The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
October 200
3S. C. Humphreys
History, Economics,
and Anthropology:
The Work of Karl
Polanyi
3. Reciprocity, Redistribution, Householding, and
Market Exchange
Polanyi’s typology of economic institutions is not, as
has been claimed by Smelser, only a typology of exchange systems. It is certainly applicable to the organization
of labor, as Polanyi showed more clearly in his last work, Dahomey and the
Slave Trade: reciprocal labor patterns are common in primitive societies,
corvée labor can be classed as redistributive, and slavery belongs to the
householding pattern. (It is more
difficult to associate different patterns of land tenure with Polanyi’s
categories, and he did not deal with this problem.) Polanyi seems to have regarded exchange of
goods as the primary pattern, and allocation of resources as secondary. This is surely
129. See Godelier,
Rationalité
et irrationalité, 251 cf.; M. Harris, “The Economy
Has No Surplus?” in American Anthropologist 61 (1959), 185-199; I. Sachs, “La Notion de surplus et son
application aux economies primitives,” L’Homme 6, 3(1966), 5-18. Suggestions for the study of surpluses in Dalton, “A Note of
Clarification on Economic Surplus,” American Anthropologist 62 (1960),
483-490.
130. Cf., however, J.
Suret-Canale’s criticism of Meillassoux, “Structuralisme et anthropologie
économique,” Structuralisme et marxisme, La Pensée
135 (October, 1967), 94-106, and Godelier, Rationalité et irrationalité,
84 cf.
131. Mary Douglas, “Lele
Economy Compared with the Bushong: A Study in Economic Backwardness,” Markets
in Africa, 211-233, is an exception.
203
where he
made his radical break with Marxist theory; in comparison, the attacks on
“scarcity” and “surplus” are of minor importance. The central point is that social relationships,
expressed in and sustained by transfers of material goods, come before
Produktionsverhältnisse.
Claude Meillassoux, attempting to reconcile Polanyi’s
approach with Marxism, has defended the central position of allocation in his
system by arguing that in primitive societies where tools are simple and land is
not a scarce resource control has to be exercised directly, through personal
relationships, and not via control of the means of production. Such a society, he seems to suggest, could also
exhibit a form of class conflict, between old and young. This view has been sharply attacked from the
point of view of orthodox Marxism, [132] but finds parallels in some non-Marxist work on
economic anthropology. [133] Further discussion of the relation between patterns of
allocation and the organization of production is clearly needed.
Polanyi, however, would hardly have
approved of Meillassoux’ enterprise, for two reasons. One is that his
own work was based on the political conviction that the function of the economy
should be to strengthen social relationships and eliminate conflict by an
allocation of wealth conforming to the values of each society. The subordination of economic organization to
social ends, which for Marx existed only in primitive communism and the
communist Utopia of the future, was for Polanyi a feature of all societies
except that dominated by the modern market system. Consequently (the second reason), he did not
consider the theories of Marx relevant for the analysis of non-market economies.
He agreed with Marx’s indictment of capitalism and cited the
“Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” as evidence that “The essential
philosophy of Marx centred on the totality of society and the non-economic
nature of man,” but held that as economic historians Marx and his followers had
made the common mistake of interpreting other ages by the light of the economic
and social organization of their own times. “Given
a definite structure of society, the class theory works; but what if that
structure itself undergoes change?... Though human
society is naturally conditioned by economic factors, the motives of human
individuals are only exceptionally determined by the needs of material
want-satisfaction. That nineteenth-century society was organized
on the assumption that such a motivation could be made universal was a
peculiarity of the age. It was therefore
appropriate to allow a comparatively wide scope to the play of economic motives
when analysing that society. But we must guard against prejudging the issue,
which is precisely to what extent such an unusual motivation could be made
effect-
132. See above, p. 181.
133. See M. Douglas,
“Primitive Rationing” (cit. n.62); L. Mair, “The Growth of Economic
Individualism” (n.59).
204
tive.” [134] Marx had not even produced a theory of socialist economics,
[135] much less a guide to the understanding of the place of
the economy in primitive societies.
Leaving aside the question of the basic of Polanyi’s
classification, what of the choice of categories? Three types only were proposed in Trade and
Market, Polanyi’s best-known work: reciprocity, redistribution, and (market)
exchange; but in The Great Transformation these had been accompanied by a
fourth category, householding, and Polanyi returned to this again in Dahomey
and the Slave Trade. At the time of Trade and Market,
Polanyi apparently excluded householding on the grounds that “as it always
applies to a group smaller than society, it does not encompass all the systems
of relationship found there.” [136] Householding in any case is a vague term defined mainly by the
absence of the inter-group relations which interested Polanyi; the peasant
subsistence smallholdings and manorial estates linked under this heading by Karl
Bücher, [137] from whom Polanyi took over the concept, resemble each
other mainly in being self-sufficient; and the manor at least could be seen as a
redistributive system. Polanyi probably
took up the concept again in Dahomey and the Slave Trade because for the
first time he was trying to give a full description of one society’s economic
institutions, instead of selecting different patterns for study in different
societies, and found that reciprocity, redistribution, and markets did not
account for every aspect of the economy in Dahomey. The system of land inheritance and Dahomean
ancestor worship “merge the habitational unit or compound and the kinship unit
into an unbreakable social entity,” [138] which has the economic functions of distributing land
and mobilizing wealth for religious ceremonies.
