Economic anthropology is a scholarly field that attempts to explain human economic behavior(production,distribution,consumption and exchange) in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope.Economic anthropology, broadly defined, is the study of material processes in their social relations.It is a sub-discipline with blurred boundaries as it cross-cuts theoretical paradigms and other sub-fields within anthropology.
As a field of study it is as old as anthropological fieldwork itself.Economic anthropology has gained its identity from its studies of hunter-gather societies, and the following transitions to subsistence production, cash economies,and the market. In the past ten years, the field witnessed also the incursion of new methods, such as field experiments.
According to Dalton, economic anthropology comprises different sets of topics, such as the structure and performance of traditional pre-colonial, preindustrial, colonial, and postcolonial tribal and peasant economies. Bronislaw Malinowski's famous Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), challenged the neo-classical assumptions of self-interested and rational motives by illustrating the social and symbolic nature of the Kula exchange system of the Trobriand Islanders. Other early anthropologists focused on the analysis of economic systems, among them Firth (1939), Goodfellow (1939), and Herskovitz (1940). Unlike the approach of Malinowski, these anthropologists employed aspects of neo-classical economics, portraying economic decisions as individual actions based on individual motivation.
Post-World War II, Economic Anthropology was highly influenced by the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi. Polanyi drew on anthropological studies to argue that true market exchange was limited to a restricted number of western, industrial societies. Applying formal economic theory (Formalism) to non-industrial societies was mistaken, he argued. In non-industrial societies, exchange was "embedded" in such non-market institutions as kinship, religion, and politics (an idea he borrowed from Mauss). He labelled this approach Substantivism. The Formalist vs Substantivist debate was highly influential and defined an era.
As globalization became a reality, and the division between market and non-market economies (or between "the west and the rest") became untenable, anthropologists began to look at the relationship between a variety of types of exchange within market societies. Neo-substantivists examine the ways in which so-called pure market exchange in market societies fails to fit market ideology. Economic Anthropologists have abandoned the primitivist niche they were relegated to by economists. They now study the operations of corporations, banks, and the global financial system from an anthropological perspective.
Economic anthropology is not only a way for us to look at past and modern less "civilized" cultures, but a way to analyze "modern" economies. It analyzes the very things that make up an economy, people.
Post-World War II, Economic Anthropology was highly influenced by the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi. Polanyi drew on anthropological studies to argue that true market exchange was limited to a restricted number of western, industrial societies. Applying formal economic theory (Formalism) to non-industrial societies was mistaken, he argued. In non-industrial societies, exchange was "embedded" in such non-market institutions as kinship, religion, and politics (an idea he borrowed from Mauss). He labelled this approach Substantivism. The Formalist vs Substantivist debate was highly influential and defined an era.
As globalization became a reality, and the division between market and non-market economies (or between "the west and the rest") became untenable, anthropologists began to look at the relationship between a variety of types of exchange within market societies. Neo-substantivists examine the ways in which so-called pure market exchange in market societies fails to fit market ideology. Economic Anthropologists have abandoned the primitivist niche they were relegated to by economists. They now study the operations of corporations, banks, and the global financial system from an anthropological perspective.
Economic anthropology is not only a way for us to look at past and modern less "civilized" cultures, but a way to analyze "modern" economies. It analyzes the very things that make up an economy, people.
Areas to be covered for civil services exam :
-Meaning,scope and relevance of economic anthropology;
-Formalist and Substantivist debate;
-Principles governing production, distribution and exchange (reciprocity, redistribution and market), in communities, subsisting on hunting and gathering,fishing,swiddening,pastoralism,horticulture,and agriculture;
-globalization and indigenous economic systems.
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