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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
From an inquiry into three distinct interpretations of African economic data, we have suggested that homo africanus is oeconomicus rather than antiquus. First, while substantivists (traditionalists) and modernists (developmental economists) appropriately subordinated homo africanus' economic behavior to social considerations, they mistakenly de-emphasized the role of markets, especially in economies where market contacts were peripheral. Consequently (since their model for comparative economic behavior was that of the traditional selfregulating market economy), they concluded that homo africanus antiquus est. Second, believing that when stripped of their cultural impedimenta, all economies conformed to the same laws, formalists 45 Both Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray have criticized him for argued that homo africanus oeconomicus est. Accordingly, they recommended modifications and applications of concepts such as rationalization, maximization, the scarcity postulate, surpluses, input, output levels, pricing and profits, and quantification in general.
Third, we examined the models of the French structuralist neo-Marxists who, by positing homo africanus within select categories of materialist history, have maintained that structurally, materially and existentially, he was oeconomicus. Beginning with an inquiry into modes of production, they averred that he produced, consumed and circulated material goods by virtue of his existence within a social structure and superstructure which was materially determined. Accordingly, they revealed his unique relationship to the market. Moreover, structuralist neo-Marxists have transformed the substantivist theory of social "embeddedness" (or the subordination of an economy to social constraints which act as cultural obstacles to change) into a social "realization" or reflection of change within production modes, whose inner structure is transformed according to the dialectic. Their model, therefore, not only has more depth and dynamism than that of the substantivists, but its structural linkages are causally related.
1 We are referring to interpretations which, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, have focused on the nature of the economic process within so-called “primitive” societies (the antiquus argument), and the extent to which conventional economic theory can be applied in the study of them (the oeconomicus argument). The present interpretations are related to an earlier controversy about the “true nature” of the economies of antiquity, which began to emerge from as early as 1864–67, when Rodbertus, Karl’ Economic Life in Classical Antiquity appeared.Google Scholar In his “modern” analysis, Rodbertus argued that a monetarized economy required a different social structure from that of an economy in kind. In 1941, Rostovtzeff's, MichaelSocial and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 1941),Google Scholar another book in the “modern” genre, reinforced the earlier view by suggesting that “the difference between the economic life of this [Hellenistic] period and that of the modern world is only quantitative not qualitative” (p. 335). Before RostovtzefFs book, however, the issue had already been joined by the publication of Bücher's, KarlDie Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft (Tubingen: Verlag der H. Lauppschen, 1893),Google Scholar which linked economic life in the ancient world to primitive (antiquus) economies. Since then, the controversy has considered the antiquus arguments of Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1922),Google Scholar and Thurnwald, Richard, Economics in Primitive Communities (Oxford University Press, 1932)Google Scholar on the one hand; and the oeconomicus analyses of Firth and Herskovits etc., on the other hand. During the 1960s, the debate continued mainly between George Dalton, one of the main proponents of the antiquus tradition, and his opponents in Current Anthropology and the American Anthropologist. For a review of the main issues see Firth, Raymond, ed., Themes in Economic Anthropology (London: Tavistock, 1967);Google ScholarLeClaire, Edward E. and Schneider, Harold K., eds., Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968);Google Scholar and throughout this article. Recently, voices of the French structuralist, neo-Marxist economic anthropologists have been added to the debate. See for example, Godelier, Maurice, Rationalité et Irrationalité en Economie (Paris: François Maspero, 1966);Google ScholarHorizon, , Trajets Marxistes en Anthropologie (Paris: François Maspero, 1973);Google Scholar and Claude, Meillassoux, “Essai d'Interprétation de Phénomène Economique dans les Sociétés Traditionnelles d'Auto-Subsistance,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, no. 4 (12 1960), 38–67, and throughout this article.Google Scholar
2 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1940);Google ScholarPubMed and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., “The Nuer of the Southern Sudan,” in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., eds., African Political Systems (London: International African Institute, 1940), pp. 272–96.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., pp. 275–277, 296. For a fuller treatment of this question, see pp. 278–88.
4 Ibid., p. 278. Emphasis is mine.
5 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer p. 16.Google Scholar
6 Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., eds., African Political Systems, pp. 273–74.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., pp. 279, 294.
