I. Recap: comparing economics and economic anthropology

A. Both study the economy and human economic behavior
B. Economics: assumes what constitutes the economy and what it is that people need, studies how they go about satisfying those needs
C. Economic anthropology: Broadens notions of the economy and human economic behavior, questions the what and why

 

II. The Nature of the Individual

A. Enlightenment philosophy focuses on nature of the individual
B. Thought experiments about "state of nature"

1. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

a. "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"
b. government necessary for cooperation and peace

2. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788)

a. "noble savage"
b. strong states not necessary

 

III. Adam Smith (1723-1790) and Enlightened Self-interest

A. Connection between "state of nature" philosophy and economics
B. The Wealth of Nations (1776): economy as natural machine
C. Philosophical foundations

1. Natural tendency to "truck, barter and exchange one thing for another" (Wealth, p. 13).
2. Smith's concept of selfishness

a. Self-interest
b. Community
c. Exchange
d. Quest for order and stability

3. Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759): Enlightened self-interest

a. Hobbesian primitives conceal emotions, stoic, violent
b. Civilization creates security, sympathy for others

D. Laissez-faire economics allows individual self-interests to promote societies' best interests
E. Smith's impact on microeconomics

1. Microeconomics: behavior of individuals, firms, households, and local markets
2. Macroeconomics: whole economic systems, states, world
3. Homo economicus: rational, economizing individual maximizes utility

 

IV. Malinowski's attack on Homo economicus

A. Smith's characterizations of "primitives" annoyed anthropologists
B. Malinowski's goals in Trobriand Islands, 1915
Click here for map.

1. Show people aren't naturally selfish
2. Prove economics to be ethnocentric

C. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922).

1. Kula exchanges of necklaces and armshells
2. Economists argued that trade in "primitive" societies was utilitarian and haphazard
3. Malinowski's arguments about the kula

a. Mutual obligations between partners
b. non-utilitarian
c. intricate, complex organization
d. Behavior is rational in its context
e. Liberality as a virtue

D. Trobrianders give in order to possess: anti-homo economicus
E. "Although, like every human being, the Kula native loves to possess and therefore desires to acquire and dreads to lose, the social code of rules, with regard to give and take by far overrides his natural acquisitive tendency" (Argonauts, p. 96).
F. Economics is ethnocentric

 

V. Is the kula economic?

A. Malinowski's reasons, Kula involves:

1. organized, purposeful work
2. desire for wealth, ownership
3. credit
4. canoe building
5. financing the voyage

B. But, kula is at "borderland between the commercial and the ceremonial" (Argonauts, 513)

1. Mingles economics and religion, magic, morality
2. All economics does this, but we don't recognize it in Western capitalism

C. Narrow vs. broad definitions of the economy

 

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu