Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7xsfk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T19:46:00.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Structural Substantivism’: A Critical Review of Marshall Sahlins’ Stone Age Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Scott Cook
Scott Cook
Affiliation:
The University of Connecticut
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Stone Age Economics is the most important book in the field of economic anthropology produced by an American cultural anthropologist since M. J. Herskovits published The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples in 1940. Its theoretical and analytical superiority to that earlier book should cheer those of us who feel depressed because of the slow and tortuous course of progress in this sub-field of anthropological inquiry. While Sahlins’ book is original and provocative, however, it is not likely to revolutionize thinking in the field as much as the recent work by Godelier (1967). Even though it lacks the theoretical scope and scholarly judiciousness of the latter work, it should nevertheless become a minor classic in the literature dealing with ‘primitive’ (or tribal) economic life.

Type
Review Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , June 1974 , pp. 355 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Belshaw, Cyril S. (1965), Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Bohannan, Paul and Dalton, George (1962) ‘Introduction’ to Markets in Africa, Bohan-nan, and Dalton, , eds., Evanston, 111.: Northwestern.Google Scholar
Boserup, Ester (1965) The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. Chicago/New York: Aldine-Atherton.Google Scholar
Bucher, Carl (1901) Industrial Evolution. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Chayanov, A. V. (1966) The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, III.: Irwin. Originally published 1925.Google Scholar
Cook, Scott (1966) ‘The Obsolete ‘Anti-Market’ Mentality: A Critique of the Substantive Approach to Economic Anthropology’. American Anthropologist, 68:323–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Scott (1969) ‘The “Anti-Market” Mentality Re-examined: A Further Critique of the Substantive Approach to Economic Anthropology’. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 25:378–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Scott (1970) ‘Price and Output Variability in a Peasant-Artisan Stoneworking Industry in Oaxaca, Mexico: An Analytical Essay in Economic Anthropology’. American Anthropologist, 72:776–801.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Scott (1973a) ‘Production, Ecology and Economic Anthropology: Notes Toward an Integrated Frame of Reference’. Social Science Information, XII, 1:25–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Scott (1973b) ‘Economic Anthropology: Problems in Theory, Method, and Analysis’. Chapter 18 in Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. Honigman, John J.. Chicago: Random House.Google Scholar
George, Dalton (1969) “Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology’. Current Anthropology, 10:63–102.Google Scholar
Edel, Matthew (1969) ‘Economic Analysis in an Anthropological Setting: Some Methodological Considerations’. American Anthropologist, 71:421–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forde, Daryll (with Mary Douglas) (1960) ‘Primitive Economies’. In Man, Culture and Society, ed. Shapiro, Harry J., pp. 330–44, New York: Oxford.Google Scholar
Galeski, Boguslaw (1972) Basic Concepts of Rural Sociology. Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Godelier, Maurice (1967) Racionalidad e Irracionalidad en la Economia. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Originally published in French in 1966.Google Scholar
Godelier, Maurice (1971) ‘Salt Currency and the Circulation of Commodities Among the Baruya of New Guinea’. In Studies in Economic Anthropology, ed. Dalton, G., pp. 52–73. Anthropological Studies, no. 7. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Gras, N. S. B. (1927) ‘Anthropology and Economies’. In The Social Sciences and Their Interrelations, ed. Ogburn, W. F. and Goldenweiser, A. A., pp. 10–23. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Harris, Marvin (1968) The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York: Crowell.Google Scholar
Herskovits, M. J. (1940) The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Herskovits, M. J. (1952) Economic Anthropology. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Kaplan, David (1968) ‘The Formal-Substantive Controversy in Economic Anthropology: Reflections on Its Wider Implications.’ Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 24:228–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeClair, E. E. Jr, (1969) Comments on Dalton's Review Article. Current Anthropology, 10:86.Google Scholar
LeClair E. E. Jr, ., and Harold K., Schneider eds. (1968) Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Richard, Lee and DeVore, Irven, eds. (1968) Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl (1930) Capital. Vol. I. New York: Dutton.Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel (1954) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Society, trans. Cunnison, Ian. London: Cohen and West.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney (1967) ‘Pratik: Haitian Personal Economic Relationships’. In Peasant Society: a Reader, ed. Potter J. M., et al., pp. 98–109. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Nash, Manning (1969) Comments on Dalton's Review Article. Current Anthropology, 10:87–8.Google Scholar
Neale, Walter (1973) ‘Primitive Affluence’. Science, Vol. 179:372–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, Karl (1968) ‘The Economy as Instituted Process’. In Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi, ed. Dalton, George, pp. 139–74. New York: Doubleday-Anchor.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karlet al., eds. (1957) Trade and Market in the Early Empires. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. (1969) ‘Economic Anthropology and Anthropological Economies’. Social Science Information, 8:13–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salisbury, Richard F. (1968) ‘Anthropology and Economies’. In Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis, ed. LeClair, E. E. and Schneider, H. K. pp. 477–85. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Schneider, Harold K. (1970) The Wahi Wanyaturu: Economics in an African Society. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 48. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation.Google Scholar
Terray, Emmanuel (1972) Marxism and ‘Primitive’ Societies. New York and London: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Thurnwald, Richard (1932) Economics in Primitive Communities. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Udy, Stanley H. Jr, (1959) Organization of Work: A Comparative Analysis of Production Among NonindustrialPeoples. New Haven: HRAF Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric R. (1959) ‘Specific aspects of plantation systems in the New World: Community sub-cultures and social class’. In Plantation Systems of the New World, Social Science Monographs VII. Washington, D.C.: Pan-American Union.Google Scholar