8 For a review of some of the substantivist literature, see Dalton, George, “Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology,” Current Anthropology, 10, no. 1 (02 1969), 63–80,CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in Dalton, George, ed., Economic Development and Social Change (New York: The Natural History Press, 1971), pp. 178–227;Google Scholar"Economic Theory and Primitive Society,” American Anthropologist, 63, no. 1 (02 1961), 1–25;CrossRefGoogle Scholar"Traditional Production in Primitive African Economies,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 76 (1962), 360–78;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDalton, George, ed., Tribal and Peasant Economies: Readings in Economic Anthropology (New York: Natural History Press, 1967);Google Scholar“Traditional Economic Systems,” in Paden, John and Soja, Edward, eds., The African Experience (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), pp. 61–79;Google Scholar"Primitive Money,” American Anthropologist, 63 (1961), 44–64.Google ScholarSee also Bohannan, Paul and Dalton, George, eds., Markets in Africa (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1962);Google ScholarFusfield, Daniel B., “Economic Theory Misplaced: Livelihood In Primitive Society,” in Polanyi, Karl, Arensberg, Conrad M., and Pearson, Harry W., eds., Trade and Markets in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory (New York: The Free Press, 1957), pp. 348–56;Google Scholar Walter C. Neale, “The Market in Theory and History," Ibid., pp. 243–70; Bohannan, Paul, “The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy,” The Journal of Economic History, 19 (1959), 491–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 We refer here to the literature which contributed to “the development decade” of the 1960s. Of those which have been consulted, we include Rivkin, Arnold, Africa and the West: Elements of Free-World Policy (New York: Praeger, 1962);Google ScholarRostow, Walt W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960);Google ScholarKamarck, Andrew M., The Economics of African Development (New York: Praeger, 1967).Google Scholar For a critique of Rostow's theory see Horowitz, Irving Louis, Three Worlds of Development: The Theory and Practice of International Stratification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966); pp. 347–401.Google Scholar
10 For the key to Polanyi's early thought see Polanyi, Karl, Origins of Our Times: The Great Transformation (London, 1945).Google Scholar His later works include Polanyi, Karl, Arensberg, C. M., and Pearson, H. W., Trade and Markets in the Early Empires;Google Scholar Karl Polanyi in collaboration with Rotstein, Abraham, Dahomey and the Slave Trade: An Analysis of an Archaic Economy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966);Google ScholarDalton, George, ed., Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies; Essays of Karl Polanyi (New York: Doubleday, 1968).Google Scholar For a good discussion of Polanyi's thought see Humphrey's, S. C. “History, Economics, and Anthropology: The Work of Karl Polanyi,” History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, 8, no. 2 (1969), 165–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 The measure of Polanyi's contribution can be estimated by the extent to which his work has influenced non-substantivists: structural neo-Marxists such as Meillassoux, Claude, “Essai d'Interprétation du Phénomène Economique dans les Sociétés Traditionnelles,” pp. 38–67;Google ScholarThe Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971);Google ScholarAnthropologie Economique des Gouro de Cote d'lvoire (Paris: Mouton, 1964);Google ScholarGodelier, Maurice, Rationalite et Irrationalite, especially pp. 232–93,Google Scholar and "Objet et Methode de I'Anthropologie Economique,” L'Homme, 5 (1965), 32–91;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and formalists, or versions thereof, such as Belshaw, Cyril S., Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1965);Google ScholarNash, Manning, “Economic Anthropology,” Biennial Review of Anthropology (1965), 121–38;Google ScholarPrimitive and Peasant Economic Systems (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1966);Google ScholarFirth, Raymond and Yamey, B. S. eds., Capital, Saving, and Credit in Peasant Economies (Chicago: Aldine, 1964).Google Scholar
12 Coquery-Vidro vitch, Catherine, “De la Traite des Esclaves á l'Exportation de l'Huile de Palme et des Palmists au Dahomey: XIX Siècle,” in Meillassoux, Claude, ed. The Development of Indigenous Trade, pp. 107–23.13Google Scholar
13 See for example Winter, E. H., Bwamba Economy: The Development of a Primitive Subsistence Economy in Uganda, East African Studies, no. 5 (Kampala: East Africa Institute of Social Research, 1955);Google Scholar and Thomas, Jacqueline M.C., Les Ngbaka de la Lobaye (Paris: Mouton, 1963).Google Scholar
14 For an important discussion of the place of markets in pre-colonial African economies see Curtin, Philip D., Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), especially chap. 5.Google Scholar
