Unit 6: Economic Systems

Humans around the world have historically developed strategies and processes for
providing themselves with material goods, including food, shelter, clothing, and other
desired goods. The examination of these economic systems have provided
anthropologists with a wealth of insight into human life, demonstrating how social
relations, environmental factors, global flows, and local and global systems of power
and inequality come together with needs influenced by both biology and culture. In
this unit, we will investigate the varieties of ways in which three primary economic
phases – production, distribution or exchange, and consumption – can be organized,
and the different approaches anthropologists have taken to the study of these phases.
We will pay particular attention to the ways in which economic processes such as
reciprocity, gift giving, and capitalist modes of production and exchange are linked to
social identities and statuses as well as broader systems of power, inequality, and
prestige, thus highlighting the close relationship between the anthropological study of
the economy and questions of power and social organization, which we will address
more thoroughly in Unit 7.

In this unit, we will address five main topics:

1. Economic Anthropology: An Introduction

2. Production and Subsistence Strategies

3. Distribution, the Gift, and the Trobriand Islands

4. Karl Marx on Capitalism: Production, Exchange, and Exploitation

5. Consumption and the Original Affluent Society

Learning Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Define and explain the major types of subsistence strategies and modes of
distribution identified by anthropologists

2. Explain anthropological accounts of the role played by gifts and reciprocity in

shaping social relationships and systems of power and prestige.
3. Apply anthropological concepts of the gift and reciprocity to the Trobriand Kula
Ring.

4. Identify and explain core approaches within Marxist anthropology on production

and exchange and how these contribute to inequality, especially under capitalism.

5. Define and explain three different approaches developed within anthropology to

account for societies’ practices of consumption.

Assigned Reading and Viewing

Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods, Chapter 7.

Excerpt from Tales from the Jungle: Malinowski (BBC; 2006; Part 4 of
6) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df9BlSbYiKY

Lapon, Gary. 2011. “What Do We Mean by

Exploitation?” https://socialistworker.org/2011/09/28/what-do-we-mean-exploitation

How to Proceed
1. Read Chapter 7 of Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods.

2. Read Parts I through III of the instructional notes, including watching the excerpt
from the BBC documentary on Malinowski and completing the practice exercises.

3. Read Gary Lapon’s brief analysis of Karl Marx, available

at https://socialistworker.org/2011/09/28/what-do-we-mean-exploitation

4. Read Parts IV and V of the instructional notes.

5. Complete the review questions.

Instructional Content
Part I: Economic Anthropology: An Introduction

Part II: Production and Subsistence Strategies

2.1 Food Collectors: Small-Scale and Complex

2.2 Food Producers: Extensive, Intensive, and Mechanized Industrial Agriculture

Part III: Distribution, the Gift, and the Trobriand Islands

3.1 Marcel Mauss and the Gift

Exercise 1: Gifts, Obligation and Power

3.2 Reciprocity

Exercise 2: Reciprocity and the Trobriand Kula Ring

3.3 Bronislaw Malinowski and the Trobriand Kula Ring

3.4 Annette Weiner and “Women’s Wealth” in the Trobriand Islands

3.5 Redistribution

3.6 Market Exchange

Part IV. Karl Marx on Capitalism: Production, Exchange, and Exploitation

4.1 Labour

4.2 Modes, Means, and Relations of Production

4.3 Commodities and Value

4.4 Capitalism and Exploitation

Part V. Consumption and the Original Affluent Society

5.1 The Internal Explanation of Consumption

5.2 Cultural Ecology or the External Explanation of Consumption

5.3 The Cultural Construction of Need

5.4 The Ju/’hoansi or the Original Affluent Society

Part I: Economic Anthropology: An Introduction

Over the years, the study of the economy has taken up such an important place within
cultural anthropology that it can be considered as its own specialization within the
discipline. Following Richard Wilk, your textbook defines economic
anthropology as “the part of the discipline that debates issues of human nature that
relate directly to the decisions of daily life and making a living” (qtd. in Lavenda,
Schultz, and Dods 2015: 165). The economy, in turn, can be defined as “the culturally
specific processes used by members of a society to provide themselves with material
resources” (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 165).

This reference to cultural specificity, unsurprisingly, is important, and part of what

makes anthropological approaches to the study of the economy different from that
adopted by other disciplines. Economic anthropology has often been at odds with
classic approaches in economics, especially that of neoclassical economic theory. As
your textbook notes, neoclassical economic theorists such as Adam Smith assumed
that individuals are inherently rational and self-interested. By reason, here, this model
means that individuals are oriented towards maximizing utility and minimizing costs.
And by self-interested, this model means that individuals are primarily concerned with
their own wellbeing and are indifferent to the welfare of others. To put this more
simply, “economic man,” as this vision of human individuals is often termed, is out to
satisfy as many of his or her personal goals and desires at as low a cost as possible.
Over the years, some anthropologists have adopted a version of this theory. But from
the earliest beginnings of the discipline, most anthropologists found that the behaviour
of individuals in many societies could not be accounted for by this theory. Bronislaw
Malinowski raised some of the first objections from within anthropology to
neoclassical theories of the “economic man.” We have already mentioned
Malinowski’s work in several of the units of this course. As you’ll recall, he
conducted fieldwork among the Trobriand Islanders, off the East Coast of New
Guinea, around the time of World War I and is widely considered the person who
introduced long-term fieldwork and participant observation to the discipline. His
observations of the economic practices of Trobriand Islanders demonstrated that the
pursuit of one’s own self-interest at minimal cost and effort could not account for
human economic practices. He notes:

Another notion which must be exploded, once and for ever, is that of the Primitive
Economic Man of some current economic textbooks . . . prompted in all his actions by
a rationalistic conception of self-interest, and achieving his aims directly and with the
minimum of effort. Even one well established instance should show how preposterous
is this assumption. The . . . Trobriander furnishes us with such an instance,
contradicting this fallacious theory. In the first place, as we have seen, work is not
carried out on the principle of the least effort. On the contrary, much time and energy
is spent on wholly unnecessary effort, that is, from a utilitarian point of view
(Malinowski 1922: 60).

Malinowski discusses the labour expended by men in their yam gardens as one
example of an economic practice that cannot be fit into neoclassical economic
theories. Men worked long and hard hours in their yam gardens, including working to
make it tidy and aesthetically pleasing in ways that didn’t, strictly speaking, seem
entirely necessary for growing the yams themselves. Indeed, part of the whole point of
gardening was to demonstrate just how much energy and effort a man could put into
it. Moreover, the results of all this hard work didn’t even directly benefit the men
themselves. Rather, the yams the gardeners harvested went to feed their sisters and
their sisters’ families. The man and his immediate family were in turn fed by the
brothers of his wife. Clearly, the model of the “economic man” working to expend as
little effort and cost as possible in order to meet his or her personal interests cannot
account for this practice.

Anthropologists, then, have instead been interested in examining the broad diversity
of ways in which economic practices have historically been organized around the
world and the meanings that such practices take on within specific social and
historical contexts. Anthropological approaches to the study of the economy are also
typically holistic. Anthropologists have historically been interested in studying not
only how different social groups meet their biologically and culturally determined
needs, but also how these efforts are both shaped by and constitutive of social
relations, and the environment. At the same time, reflecting the challenges to the
concept of holism discussed in Unit I, contemporary work in economic anthropology
typically emphasizes how economic processes most often exceed the boundaries of
any particular social group or culture, linking different social groups and inserting
them into global systems of power and inequality from colonialism to capitalism.

Economic processes can be divided into three phases: production, distribution or

exchange, and consumption. As your textbook notes, anthropologists have differed in
their emphasis on the relative importance of each one of these phases to the overall
economic system of particular societies. In many societies, however, each phase is
closely interlinked to the other, such that changes in one phase of economic activity
may affect another and in practice it can be difficult to separate them from one
another. In what follows, we will examine some of the key concepts and approaches
that have developed over the years in economic anthropology, sorting them roughly
into approaches in the discipline that have focused on each of these phases. We will
begin with arguments about subsistence strategies as one way in which
anthropologists have attempted to theorize production in different societies, move
through anthropological approaches to question of distribution, and end with theories
of consumption. In Part IV of this unit, we will examine Karl Marx’s theories of
capitalism, noting how a Marxist approach relates questions of exchange to
production.

Part II: Production and Subsistence Strategies

Your textbook discusses two general classification systems that anthropologists have
developed in order to categorize and analyze different systems of production, as well
as related strategies of exchange and consumption: subsistence strategies and modes
of production. Your textbook defines production as “the transformation of nature’s
raw materials into a form suitable for human use” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015:
167). Production, as noted earlier, is often closely linked to and dependent on systems
of distribution and consumption. The concept of modes of production is derived from
the theories of Karl Marx and will be discussed in Part IV of these unit notes along
with Marx’s arguments about how exchange works under capitalism.

Your textbook defines subsistence strategies as “the patterns of production,

distribution, and consumption that members of a society use to meet their basic
material survival needs” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 165). The
anthropological study of subsistence focuses on the basic tools, techniques, and
organizational arrangements that people use to obtain food and other material
resources from their natural surroundings. Anthropologists have developed a
categorization of subsistence strategies that has proved productive. The main division
within subsistence strategies is that between food collectors and food producers,
although, as your textbook notes, these practices may in fact overlap in a given society
or social group.

2.1 Food Collectors

Food collectors, also sometimes referred to as foragers or hunters and gatherers,

can be defined as “people who gather wild plant materials, fish, and/or hunt for food”
(Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 166). Food collection is the oldest human
subsistence system. In most regions today, however, this way of life has been replaced
by more intensive food procurement systems based on agricultural production.
Whereas foraging once more than adequately met the needs of many human societies,
in modern times, foragers have generally been pushed into unfavourable environments
not representative of their former habitats. They also conduct trade and maintain other
relationships with farmers and herders and, in some circumstances, with industrialized
societies. Your textbook notes that the specific strategies used by food collectors to
satisfy their material needs depends on how rich the environment in which they live is
in natural resources. Small-scale food collectors or foragers, such as the Ju/’hoansi
of southern Africa, lived in environments where resources are often patchy and, as a
result, tend to relocate often in search of food. We will discuss the Ju/’hoansi and
anthropological studies of this social group in greater detail in Part V of these unit
notes. Complex food collectors or foragers, such as the Native peoples of the
northwest coast of North America, lived in environments where the resources were
more plentiful and, as a result, tended to build permanent settlements.

2.2 Food Producers

While food producers may also incorporate practices of food collection into their
subsistence strategies, they can be distinguished from the previous category because
they also depend on the domestication of animals and/or plants in order to meet their
human needs (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 166). The category of food
production can be further subdivided into four categories. Herders, also sometimes
referred to as pastoralists in the anthropological literature, depend on domesticated
animals for food and other economic resources. Except for modern forms of stock
raising practised in industrialized countries, most pastoral systems are nomadic and
rely upon the organized movement of herds to naturally occurring pasture and water
over open range land. Herders may base their subsistence on one or more species that
have been amenable to human control and provide sufficient amounts of milk and
meat to constitute a major dietary staple. Cattle-based systems are perhaps the most
widespread and are especially important in the drier regions of the tropical grasslands
that surround the great Sahara and Kalahari deserts and the smaller arid expanses of
East Africa. As your textbook notes, nomadic herders generally live alongside
societies that depend on forms of sedentary agriculture. This can result in a variety of
mutually beneficial exchange relationships between nomadic herders and sedentary
farmers, but can also lead to conflicts over land ownership and resource management.

Farming can be divided into three different categories, according to the types of
technologies used. In extensive agriculture, as your textbook notes, farmers burn
brush in uncultivated lands and then grow crops in the ash-enriched soil. These
techniques eventually exhaust the soil, requiring farmers to cultivate new plots in
order to grow their crops. In intensive agriculture, farmers use tools such as crop
rotation, irrigation, and fertilizer, in order to cultivate the same piece of land over a
longer period of time. Finally, in mechanized industrial agriculture, farming
depends on industrial methods of production. Mechanized industrial agriculture can
characterize both the ways in which both crops and animals are cultivated.

Part II: Distribution, the Gift, and the Trobriand Islands

A typology of societies according to subsistence strategies tends to focus on
production as the predominant category of economic analysis, or, more specifically,
on the tools and techniques used by different societies in order to satisfy their material
needs in relation to the environments in which they live. Some of the richest work
within economic anthropology, however, has focused on the modes of distribution or
exchange used by different societies. Distribution, as your textbook notes, can be
thought of as the various methods used to allocate goods and services within a given
social context (Lavenda, Schultz and Dods 2015: 167).

As we will see, one of the key contributions of anthropological work on distribution

or exchange has been to demonstrate how the methods that a society uses in order to
distribute goods and services both reflects the organization of social relations within
that society and are constitutive of or help to create those social relations. As
Marshall Sahlins puts it, “[a] specific social relation may constrain a given movement
of goods, but a specific transaction – ‘by the same token’ – suggests a particular social
relation.” In a statement that references Marcel Mauss’s theory of the gift (discussed
below), he concludes, “[i]f friends make gifts, gifts make friends” (1974: 186). One of
our goals in this section of this unit will be to unpack this claim about how gift giving
and other forms of exchange and distribution shape social relations. Distribution has
typically been divided by anthropologists into three dominant modes: reciprocity,
redistribution, and market exchange. To get at the ways in which modes of
distribution can imply particular types of social relations, we’ll begin with Marcel
Mauss’s classic theory of the gift.

3.1 Marcel Mauss and the Gift

Marcel Mauss was a highly influential French scholar whose theories became
important to both anthropologists and sociologists and have been productively
contested, revised, and elaborated on over the years. One of his major contributions to
anthropology was his theory of the gift. In modern Western societies, we typically
assume that gifts should be presented freely. That is, they are not supposed to have
“strings” attached to them, by which we mean that receiving a gift from someone
should come without obligation and debt on the part of the receiver. Drawing on
fieldwork conducted by anthropologists such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss
countered such assumptions. In his view, there was no such thing as a “free gift.”
Rather, he argued, gifts produce ties of obligation and debt. Practices of gift giving are
both self-interested and oriented towards others. They can work to promote relatively
egalitarian social systems, but they can also be used to reinforce systems of power and
prestige. Anthropologists have argued that gift giving will tend to establish egalitarian
relationships when individuals give and receive gifts of relatively equal value. By
contrast, gift giving may tend to establish unequal relationships when the relative
value of the goods exchanged between individuals are unequal or if one person gives
gifts while another receives them. Giving more gifts or giving gifts of higher value
may establish the giver’s relative power or prestige over the receiver.

As your textbook notes, for Mauss, the personal relations of obligation implied by gift
giving were starkly distinct from the impersonal nature of commodity or market
exchanges that predominated in capitalist societies. Contemporary anthropological
work has questioned this assumption of a radical divide between capitalist and non-
capitalist societies, showing how both market exchange and practices of gift giving
can often be at work within capitalist societies as well. Mauss’s arguments about gifts
and power, for instance, have been influential in helping anthropologists to rethink the
dynamics of charity, provoking them to consider how such practices and ideas about
charitable donations can in some cases work to reinforce or create unequal
relationships between those who give and those who receive.

Exercise 1: Gifts, Obligation, and Power

As noted above, while Mauss argued that gift giving was the predominant
mode of exchange in non-capitalist societies, anthropologists today argue
that it is often an important form of exchange in capitalist societies as
well. Take a moment to consider the role of gift giving in your own social
context. What examples of gift giving can you think of? What kinds of
expectations are there for return in these practices of gift giving? In what
ways do these exchanges of gift seem to imply social relations of
obligation and are these equal or unequal?

3.2 Reciprocity

Mauss’s argument that gift giving worked to establish relations of debt and obligation
played an influential role in later anthropological debates about reciprocity. Marshall
Sahlins argues that practices of reciprocity can be classified along a continuum, in
which three key forms can be located: generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity.

Generalized reciprocity refers to the exchange of goods and services without

expectation of an immediate return. Generalized reciprocity may include forms of
exchange in which there is no expectation of a return to forms of reciprocity in which
there is a more diffuse and implicit expectation that the exchanges will, most likely,
eventually balance out. The forms of exchange that take place between parents and
children in many societies may often fall into this category. Parents often provide their
children with crucial goods, ranging from food, shelter, and clothing to other gifts.
There may be an implicit assumption that children will eventually reciprocate, for
instance, by caring for their parents as they age. But in many societies, it may be
considered unseemly to suggest that this return is expected or to make the provision of
goods dependent on a return of a specified quantity within a specified amount of time.
Furthermore, in perfect generalized reciprocity, failure to reciprocate does not result
in the giver ceasing to give.

Balanced reciprocity refers to the exchange of goods of equivalent value within a set
time period. Sahlins defines perfectly balanced reciprocity as “the simultaneous
exchange of the same types of goods at the same time” (1974: 194). Balanced
reciprocity can also include transactions in which a return of equivalent value is
provided with some degree of delay, but the expectation of a return within a
reasonable elapse of time is much stronger than in generalized reciprocity.
Generalized and balanced reciprocity, argues Sahlins, also involve different sorts of
social relationships between the parties involved in the exchange. Generalized forms
of reciprocity often presuppose and reinforce an ongoing sense of mutual obligation
and intimacy between parties. Balanced forms of reciprocity involve greater social
distance. The timing of providing a return can also play a role in shaping the nature of
the relationship between the two parties. In perfectly balanced reciprocity, the
obligation between the parties could potentially be fulfilled in that immediate
transaction. Delaying the return, by contrast, can work to extend social obligation into
the future. Forms of barter in which two parties exchange equivalent goods at the
same time provide an example of perfectly balanced reciprocity. Birthday gifts
between peers in North America could be classified as a form of balanced reciprocity
that sits somewhere between this perfect form of balanced reciprocity and generalized
reciprocity. Perceived differences in the relative value of gifts can also affect social
relations (see discussion below).

