Book Reviews

shown. Yet, because Aristotle was unfamiliar

with the supply-demand-price mechanism (p.
104, 106), did not mention scarcity as a factor operating in the economy [pp. 97-98], and
voiced disapproval of profit in trade [p. 791;
Polanyi would have us believe that the Athenian economy was generically different from
the market economy and, consequently, cannot
be described or analyzed by us now in terms of
formal economic analysis. Granted the fact that
Aristotle did not have the concepts of supply
and demand analysis in his tool kit, does this
really enable us to definitively classify the
Athenian economy or prevent us from applying
such analytic tools to data pertaining to that
economy?
The semantic tangles and conceptual binds
that Polanyis antimarket mentality leads him
into are illustrated in the final essay of the volume in a section entitled Submonetary Devices
in Mycenae (pp. 321-328). Polanyi states the
rationale for this section as follows:
The economic historian of antiquity cannot
make use of the concepts of money, price,
etc., inherited from nineteenth-century economies without a considerable refinement of
these terms. Money, it is suggested, should
be defined as fungible [sic] things in definite
uses, name payment, standard, and exchange,
while price should be replaced by the
broader term equivalence, which transcends
markets [p. 3221.
Polanyis execution of this redefinition program
(which the reader is invited to examine in situ)
left this bewildered reviewer longing for the
precision of the so-called obsolete nineteenthcentury concepts of money and price; almost anything would be preferable to Polanyis
fungibles. Despite Polanyis arguments to the
contrary, then, the whole issue of the relationship between market and marketplace in pnmitive, peasant, and archaic economies, as well as
the applicability of formal economic theory to
their analysis, is still wide open.
In closing, it should be pointed out that, like
it or not, the student and practitioner of economic anthropology must, sooner or later,
come to grips with Polanyi, if only because the
issues he raises with such putative definitiveness
(or which have been raised by others in reaction to him), and the controversies they have
engendered, are crucial ones in the coming of
age of this subarea of anthropological inquiry.
Regardless of how one may wish to rate Polanyis contribution to the comparative study of
economies, he must be granted one important
achievement: almost singlehandedly he invigorated discourse on the meaning, scope, and

969

methods of economic anthropology; his writings, which are well represented in the volume
under review, have made it not only fashionable but imperative for students of economic
anthropology to take theoretical and philosophical problems seriously. This is Polanyis most
important legacy for anthropological inquiry.
Themes in Economic Anthropology. RAYMOND
FIRTH,ed. (A.S.A. Monographs, 6.) London,
New York, Sydney, Toronto, Wellington:
Tavistock Publications, 1967. x, 292 pp.,
index, 2 figures, chapter notes, notes on
contributors, chapter references, 4 tables. 45s.
Reviewed by GEORGE
DALTON
Northwestern University

This is a very useful book and deserves a

careful reading by anyone interested in economic anthropology. It consists of ten essays
written by eight social anthropologists and an
agricultural economist, six of whom are associated with The London School of Economics
as teachers or former students. The essays are
of two kinds. Six are addressed to theoretical
issues (Firth, Frankenberg, Cohen, Douglas,
and two by Joy). The principal theme of these
is the relevance of economic concepts and models to economic anthropology, with special attention given to the debate that has intensified
since the publication of Trade and Market 111
the Early Empires, Polanyi, Arensberg, and Person, eds., 1957. The two essays by Firth and
Cohen are especially good and very definitely
clarify the theoretical issues under dispute.
The remaining four essays are ethnographic
case studies based on the fieldwork of their authors (Barth on the Mountain Fur of the
Sudan; Ortiz on the P k z Indians of Colombia;
Epstein on rural South India; and Barid on YUgoslavian peasants). These empirical essays are
of unusually high and even quality; all four are
very much worth reading. Each makes analytical points of wide application. Three of the
four are about mixed cash and subsistence
economies undergoing socioeconomic change
within peasant cultures. Scarlett Epsteins essay
(like her book, Economic Development and SOcia1 Change in South India) is a particularly
fine piece of work that shows how traditional
jajmani relationships impede innovations, as
well as the economic rationale underlying the
constant size of the allotments in kind traditionally received by dependent castes. (Regrettably, in this review, I shall have space to consider individually only the six theoretical essays.)
Firths Themes in Economic Anthropology:
A General Comment is a clear statement of