15 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, “Reserches sur un Mode de Production African,” La Pensée, 144 (03–04, 1969), 68–70.Google Scholar
16 Hill, Polly, “Markets in Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 1, no. 4 (1963), 441–53, especially 447, 449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Tosh, John, “The Northern Interlacustrine Region,” in Gray, Richard and Birmingham, David, eds., Pre-Colonial African Trade (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 107–08.Google Scholar
18 Uzoigwe, Godfrey N., “Precolonial Markets in Bunyoro-Kitara,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14, no. 4 (09, 1972), 422–55, see especially, 448–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Sutherland-Harris, Nicola, “Trade and the Rozwi Mamba,"Google Scholar in Gray, and Birmingham, , Pre-Colonial African Trade, pp. 247, 258.Google Scholar
20 Perinbam, B. Marie, “Social Relations in the Trans-Saharan and Western Sudanese Trade: An Overview, “Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15, no. 4 (10, 1973), 416–36;CrossRefGoogle Scholar“The Role of the Dyulas in Western Sudanese History: Developers of Resources,” in Swartz, B. K. and Dunnett, R. E. (eds.), West African Dynamics; Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (The Hague: Mouton Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar
21 See for example, Bohannan, Paul and Dalton, George, Markets in Africa.Google Scholar For critical views of the value of this book see Hill, Polly, “Markets in Africa,” pp. 441–53;Google ScholarSchneider, Harold K., “A Model of African Indigenous Economy and Society,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 7, no. 1 (10, 1964), 44–45;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), pp. 52–53.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., p. 6.
23 For example, Polanyi's structure of non-market exchange, reciprocity and redistribution, was derived from Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific, and from Thurnwald's Economics in Primitive Communities. See Polanyi, , The Great Transformation, pp. 54et seq., and pp. 106–08.Google Scholar
24 See for example, Dalton, , “Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology,” pp. 185, 193, 195, 201;Google Scholar and Polanyi, et al. , “The Place of Economies in Societies,” in Trade and Markets, p. 241.Google Scholar
25 Dalton, George, Economic Systems and Society: Capitalism, Communism and the Third World (Kingsport, Tennessee: Kingsport Press, 1974), p. 197.Google Scholar
26 Polanyi, , “Our Obsolete Market Mentality,"Google Scholar in Dalton, , Primitive, Archaic and Modem Economies, p. 59.Google Scholar
27 According to George Dalton; “In subsistence (non-market) economies, the question of choice among real alternatives does not arise in such explicit fashion. A Trobriand Islander learns and follows the rules of economy in his society almost like an American learns and follows the rules of language in his. … The Trobriander is born into a yam growing economy. He does not ‘choose’ to plant yams rather than broccoli. The question does not arise in this form, but rather in the form of how much of each of very few conventional crops to plant or how to apportion a given work day to several tasks. “Dalton, , “Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology,” pp. 188–89.Google Scholar
Interestingly enough, economist Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), who was older than the substantivists, had similar comments about “the savage” who lived “under the dominion of custom and impulse; scarcely ever striking out new lines for themselves; never forecasting the distant future; fitful in spite of their servitude to custom, governed by the fancy of the moment.” Marshall, Alfred, Principles of Economics (8th ed.London, 1938), Appendix X A, pp. 723–24.Google Scholar
28 One of the earliest formalist studies is Jones, W. O., “Economic Man in Africa,” Food Research Institute Studies, I (1960), 107–34.Google Scholar One of the most recent, and to date the best treatment of the subject is Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa.Google Scholar Other studies include Verhaegen, Guy, “Les Paysan Africain, ‘Homme Traditionnel,’ ou ‘Homme Economique.’” Cahiers Economiques et Sociaux, 6 (1968), 100–27;Google ScholarFallers, L. A., “Are African Cultivators to be called Called ‘Peasants’?” Current Anthropology, 2, no. 2 (04, 1961), 108–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in Dalton, Gearge, ed., Economic Development and Social Change, pp. 169–77;Google ScholarHill, Polly, “A Plea for Indigenous Economics,” in Economic Development and Cultural Change (10 1966),Google Scholar slightly amended and published in her Studies of Rural Capitalism in West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 3–17;Google ScholarSchneider, Harold, “A Model of African Indigenous Economy and Society,” pp. 37–55.Google Scholar
29 Perinbam, B. Marie, “Trade and Politics on the Senegal and Upper Niger, 1854–1900,” unpub. dissertation (1969), pp. 101–16;Google Scholar and field work in Senegal and Mali, 1968, 1969.