Householding remains anomalous among Polanyi’s
categories because it represents the economic aspect of the basic social unit,
whereas the other three categories all refer to the organization of economic
relations between units. Reciprocal
prestations of food and other gifts, labor, or hospitality occur typically
between affinal groups, or between neighbors. Market exchange makes transactions possible
between individuals irrespective of their social
134. GT, 153 cf.
(Essays,
38 if.). Cf. G. Ldkacs, “Der
Funktionswechsel des historischen Materialismus.”
135. Polanyi,
“Sozialistische Rechnungslegung.” He was
critical of some aspects even of the Marxist interpretation of the development
of the market economy (GT, op. cit.).
136. F. Benet, TM,
215. Polanyi added in City Invincible that householding is formally the
same as redistribution (Essays, 307-308). It is worth noting that this resemblance may be
used as the basis for an ideological justification of a redistributive system,
as in Dahomey.
137. GT, 60;
Bücher, Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, 108 if.
138. DST, 72.
Previously Polanyi had entirely omitted inheritance systems from his comparative
economics.
205
relationship.
Redistribution requires central
collection and allocation by a higher authority, but can be seen as satisfying
the basic unit’s need for services and goods which it cannot produce alone by
providing an institutionalized channel for the pooling of resources.
Smelser in his review of Trade and Market
proposed to divide the category of redistribution into two: systems in which
central collection is genuinely followed by redistribution, as in the division
of the harvest among different castes in the Indian village, [139] and those in
which collection serves to mobilize resources for the enterprises of the ruling
group - pyramid-building, for example. But the two functions are frequently carried
out by the same organization, and justified in the same way as serving
collective interests; the distinction between immediate material distribution
and the deferred or less measurable benefits of the ruler’s activities as priest
or war-leader does not seem sharp enough to warrant classing “mobilization” as a
separate category.
Smelser’s reason for this modification is betrayed by
his further suggestion that his four categories (reciprocity, redistribution,
mobilization, and market) [140] correspond to the four functional sub-systems of
society in Parsonian theory. Reciprocity
corresponds to the function of latent pattern-maintenance and
tension-management; redistribution to the allocation of rewards and facilities
according to the integrative requirements of society; mobilization to
goal-attainment; market exchange to adaptation. Each type of exchange is embedded in a
different social structure. Reciprocity
is embedded in the structure of the segmental units (families, neighborhoods,
clans, etc.) between which reciprocal prestations occur; redistribution in the
system of social stratification which determines dues and rewards; mobilization
in the system of political authority; market exchange in the market mechanism
and the system of specifically economic roles and institutions associated with
it. In most societies all four types of
exchange can be identified, but their relative importance depends on “the
value-system of the society in question, the level of differentiation of its
social structure, and the complexity of the demands of its internal and external
situation.” Further study, he suggests,
should be devoted to clarifying the relation of economic institutions to social
structure along these lines.
A different approach is adopted by Marshall Sahlins, [141] who has
attempted to build up a model of the sociology of primitive exchange based on
the two concepts of reciprocity and redistribution, representing “horizontal”
and “vertical” exchange patterns. Householding
is regarded as a small-scale redistributive system; reciprocal transactions are
graded from “generalized
139. But this system is
as much reciprocal as redistributive, cf. Neale, TM, 218-236, and K.
Ishwaran, Tradition and Economy in Village India (London, 1966).
140. Since Smelser was
discussing TM, he did not consider householding.
141. Cf. above, n.40.
206
reciprocity”
or pure altruism through “balanced reciprocity,” in which giver or seller
receives a fair return, to “negative reciprocity,” in which each party tries to
maximize his own advantage. Haggling,
barter, gambling, chicanery, and theft are examples of “negative reciprocity.” The position of an exchange on this scale is
conditioned by the “span of social distance” between those who exchange. Social distance may be simply the degree of
closeness of kinship or neighborhood, or may be affected also by differences in
rank or wealth. The reciprocal
relationships of the powerful and the rich have a wider radius than those of the
poor or insignificant. There may be a
sharp distinction in type between in-group exchanges and those with outsiders,
or the latter may be assimilated to in-group patterns by the formation of
trade-friendships or partnerships, relations of blood-brotherhood, and so on.