970

American Anthropologist

his present views and shows an appreciation of

the recent theoretical work done in economic
anthropology. He emphasizes the structural
differences between industrial capitalism and
the economies that anthropologists study and
recognizes that there are real differences between primitive and peasant economies, as well.
He goes on to describe different kinds of markets and emphasizes that the significance of
the economy is seen to lie in the transactions of
which it is composed and therefore in the qudity of relationships which these transactions create, express, sustain, and modify.
He underscores the importance of Mausss
work on gift-giving (with qualifications and
amendments he describes in some detail). All
this is common ground between Firth and the
Polanyi group. The rest is not. Firth retains his
long-held view-very clearly spelled out here
-that despite the importance of social institutions in primitive and peasant economies and
despite the structural differences between them
and industrial capitalist economies, choice;
scarcity, and decision-making are key concepts for anthropologists as well as economists.
Moreover, he argues, since persons in primitive
and peasant economies seek material gain (economic advantage), motivation is not different
in kind from what is common in capitalism.
Percy Cohens Economic Analysis and Economic Man: Some Comments on a Controversy is the most informative of the sb. theoretical essays. It contains a clear explaniltion of
some of the sources of misunderstanding in the
debate over the relevance of economics to the
analysis of primitive and peasant economies.
He gives an expository account of the various
types of analysis that comprise conventional
economic theory. Once it is seen that economic
theory is not a single field but several disparate
kinds of analysis, it becomes clear that much of
the confusion is due to the fact that different
writers attach different meanings to the phrase
applying economic theory, where primitive
and peasant economies are concerned-especially when they have in mind different kinds
of primitive and peasant economies as well.
Cohen unravels all this neatly and in very clear
language. He goes on to make other telling
points: that such abstract terms as scarcity
and choice are variously interpreted, and so
their indiscriminate use contributes to misunderstanding. He shows how tautological it is to
describe activities as rational, and how difficult it is in economic anthropology to employ
terms like capital in the meanings they convey for economists and capitalism. He describes
how, in capitalism, the market mechanism compels economizing and how the use of money
and pricing allow the fine calculation of cost

[70, 19681

and revenue necessary to economize. Both are

absent in primitive economies and the noncommercial sectors of peasant economies. He concludes his essay with a lucid contrast of ideal
types of simple and complex societies.
Ronald Frankenbergs Economic Anthropology, One Anthropologists View is a highly
condensed survey of the views of some dozen
writers who have contributed to the debate over
theoretical issues. He concludes with the
suggestion that Marxs concept of socially necessary labor time may well be the key to the
further theoretical development of economic
anthropology. He does not show us how to use
this key other than to refer to Salisbury and Epstein, both of whom show how labor requirements of production change when technology
changes. The essay tries to cover an impossible
amount of ground and trails off incoherently.
The questions he raises at the end are unnecessarily original.
Leonard Joys One Economists View of the
Relationship between Economics and Anthropology argues that properly used economic
models are capable of incorporating social and
cultural as well as economic variables. This IS
true, but he does not show us how. (My colleague, Irma Adelman, does show us how in
her book published in 1967, Society, Politics,
and Economic Developmenf.) In a second
essay, An Economic Homologue of Barths
Presentation of Economic Spheres in Darfur,
Joy shows how one could go about specifying
Barths transactional flows via mathematical
programming models of a kind used in econometrics. I t is a pity he has not tried to collect
the information in the field necessary to work
his model. He might find that Scarlett Epsteins
much simpler kind of quantification is both sufficiently useful for the purposes anthropologists
have in mind and feasible for fieldworkers to
do.
Mary Douglas Primitive Rationing: A
Study in Controlled Exchange uses the analogies of rationing, licensing, and foreign exchange controls to make a point that has been
made by others: that prestige sphere monies
(the pig tusk, kula bracelet, and potlatch copper sorts) have limited and special purposes
and uses in creating status positions and prerogatives. Her essay would be improved if she
distinguished more sharply between pre-European and post-European situations. As with her
Lele, entirely new transactional situations are
created whenever the traditional prestige money
continues in use after Western cash is introduced.
I regret that none of the six theoretical essays reflects an extensive reading of Karl Polanyis works. Bohannan, Sahlins, and I are rather

Book Reviews

971

one card missing. Also, I dont remember

whether it was Frank Merriwell, Tarzan, Nick
Carter, or sturdy Dick Rover who was the first
to take in the whole situation at a glance. I
expect, however, that many characters, before
and since, have been endowed with these precious gifts of instant calculation and comprehension.
Most real people I know (myself included),
however, dont enjoy this divine dispensation.
They have to count the cards one by one to see
i f they are all there. And, when confronted by
a situation, they are more likely to be confused, foggy, or uncertain, rather than cool,
confident, or comprehending. In short, real people-as
distinguished from the fictional kind
and computers-get the arithmetic sum by adding one little number to another, and the picture by the relatively laborious and complementary processes of analysis and synthesis.
Or: instant learning is a myth, a film clichC and
a pulpers massage. Even Evelyn Wood, retailer
of Reading Dynamics, only promises to teach
us to read anywhere from 3 to 10 times
faster than we now read. But in many cases,
things are being published at a rate far in excess of three to ten times the rate of twenty or
thirty years ago. And what about that enormous backlog of pre-World War I1 (or preWorld War I) stuff we havent yet gotten
around to reading? If the young Thomas Wolfe
was dismayed by all the books in the stacks of
Widener that he would never have the time to
read, the rest of us with more modest goals still
have reason to be depressed by the amount of
reading we want to get done even in the field of
our own special interest. Will Evelyn Wood
teach us to read 12 or 20 times faster, or 20 to
30 times faster, than we now read? And if she
does, will we be able to keep up or catch up
anyway?
Some member of the U.S. Congress, whose
name escapes me (I must have been reading
too slowly), said recently that he had learned
to read between 300 and 400 pages (or was it
600 and 700?) an hour and that he
reniember[s] more. And that takes me back
Peasant Society: .4 Reader. JACK M. POTTER, to the gambler and Frank Merriwell. Is the litMAYN. DIAZ,and GEORGE
M. FOSTER,
eds. erature in our field or subfield accumulating at
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967.
ix, 453 pp., selected bibliography, 4 figures, such a rate that we shall some day soon have
to try to take it all in at a glance by riffling the
4 tables. n.p. (paper).
pages of a book before our eyes? My own feelReviewed by ROBERTA. MANNERS ing is that while this may be good enough for
Brarideis Universiv Congressmen, it wont do for anthropologists.
I dont know whether it was in some early
Most of us feel, like the late Thomas Wolfe,
Marx brothers film or in a film of another, a keen sense of frustration and despair at being
lesser, comedian like Bob Hope that I first saw unable to read more than we do. But the unthe by-now clichcd, scene in which the archety- happiness and anxiety it may cause us is not to
pal gambler riffles a new pack of cards next to be compared with the anxieties it provokes in
his ear and then coolly announces: There is most of our students. If the professionals find it

generously treated, but Polanyi, whose writings

are basic to ours, is referred to only superficially. It is also a pity that more development
economists did not contribute to this symposium volume. Economists who have worked in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America are themselves
thrashing out the questions of the relevance of
conventional economics to processes and problems of national economic development. (See
Martin and Knapp, editors, The Teaching of
Development Economics, 1967, especially the
essay by Seers, The Limitations of the Special
Case, which the symposium was convened to
react to.) Dudley Seers, Hla Myint, and Joan
Robinson in England, and Irma Adelman, W.
Arthur Lewis, Everett Hagen, and Joseph Berliner in the U.S. have interesting things to say
on the relevance of economics to primitive and
peasant economies.
The reasons why it is difficult to create a
theoretical framework in economic anthropology are becoming clear. ( 1 ) The scope of the
subject is extremely wide and involves the consideration of the structure and performance of
thousands of primitive and peasant economies
under traditional and modernizing conditions in
Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and the
Middle East. ( 2 ) There are two opposed ways
of viewing the subject and the social reality
with which it deals. Firths view that economic
anthropology is, among other things, about individual behavior and motivation. Scarcity, in
the economists sense, and the individual pursuit
of material gain are universal conditions that induce economizing behavior i n all societies. These
combine to make economic theory applicable to
primitive and peasant economies and to justify
the conclusion that the economies anthropologists study are different from capitalism only in
degree, not in kind. Polanyis position differs at
each point. (3) Semantic and conceptual misunderstandings prevail: e.g., ( a ) the meaning
and relevance of scarcity, choice, economizing, and maximizing; and (b) the meanin: attached to applying cconomic theory to
primitive and peasant economies.