In negative reciprocity, by contrast, one party seeks to benefit at the expense of the
other. Haggling during barter in order to get a better deal for oneself falls into this
category, as do theft and obtaining goods from other social groups through warfare or
raids. This category of reciprocity implies the greatest social distance between parties
involved in the exchange.

Multiple different forms of reciprocity are typically at work in any given society and,
as the above examples already begin to suggest, often carry with them different
expectations for the nature of the social relationship(s) between the parties involved in
the exchange. At the same time, it is important to recall that generalized, balanced,
and negative reciprocity are ideal types. In actual practice, exchanges may often fall
somewhere between the ideal-type versions of these categories with important
consequences for social relationships. Practices of giving birthday gifts in North
America suggest the ways in which the lines between generalized and balanced forms
of reciprocity may blur together in ways that are crucial to social relationships.
Parents, for instance, may often provide their small children with birthday gifts with
no expectation of an immediate return (generalized reciprocity).

But when a friend gives you a birthday gift, there may be more of an expectation that
you will reciprocate with a gift of roughly equal value on his or her birthday, even if
this is not overtly specified. This exchange of gifts of roughly equivalent value over a
relatively specified period of time would fall under the category of balanced
reciprocity in Sahlin’s typology. Yet it is important to note that its forms and
expectations fall somewhere between generalized and perfectly balanced
reciprocity. Both the expectation of a return in kind and the delay in its fulfillment are
crucial to the relationship. Providing a gift of similar value to the one that your friend
gave you can work towards establishing the relationship as one between peers while
postponing this return until a later time, such as your friend’s birthday, suggests an
ongoing relationship of mutual obligation between the two of you. One individual’s
ability to give a gift of greater or lesser value than the other, meanwhile, may also
have consequences for the relationship, shifting the relationship from one between
peers or equals to one of financial or social inequality, or leading to frustration on the
part of the friend who finds him or herself giving gifts of greater value. The point here
is that practices of reciprocity, including the expectations we have around return,
equivalence, and timing, shape our social relationships.

Exercise 2: Reciprocity and the Trobriand Kula Ring

Bronislaw Malinowski’s work in the Trobriand Islands provides

anthropology with one of the most famous examples in the discipline of
reciprocity and gift giving. As suggested in Part I of this unit, Malinowski
identified several unique and fascinating economic institutions within
Trobriand society, but his study of the "kula ring" has attracted the most
attention. To get a better sense of how the kula ring functioned, before
moving on to the next section of the unit notes, watch the following
excerpt from the BBC documentary, Tales from the Jungle:
Malinowski (2006; Part 4 of 6), until the end of the segment on kula,
roughly minute 7.30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df9BlSbYiKY.
Consider and answer the following questions. What is the kula trade, who
is involved in it, and what types of objects are exchanged? What seems
similar or different between these objects and types of objects that might
get exchanged in North American and/or your own society? What type of
reciprocity do you think is involved in the kula trade? How might you
apply the arguments we’ve explored about reciprocity, gift giving, and
social relations to the kula trade?

3.3 Bronislaw Malinowski and the Trobriand Kula Ring

The kula ring analyzed by Malinowski involves regular visits between trading
partners in both nearby villages as well as from distant islands, who exchange shell
ornaments in the form of necklaces (soulava) and armbands (mwali). Each participant
is linked to two partners: one to whom he gives a necklace in return for an armband,
and the other to whom he makes the reverse exchange of an armband for a necklace.
Although each individual is tied to only two partners, each contact has an additional
connection on either end of the distribution chain, ultimately forming a great circle
linking more than a dozen islands over hundreds of miles of ocean.

As the BBC documentary suggests, Malinowski was fascinated by these exchanges.

The shell necklaces and armbands did not appear to have any utilitarian purpose.
Indeed, Malinowski observed that they were rarely worn, such that they didn’t even
seem to have a particularly consistent use as decoration. Why would the Tobriand
islanders set off on such long and expensive journeys, often risking life and limb, for
such apparently useless trinkets?

The answer lies in the way these exchanges cement social ties and prestige. The
regular exchange of kula objects establish friendly relations among the inhabitants of
different islands and maintain a pattern of peaceful contact and communication. They
also reinforce status distinctions and prestige. Only a limited number of men, typically
those with higher social status and more wealth could afford to take part in the
exchanges. Malinowski also observes that there were further distinctions between
those who participated. Chiefs were more likely to have multiple partners; lower-
ranking men would have fewer. While all kula objects were highly valued, some were
considered to be more valuable than others. Taking possession of especially
valuable kula objects brought prestige to those who were its owners, even if they were
expected to give that object to a trading partner within a reasonable amount of time.
Moreover, being able to gift a particular valuable kula object to a trading partner
brought the giver prestige. Finally, the exchange in kula also provided an opportunity
for islanders to barter for utilitarian goods, which islanders brought with them to trade
on kula expeditions.

The kula ring thus demonstrates how reciprocity and gift giving create social
relationships. Following Sahlin’s typology above, the kula exchange can be viewed as
an example of balanced reciprocity. A man who gave a kula object to a trading partner
expected the receiver of that gift to provide them, in return, with a kula object of
approximately equal value. However, like the example of birthday gifts between peers
in North America outlined above, the kula exchange fell somewhere
between perfect reciprocity, in which objects of equal value are immediately
exchanged, and generalized reciprocity, in which there is a more diffuse expectation
of return, in ways that are critical to its social effects.
First, Malinowski notes that there was always some delay between the moment in
which a man received a kula object from a trading partner and the moment in which
he provided a return gift. This delay might be a matter of minutes or as long as a year,
but it was considered a crucial part of what made kula exchange different from the
ordinary barter, which Trobriand islanders termed gimwali, and which also took place
during these expeditions. Gimwali might be seen as a form of either perfectly
balanced or even negative reciprocity. It involved an immediate exchange of goods
whose relative value was often haggled over aggressively. Gimwali was considered
less sociably reputable than the exchange of kula objects. Indeed, a common form of
insult was to say that a person engaged in kula as though it were gimwali.

Finally, while there was an expectation that trading partners would provide one
another with gifts of equal value, as noted above, giving a gift of higher value could
also earn the giver more social prestige. Men were often quite proud to be the
temporary owners of particularly valuable kula objects, which brought prestige to
them and to their communities. Yet Malinowski noted that when speaking of
transactions with their trading partners, they tended to emphasize the value of the
objects they had gifted and to downplay the worth of the objects they received.
Malinowski argues that such tactics reflected the social importance Trobriand
islanders placed on giving generously. Men who participated in the kula exchange
were anxious to demonstrate that they were generous in their giving, since this
brought social prestige and improved social status.

Expectations of equivalence thus came together with an emphasis on appropriate

delay and the potential for difference in value of goods to establish the social
dynamics involved in this trade. The expectation that trading partners would provide
each other with gifts of equal value established them as peers. The insistence on an
appropriate delay in providing that return extended the obligation between partners
into the future, asserting the ongoing nature of their relationship. The potential for
differences in value in the goods gifted could lead to disgruntlement on the part of the
trading partner left waiting for that appropriate return gift, while also contributing to
the prestige and social status of the giver who had gifted generously.

3.4 Annette Weiner and “Women’s Wealth” in the Trobriand Islands

More than half a century after Malinowski conducted his research, anthropologist
Annette Weiner shed new light on understandings of how practices of reciprocity
shape social relationships among the Trobriand islanders. Weiner observed the
existence of a highly respected local tradition of accumulating and exchanging banana
leaves, which were known locally as “women’s wealth.” Like the kula objects, at first
glance, banana leaves did not have any particular utility. Women did use them to
make grass skirts, but Weiner observed that the bundles of leaves were themselves
considered valuable over and above that particular use. Like Malinowski, Weiner thus
set out to understand the meaning of this apparently irrational form of exchange. Why,
she asked, did Trobriand islanders exchange great amounts of money or other goods
to obtain banana leaves?

Her answer to this question demonstrated the central role that women and the
exchange of banana leaves played in the economic and social life of the islanders. As
observed in Part I of these unit notes, Malinowski had already revealed that men
spend a great deal of time working on and labouring over yam gardens. But rather
than consume the yams themselves, men then give the resulting yams to their sisters’
husbands for consumption by their families. Where Malinowski had seen the
distribution of yams as a one-sided movement of the yams from men to their sisters’
husbands and their families, Weiner argued that what was at work was in fact a
balanced form of reciprocity: yams were traded over an appropriate amount of time
for banana leaves or women’s wealth. Specifically, when a member of a woman’s
family died, that woman’s husband was expected to provide her family with banana
leaves. The yams provided to a woman’s husband by her brother were in this way
balanced out with a return from the husband of banana leaves, and the fairness of the
exchange was continuously calculated on both sides. Weiner argues that these
exchanges reinforced the pivotal role of women in kinship relations.

3.5 Redistribution

The above examples demonstrate the central role that forms of reciprocity and, in
particular, balanced reciprocity can play in creating and maintaining social
relationships. Anthropologists have also been interested in other methods of
distributing goods, including redistribution. Redistribution involves the co-
ordination of distribution through some form of centralized social organization. This
central social organization or those who occupy it receive economic or material
contributions from all the members of the society, which they in turn redistribute.

A classic example of redistribution within anthropology, as well as an example key to

Mauss’ theory of the gift, is that of the potlatch. The potlatch is a gift giving ceremony
traditionally practiced among the First Nations peoples of Canada’s west coast. As
your textbook notes, it would be reductive to see the potlatch as only a system for the
redistribution of goods. Rather, it was an important ritual event in which people came
together to bear witness to culturally significant events. The potlatch was also an
important way of establishing social hierarchy. Potlatches involved the staging of
ostentatious public feasts to which a host would invite all the prominent leaders from
neighbouring communities. Along with massive amounts of food, all the guests were
given valuable gifts, including many manufactured trade items and copper emblems.
On some occasions the host's wealth was further demonstrated through the actual
destruction of valuable items. The host’s ability to give away or redistribute goods to
his guests during the potlatch reinforced his social status. It also established
relationships of social obligation. Higher-ranking guests would be expected to invite
the host to their own potlatches in the future.

Systems of redistribution are also common to many modern nation states in the form
of taxation. In Canada, for instance, individual citizens pay taxes to the Canada
Revenue Agency on the assumption that those taxes in turn will be used by
government agencies to provide all citizens with needed goods and services, including
health care, road construction, education, a legal system, and military defense. Unlike
market exchanges, the give-and-take involved in redistributive systems is determined
not by supply and demand forces but by socially and politically defined rights and
obligations. Thus, in Canada, the general intent of government redistribution is not to
make a profit but to transfer income from the wealthier groups and regions to the less
advantaged and create equality of service and opportunity. As in many other
redistributive systems, this ideal is often compromised by allocating a significant
share of revenue to the elites in power and the special interest that support them.

Practices and ideals of redistribution play an especially central role in many state
socialist contexts. In Cuba, up until recently, citizens didn’t have the right to buy and
sell cars or homes. Instead, these were redistributed by various government
institutions to individual citizens as rewards for their work performance or good
political records. In practice, this system of redistribution also led to a rampant black
market, as citizens turned to unofficial and illegal means of exchange to supplement
goods in short supply from states. Several scholars have argued that the emphasis on
redistribution led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since citizens expected state
socialist governments to supply them with material goods, the governments’ failure to
do so to their citizens’ satisfaction contributed to dissatisfaction with the system and
to the protests that eventually led to its collapse. In Cuba, state socialism is still in
place. But just as so-called capitalist systems like Canada rely not just on market
exchanges but on practices of redistribution, Cuba’s economic system involves a mix
of market exchanges and redistributive practices. After Raúl Castro took over the
presidency from Fidel Castro in 2008, he legalized the sale and purchase of cars and
houses, which has in turn opened up an array of opportunities and complexities for
local citizens. While some Cubans have acquired badly needed funds by selling their
homes, it also contributes to a system in which wealthy Cubans and even, in some
cases, foreigners are in a better position to obtain quality housing than those with
limited incomes.