30 In his study of Bunyoro-Kitara pre-colonial markets, Godfrey Uzoigwe has suggested a market model based on Skinner, G. William, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 24, no. 1 (1964), 2 (1965), 3 (1965).CrossRefGoogle ScholarSee Uzoigwe, , “Precolonial Markets,” pp. 437–41.Google Scholar
31 See footnote 1, and Meillassoux, Claude, “L'Economie des Echanges PreColoniaux en Pays Gouro,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 3 no. 2 (1963), 551–76;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMeillassoux, , Anthropologie Economique des Gouro de Côtes d'lvoire;Google Scholar"Recherche d'un Niveau de Détermination dans la Société Cynégétique,” L'Homme et la Societe, 6 (1967), 95–105,CrossRefGoogle Scholar in Alexandra, Pierre, ed., French Perspectives in African Studies (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 187–203;Google Scholar"From Reproduction to Production,” Economy and Society, 1, no. 1 (02 1972), 93–105;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedBalibar, Etienne, “On the Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism,” in Althusser, Louis and Balibar, Etienne, eds., Reading Capital (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), chapter 2;Google ScholarTerray, Emmanuel, Marxism and ‘Primitive’ Societies, trans. Klopper, M. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).Google Scholar
32 Marx, Karl, Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, Nicolaus, Martin, trans. (New York: Vintage Books, 1973).Google Scholar For an abridged version, see Marx, Karl, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, ed. and intro. by Hobsbawm, Eric J. (New York: International Publishers, 1965).Google Scholar
33 Godelier, Maurice, Horizon, Trajets Marxistes en Anthropologie, p. 18.Google Scholar See also chap. 1 on “Anthropologie et Economie"; and “Qu-est-ce que Définir une ‘Formation Economique et Sociale’: ‘Exemple des Incas,” La Pensée, no. 159 (10 1971), 99–106.Google Scholar
34 Godelier, Maurice, Horizon, Trajets Marxistes en Anthropologie, p. 18.Google Scholar
35 Dalton, , “Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology,” p. 188.Google Scholar
36 Marx, , Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, pp. 81, 87.Google Scholar
37 See footnote 33.
38 Terray, Emmanual, “Commerce Précolonial et Organization,” pp. 145–52.Google Scholar
39 Meillassoux, , L' Anthropologie Economique, pp. 38, 89, 95–6, 253.Google Scholar
40 Ibid., pp. 98–99, 123, 236–39. Fora similar conclusion which he reached about the Mbuti hunters of the equatorial Congo see “Recherche d'un Niveau de Détermination,” p. 100.Google Scholar
41 The klala consists of teams of men who agree to work together for the duration of the agricultural cycle.
42 Meillassoux, , L'Anthropologie Economique, pp. 128, 138–40, 159, 177, 182–83.Google Scholar
43 Ibid., pp. 98, 124–25, 188–89, 193, 259. See also "Essai d'Interprétation du Phénomène Economique,” pp. 38–87;Google Scholar"L'Economie des Exchanges Pré-Coloniaux en Pays Gouro,” pp. 551–76;Google Scholar “The Guro-Peripheral Markets Between the Forest and the Sudan,” Bohannan, and Dalton, , Markets in Africa, pp. 67–92.Google Scholar
44 Meillassoux, , L'Anthropologie Economique, p. 276.Google Scholar
45 Both Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray have criticized him for his narrow interpretation of “modes of production,” which he defines as a single mode, more akin to forms of labor, rather than to an entire social structure, superstructure, and the material base. Terray particularly argues that his non-Marxist, restricted use of the term (Meillassoux excludes the juridico-political and ideological superstructure) makes the study of social and ideological relations and varieties, as well as a material-historical inquiry into lineage-based and segmentary societies, impossible. Terray also is critical of Meillassoux's apparent reluctance to admit to a potential for pre-market exploitation of producers by controllers. He cites Georges Dupré's and Pierre-Philippe Rey's unpublished material on exchanges in Congo-Brazzaville to demonstrate that “prestige-giving goods amount to a diversion of the product by the elders, who make special use of it to reinforce the dependence of the direct producers,” although he hesitates to apply class conflict appellations. Finally, Coquery-Vidrovitch, in her study of production modes, is critical of the narrow scope of his inquiry: that of subsistence economies to the partial neglect of the organization of production and of the social hierarchy.