­ ing the text with footnotes or excessive references, quotations ized to an unprecedented degree, providing space for the and citation marks. The Notes on Further Reading which emergence of social disciplines modelled on the natural sci­ precede the Bibliography are intended to provide interested ences. Anthropology found itself pigeon-holed as the study readers with further detail concerning the materials presented of those parts of humanity that the others could not reach. in each chapter, as well as supplementary suggestions. Incorporated into the expanding universities, the job of the We are grateful to Sophie Chevalier, Horacio Ortiz and anthropologists was to accumulate an objectified data bank Vishnu Padayachee for permission to use collaborative mate­ on 'other cultures', largely for consumption by insiders and rial. Thanks also go to Gareth Dale, Stephen Gudeman, Sandy a few other experts, rather than the general public. The pro­ Robertson and Don Robotham for their helpful comments. fession became fixed in a cultural relativist paradigm (every society should have its own culture), by definition opposed to the universally valid truths of economics. Anthropologists based their intellectual authority on extended sojourns in X 1 Economic Anthropology Introduction: Economic Anthropology remote areas, and their ability to address the world's economic the 1970s through three decades of neoliberal globalization. trajectory was much impaired as a result. We examine new critical perspectives, the 'cultural turn' in We identify three stages in the development of economic economic anthropology, and fresh aspirations to the mantle anthropology as a field. In the first, from the 1870s up to the of hard science, notably in the guise of 'New Institutional 1940s, most anthropologists were interested in whether Economics'. This period has seen anthropologists expand the economic behaviour of 'savages' was underpinned by their inquiries to address the full range of human economic the same notions of efficiency and 'rationality' that were organization, which they study from a variety of perspec­ taken to motivate economic action in the West. They initially tives. So far, they have preferred in the main to stick with devoted themselves to assembling compendious accounts of the tradition of ethnographic observation. We argue that the world history conceived of as an evolutionary process. Later, time is ripe for anthropologists to go further and address in the years following the First World War, the practice the world economy as a whole. In this new, fourth phase, of fieldwork became ever more dominant, and ethnogra­ economic anthropology would finally emerge as a discipline phers sought to engage the more general propositions of in its own right. mainstream ('neoclassical') economics with their particular The most basic issue remains whether or not the forms of findings about 'primitive' societies. They failed, mainly market economy that have allowed North Atlantic societies to because they misunderstood the economists' epistemological dominate the world economy over the last two centuries rest I premises. on principles of universal validity. Arguments about same­ Ill In the 1950s and 1960s the Cold War was at its height, the ness and difference have plagued economic anthropology II I world economy was booming and governments everywhere throughout its history. We can be proud of anthropologists' I committed themselves to expanding public services while commitment to joining the people where they live in order to retaining tight controls over financial markets. Economic find out what they think and do. We now understand that anthropologists argued among themselves about the theories to analyse non-market economic action through the lens of and methods needed to study their special preserve, which market models is no more defensible intellectually than to was now extended to include the world's peasants alongside analyse the latest financial crash on Wall Street in terms of its dwindling number of tribesmen. 'Formalists' held that the the worldview of a small community of hunter-gatherers. concepts and tools of mainstream economics were adequate Contrasts of this kind have their uses, but they must be to this task, while 'substantivists' claimed that institutional employed with caution. There is no reason to suppose that approaches were more appropriate. By 'institutional' they the diversity of human economies throughout history can be meant that economic life in societies that were not dominated r~duced to a single great divide between the West and the rest. by impersonal markets was always 'embedded' in other social In any case, anthropologists need to make fieldwork-based institutions, ranging from the household to government and ethnography more open to a perspective on world history that religion. most of them abandoned in the twentieth century. In retrospect, this formalist-substantivist debate was a golden age for economic anthropology. It ended in a stale­ mate, thereby opening the way for Marxists and feminists Some Issues of Method to exercise a brief dominance, but they too mainly drew on the traditional subject matter of exotic ethnography. The 1'-ny concept put forward as presumptively universal has third stage of our history takes us from the watershed of lts own particular history. The word 'economy' originates 2 3 Economic Anthropology Introduction: Economic Anthropology in the Ancient Greek oikonomia, where it referred to the chapter we provide a historical outline of its changing ref­ management of a household, usually a manorial estate. A erents from ancient times to now. Economy is one of the complex division of labour based on markets and money keywords of modern civilization. Knowledge of its histori­ can be traced back much further, notably to Mesopotamia cal trajectory should make us more aware when deploying in the third millennium BCE; but, as we explain in the next it universally. chapter, oikonomia was conceived of as the antithesis of the A more serious limitation follows from our decision to place market principle. Of course human beings have reproduced economic anthropology in the context of Western intellectual themselves in their environments and exchanged goods with history and this in turn within a particular view of world other groups since the origins of our species, so in this sense history. Our account is heavily skewed towards a North we can say that the human economy is as old as human­ Atlantic perspective, reflecting European and American domi­ ity itself. Since modern ethnography can shed only very nance of world society and its academic representation in limited light on this history, we must look instead to other the modern period. Economic anthropologists have worked disciplines, especially to economic archaeology. Although around the globe for over a century, but a self-conscious intel­ archaeological studies of material traces- including the fossil lectual community took shape initially in European countries record - yield rich clues to ancient modes of subsistence with colonial empires, before its eventual consolidation