3.6 Market Exchange

The final form of distribution examined by your textbook in this section is market
exchange. Market exchange is the form of distribution to which we are most
accustomed in capitalist societies. Rephrasing the definition in your textbook slightly,
market exchange can be characterized as “a mode of exchange in which the exchange
of goods is calculated in terms of a multi-purpose medium . . . and standard of value,”
such as money (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 171). In market exchange, to put
this otherwise, goods are not traded directly for one another but rather are calculated
in terms of an all-purpose and universal currency such as money. Market exchange is
the predominant form of exchange in capitalist societies. However, as your textbook
notes, market exchange has also existed in non-capitalist societies and other forms of
distribution, including reciprocity and redistribution, exist under capitalism. As we
will see in the next section and in Unit 7, market exchange and capitalist modes of
production bring with them a particular set of social dynamics and relations of power
and inequality, which have formed an increasingly important and fascinating object of
study within anthropology.

Part IV. Karl Marx on Capitalism: Production, Exchange,

and Exploitation
If economic anthropology of the 1960s was dominated by debates over distribution,
argues David Graeber (2001: 26), by the 1970s anthropologists had begun to turn their
attention to questions of production. This new focus had much to do with the growing
popularity of the theories of German philosopher Karl Marx within the discipline.
Born in 1818 in Germany to a middle-class family, Marx passed away in 1883 after
producing several highly influential texts. Some of his most famous works include the
three-volume Capital and The Communist Manifesto, co-written with his frequent
collaborator, Friedrich Engels. While Marx is famous in part as one of the founding
advocates for communism and socialism, most analysts today would agree that his
work is at its strongest in its analysis and criticism of capitalism and exploitation.
Marx elaborated his theories of capitalism over the course of several decades and in
multiple works. Unsurprisingly, there are thus multiple and sometimes contradictory
interpretations of what Marx meant by various concepts and he himself appears to
have changed in his mind over time. In this section, we will explore some of the key
concepts and arguments in Marx’s theory of production and exchange under
capitalism, emphasizing the differences he saw between how exploitation functions in
capitalism versus in other types of economic systems. This discussion will provide the
basis for a further elaboration of Marx’s and Marxist interpretations of how power
works in Unit 7. We’ll begin here by outlining some of the key terms in Marx’s theory
of economic processes and capitalism: labour; modes, means, and relations of
production; as well as commodities and value.
4.1 Labour

As is made clear in both your textbook and the additional assigned reading by Gary
Lapon, labour plays a central role in Marx’s theory of exploitation under capitalism.
Marx defines labour as “the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities
existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities
which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind” (qtd. in
Lapon). In other words, labour is the set of human intellectual and physical capacities
mobilized by individuals in order to transform the material world and produce new
value. As we shall see, this argument that human labour is what produces new value is
key to Marx’s theory of exploitation under capitalism.

4.2 Modes, Means, and Relations of Production

Also key to Marx’s approach to economic processes is the argument that different
societies can be characterized by the different systems they used in order to carry out
production. Marx referred to these systems as modes of production. Anthropologist
Eric Wolf, whose work we examined in Unit 3, defines a mode of production as “a
specific, historically occurring set of social relations through which labour is deployed
to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization, and knowledge”
(qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 172). The means of production refers to
“the tools, skills, organization, and knowledge” involved in production. The relations
of production refer to “[t]he social relations linking human beings . . . within a
particular mode of production” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 172). The concept
of relations of production thus refers to the distribution of productive tasks among
different social groups, and how their different forms of labour or productive activities
then relate to one another. A mode of production can thus be seen as the sum total of
how the means (technology, skills, knowledge) and the social relations of production
(the division of labour among social groups) are organized within a particular social
context.

Marx and Engels elaborated an essentially evolutionary schema of modes of

production, yet scholars following them have noted that more than one mode of
production can be at work within any given society at any given point. The
development or forcible introduction of a new mode of production into a society can
often lead to historical change as well as social conflict. These sorts of conflicts were
frequently introduced as societies were brought under colonial domination and
productive activities were forcibly reorganized by capitalism. Anthropologists such as
Eric Wolf also reworked Marx and Engels’ schema of modes of production to better
suit the needs of the discipline.

As noted in your textbook, Wolf identified three principle modes of production:

1. A kin-ordered mode of production, in which social labour is organized through
kinship relations, with productive tasks distributed among different members of a
family. This mode of production is frequently found among foragers, herders, and
farmers.

2. A tributary mode, in which labourers pay tributes to rulers. One prime example of
this tributary mode can be seen in European feudal systems of the Middle Ages, in
which peasants or serfs worked on land that belonged to lords, devoting part of their
labour to producing what was necessary for their own subsistence and the other part to
producing harvests paid to the lords. Notably, in European feudalism, social positions
were fixed. One was born into and remained within the position of either lord or serf.

3. The final mode of production is capitalism, which is also the mode to which Marx’s
arguments have most successfully been applied. Under capitalism, capitalists own the
means of production, workers sell their labour in exchange for wages, and this labour
in turn generates surplus value for capitalists, which they either reinvest in the
productive process in order to produce new surpluses or extract in the form of profit.
Exploitation under capitalism rests on this extraction of surplus value from the labour-
power of the workers. To understand this argument, we first need to define two other
key concepts in Marx’s theory: commodities and value.

4.3 Commodities and Value

Goods produced and exchanged under capitalism take on a special character: they are
commodities. That is, they both satisfy human needs and can be exchanged for others
according to an abstract and quantitative measure. The products of human labour
under capitalism, in other words, have both a use-value and an exchange-value.
The use-value of the good refers to “the usefulness of a thing,” its specific material
and tangible qualities and the uses to which it can be put. My desk is useful to me as a
surface on which to place my computer as I work; that is its use-value. But under
capitalism, goods also have an exchange-value, which refers to the quantitative
measure according to which goods can be exchanged for others.

Viewed from the perspective of exchange-value, we are no longer interested in the

physical, material, or useful dimensions of a good. Rather, we are concerned only
with that abstract and quantitative measure according to which every good is treated
as exchangeable for others, typically through the medium of a universal currency such
as money. In order to have a system in which objects function as commodities with
exchange-values, there first has to be a widespread and often quite elaborate division
of labour. Different individuals devote their energies and labour to producing multiple
different kinds of products, parts of products, or services, thus resulting in a desire for
exchange and the need to find some abstract measure by which to compare all of the
goods being exchanged. Finally, it is important to note that commodities can be both
physical and material objects, such as tables, and more ephemeral, such as a lecture, a
music concert, or a brand.

We can see the distinctive character of exchange-value if we think back to the

Trobriand kula ring. In that system, kula goods were exchanged, but they did not have
an exchange-value. Kula goods were not traded for money or for just any other kind
of object, but rather were traded or gifted for one another according their specific
tangible and material qualities, or their use-values. As soon as the kula goods are
bought and sold for money, they have acquired an exchange-value. Regardless of how
much one might care for their age or their previous history of ownership, at the
moment at which one buys or sells these goods for money, they are no longer viewed
in terms of those tangible qualities but are rather calculated in terms of a quantitative
and abstract measure according to which they can be equated with and exchanged for
any other kind of good. The fact that we most often trade goods for money is thus a
potent expression of how we measure goods under capitalism in these purely
quantitative and abstract ways divorced from their material qualities or use-values.

But what determines this exchange-value? Or, in other words, what is it in objects that
makes them, under capitalism, exchangeable for every other object? Marx argues
that it is human labour that creates the value of goods under capitalism. More
specifically, he argues that the value of a commodity is the “socially necessary labour
time” it took to produce it, which he then further defines as “the labour-time required
to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given
society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that
society” (Marx 1990: 129). This phrasing “socially necessary” to describe the ratio
according to which human labour determines the value of goods under capitalism is
important. Many and multiple factors go into determining how much labour time will
be considered appropriate in any particular context and this can change over time.

An additional characteristic of capitalism as a mode of production from Marx’s

perspective is that, under capitalism, labour itself is a commodity. Different forms of
human labour can be differentiated from one another according to their qualitative and
useful dimensions. But under capitalism, labour-power also has an exchange-value.
Individual workers sell their labour to specific workplaces in exchange for wages,
which they then use to buy the commodities from houses to food that they need. From
this perspective, labour itself is treated only in terms of a quantitative and abstract
dimension. It is calculated according to its exchange-value.

One final type of value is necessary to understand the distinctive and exploitative
nature of capitalism. As mentioned earlier, human labour has a special quality. If,
under capitalism, labour is also a commodity, it is also different from other types of
commodities: it is the one type of commodity that produces value. By bringing
together fabric, thread, and labour, three types of commodities with their own specific
use-values and exchange-values, humans produce a new commodity – say, blue jeans
– with its own use-value and exchange-value. It is the labour of humans that achieve
this new value. But under capitalism, as Gary Lapon (2011) points out, workers are
not compensated for the new value they have produced. Whether they are paid what
some might deem a fair wage or are paid poorly, capitalism depends on a gap between
the new value produced by the labour of workers and the compensation they are
provided for that labour in wages. This gap is surplus-value, which, as mentioned
above, can either be reinvested by capitalists into the productive process to make new
surplus values, or extracted in the form of profit. Surplus value was at the heart of
why Marx believed that capitalism was exploitative. Even in conditions where a
company provides its workers with a decent wage and good work conditions, the
owners of the business are still extracting a value from labour for which the worker is
not compensated.

4.4 Capitalism and Exploitation

Marx’s argument reveals how capitalism at once offers a new sort of freedom and
equality, at least by comparison to systems such as feudalism or slavery, and
continues to be exploitative. Under feudalism, recall, one’s position in life was
determined by birth. Serfs worked the land that belonged to their lords, extracted for
themselves just enough to allow for their own survival, and were obliged to give up
the rest to the lords. Modern slavery, as Gary Lapon (2011) notes, provides an even
more obvious example of a transparently exploitative system of labour. The slave is
forced to work for his or her master, often through physical violence, is provided
enough to survive (or not) by their owner, and the products of their labour are all
forcefully extracted by their master.

Under capitalism, by contrast, workers enjoy relative freedom. Rather than being
relegated to a particular position by birth or conquest, as they would under feudalism
or slavery, under capitalism, workers are free to trade their labour for wages. If they
don’t like where they work, then they are free to take that labour and sell it for wages
elsewhere. Workers are also free at the level of consumption. Every worker is free to
take his or her wages and trade them for goods. At this level of simple exchange, then,
everyone under capitalism is, in theory at least, free and equal. Now, of course, things
aren’t quite that simple in practice. There may be more or less jobs available at given
points in time, and employers or sellers may discriminate on the basis of gender, race,
ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, or other factors. Yet while employers or sellers
may discriminate, there is in fact no logical reason within capitalism for them to do
so. Indeed, a number of scholars have noted that the desire to sell under capitalism has
itself historically often contributed to the rise and success of certain social movement.
Whether in the rush of companies and advertisers to appeal to women as consumers in
the early twentieth century or in the drive to appeal to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgendered folk in the late twentieth century, capitalism has often played a crucial
role in furthering visibility and sometimes equality for marginalized social groups,
even if only to advance profit-making interests.

It is at this level of profit that one sees how capitalism, for all its apparent and not
entirely illusory forms of equality, in fact rests on far-reaching exploitation. For, as we
have already noted, capitalism depends on the creation of surplus-value or profit,
which in turn depends on ensuring that there is a gap between the wages workers are
paid and the new values that are produced through their labour. There are multiple
tactics that capitalists can employ to increase this gap. For instance, they can
mechanize the work process so as to speed it up and reduce the number of workers
required to create a particular type of good or service. While automatic checkout
machines at the grocery store, for instance, promise consumers a faster exit, they do
so in part by extracting free labour from the consumer who with the help of the
machine takes on the job that used to be provided by a human. Another common tactic
is to move production to areas of the world in which labour is cheap, for instance by
outsourcing call centres to India or taking advantages of free trade zones in the North
of Mexico where labour costs are kept at a minimum in order to attract foreign
investors. Finally, companies can also appeal to individuals’ passions, interests, or
wellbeing in order to extract more labour hours from them. Google is often praised as
a company that cares for its workers because it provides them with a massive range of
services, from laundry to free food at company kitchens and cafeterias to massage.
Others, however, have pointed out that these services are designed to keep workers at
work. Why go home if you can eat and do your laundry at work? It is the company
that wins, since they can then extract longer work hours from employees, generating
greater surplus value or profit.

Part V. Consumption and the Original Affluent Society

We will return to Marx and capitalism in Unit 7. For now, however, let’s complete our
overview of economic anthropology by turning our attention to the final phase of the
economic process: consumption. Consumption can be defined as “using up material
goods” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2105: 175). Here we will examine three different
approaches to the study of consumption within anthropology, concluding with an
exploration of Marshall Sahlins’ argument about the Ju/’hoansi as the “original
affluent society.”

5.1 The Internal Explanation of Consumption

The first theory of consumption discussed in your textbook comes from the work of
Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski listed a basic set of human needs, including
nourishment, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, movement, growth, and health. He
argued that every culture responds in its own ways to these needs with a
corresponding institution, including food collecting techniques, kinship, shelter,
protection, and so on. This approach allowed Malinowski to demonstrate that
behaviours that may seem at first glance odd to Westerners have their roots in the
efforts of a society to respond to these basic human needs. But as your textbook notes,
accounting for consumption as a response to basic human needs alone fails to account
for why different societies respond to these needs in different ways.

5.2 Cultural Ecology or the External Explanation of Consumption

A second approach to the question of consumption developed within anthropology is

that of the external explanation or cultural ecology. The term cultural ecology, as
your textbook recounts, comes from anthropologist Julian Steward, who studied under
Franz Boas. Cultural ecology seeks to account for economic and other cultural
behaviours primarily as adaptations to the physical environments that people inhabit
(Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 176). The environment clearly plays an important
role in the economic and other cultural behaviours of societies. However, such
practices are clearly not determined by the environment alone. For instance, your
textbook notes that the economic practices of herders in Eastern Africa are affected
not only by the semi-arid environment in which they live but also by political
pressures exerted by the nation-states of this region.

An approach that views economic behaviours solely as adaptations to the environment

is also problematic because it fails to account for the selectivity that many social
groups practice in terms of which foods and other good from their environment they
choose or prefer to consume. This point brings us to our final approach to
consumption: the cultural explanation.

5.3 The Cultural Construction of Need

As your textbook notes, ethnographic research demonstrates that no society consumes

every available food source. While both human need and the environment play
important roles in shaping a society’s consumption practices, this practice of
selectivity demonstrates that neither one of these two factors can account for
consumption on their own. To human need and the environment, we therefore have to
add a third influence: culture. This, in turn, also raises the question of how the foods
or other goods a society chooses to consume can themselves send social messages.
For instance, Mary Douglas argues that practicing Jews or Muslims who consume
only the foods deemed “clean” by their religions are doing more than just meeting
their biological need for food. They are also declaring their unity with their religious
communities.

5.4 The Original Affluent Society

The cultural construction of need plays an important role in one final case study and
argument in economic anthropology: ideas about the cultural relativity of wealth. It
has often been assumed in Western societies that foragers live difficult lives, devoting
“all their waking hours searching for enough food to survive” (Lavenda, Schultz, and
Dods 2015: 181). Yet Richard Lee and other ethnographers who worked with foraging
societies such as the Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari Desert countered such stereotypes.
They observed that while the Ju/’hoansi suffered from periodic food shortages, their
diet was mostly balanced. Moreover, they were able to satisfy their needs for food
with the types of food that they preferred. Your textbook notes that over 100 plants in
their environment were considered edible by the Ju/’hoansi, but of those 100 they
typically consumed only 14. This selectivity thus demonstrates how the consumption
patterns of the Ju/’hoansi was shaped by cultural preference, and not just need or
environment.

Finally, to demonstrate the point that these foragers’ lives were not in fact as hard as
Westerners tended to believe, your textbook notes that in order to obtain these diets
the Ju/’hoansi worked what from a Western perspective might seem like relatively
short hours. Women provided about 55% of the diet while men provided the
remaining 45%, reflecting a gendered division of labour. In order to meet their needs,
the Ju/’hoansi on average spent only 20 hours per week collecting food. This is a stark
contrast to the 8 to 10 hours per day that is likely more typical, say, for a Google
employee. This contrast led Marshall Sahlins to call the Ju/’hoansi the “original
affluent society.” He argued that there are two paths to wealth. Either a society has to
produce much; or it can desire little. This second option is the path taken by the
Ju/’hoansi.

Review Questions
1) What are the different subsistence categories that anthropologists use to classify
societies? What is a mode of production and what are the three different types of
mode of production identified by Eric Wolf? Name and define these different
subsistence and mode of production categories.

2) Name and define the different categories of distribution identified by

anthropologists. According to the notes above, what are some of the ways in which
practices of reciprocity and gift giving shape social relationships?
3) Explain how reciprocity functioned to establish social relations in the case studies
discussed above: Bronislaw Malinowski’s discussion of the kula ring and Annette
Weiner’s discussion of exchanges of banana leaves.

4) Explain the commodity and the different categories of value discussed by Marx,
including use-value, exchange-value, and surplus-value. According to the discussion
of Marx above, in what way does a capitalist mode of production encourage a relative
social equality compared to systems such as feudalism and slavery? What is the
source cause of exploitation and inequality under capitalism, according to Marx?

References
Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin
of Our Own

Dreams. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Lapon, Gary. 2011. “What Do We Mean by

Exploitation?” https://socialistworker.org/2011/09/28/what-do-we-mean-exploitation

Lavenda, Robert H., Emily A. Schultz, and Roberta Robin Dods. 2015. Cultural
Anthropology:

A Perspective on the Human Condition, 3rd Canadian Edition. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 2002 [1922]. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account

of Native

Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. New

York, NY: Routledge.

Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I. London:

Penguin

Classics.

Sahlins, Marshall. 1974. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.

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