Again, different modes of exchange may be prescribed for different
classes of goods. [142] The patterning of exchange may be influenced by a general
tendency to individualism or to cooperation in the moral attitudes of the
community. [143] The mode of exchange will also be influenced by the social
structure. Sahlins suggests that
“balanced reciprocity” is likely to be found in segmented societies consisting
of autonomous settlements only loosely linked by kinship and clan organization,
and that it is particularly in such societies also that primitive money is
likely to be found. These societies have
connections too wide and tenuous for exchange to be structured entirely by
“generalized reciprocity,” and do not have a sufficiently strong central power
for a redistributive system.
Although both Sahlins’ and Smelser’s articles contain
many suggestions which could form the basis for further empirical research, [144] they both discuss Polanyi’s classification mainly from
a formal point of view, and modify it in order to produce a neater formal model.
It was natural that attempts should be made to link Polanyi’s economic
patterns to types of social structure, but many problems remain, especially in
analyzing the interrelations of different patterns within a single society. There was a certain ambiguity in the way in
which the scheme was presented in Trade and Market. Although it was made clear there that
Polanyi’s categories referred to institutional patterns which might coexist in a
single economic system, [145] the societies discussed were presented as dominated by
one type of economic organization. Where
two patterns existed in a single society, stress was laid on their
incompatibility, as in the case of reciprocity and market exchange among the
Berbers, or redistribution and European market trade in Dahomey.
142. See Bohannan, “Some
Principles of Exchange and Investment Among the Tiv,”
American Anthropologist 57 (1955),
60-69.
143. Cf. M. Mead, ed.,
Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples.
144. Sahlins’ “On the
Sociology of Primitive Exchange” also has a rich appendix of ethnographic
material.
145. E.g., TM,
255-256.
207
Polanyi hoped that his research would form the basis of
a “new science of comparative economics,” but these attempts at developing it
seem perhaps a little premature. It might
be wiser to continue with Polanyi’s empirical and operational approach, testing
the usefulness of his categories in historical and anthropological studies and
seeing what problems arise in trying to apply them, before attempting to use
them as a basis for more ambitious theoretical constructions.
His categories should be regarded as
sketches of some areas in a largely unexplored territory rather than as
coordinates in a diagram.
In Dahomey and the Slave Trade Polanyi for the
first time applied his typology to the analysis of a single society’s economic
system in all its aspects. As has been
said, this led him to modify his classification by reintroducing householding as
a category, and even this did not enable him to give a very satisfactory account
of land tenure or inheritance. The main
weakness of his account, however, is that the reciprocal, redistributive,
householding, and market sections of the economy are described in separate
chapters, with little attempt to explain their interrelations. We are not told how the individual reconciles
his various economic commitments, nor how the general
value-system maintains the separation of different institutional patterns and
the attitudes appropriate to each. This
is partly the fault of the sources; [146] but Polanyi does not discuss the implications of, for
instance, the apparent tendency to present the redistributive system as an
all-inclusive higher level household, or of the fact that the market-women’s
goods were not grown on family land but bought from large plantation-type farms,
which must have facilitated the separation of householding and market spheres.
Smelser was justified in criticizing Polanyi’s “radical
institutionalism”; the analysis of institutions alone will reveal little, if
they are not related to environmental conditions on the one side, and to values
and Wirtschaftsethik on the other. But institutions may still make a good starting
point for the study of values. In my own subject, the economy of ancient
Greece, an approach through Polanyi’s categories, though certainly not the only
one to be pursued and not capable of answering all our
questions, seems to me to have produced some interesting results.
Although many details in the interpretation of the
Mycenaean Linear B tablets are still obscure, [147] they show at least that the
economy of the more advanced areas of Greece in the Bronze Age was dominated by
a redistributive system of the kind known from the palace archives of the
ancient Near East. Taxes in grain, wool,
oil, and wine accumulated in the palace store-rooms; land tenures were minutely
recorded, status distinctions formalized, trade
146. See W. J. Argyle,
The Fon of Dahomey: A History and Ethnography of the
Old Kingdom (Oxford, 1966),
for a more critical and cautious account of the evidence.
147. See Finley, “The
Mycenaean Tablets and Economic History,” Economic History Review, ser. 2,
10 (1957-58), 128-141.
208
relations
with distant regions stimulated, and a high level of craft specialization
achieved through the centralization of wealth and administrative capacities of
the palace system.
This system, in Greece, did not survive the upheavals
of the end of the Bronze Age. In the Near
Eastern civilizations the old structure survived the crisis, but in Greece
cities and palaces were destroyed, trade and other regular communications broke
down, writing was forgotten; the startling impoverishment of material culture
revealed in the archaeological record was accompanied by extensive depopulation
and a major breakdown of the religious, political, and economic institutions
which had centered on the palace. [148] One of the most
important aspects of the discovery of the Mycenaean civilization for the ancient
historian is that the development of the Greek polis appears no longer, or at
least not only, as a product of Indo-European tribal organization, but as a
social system growing out of the ruins of an “Oriental despotism.”
Whether the society portrayed by Homer should be
regarded as an attempt to refashion the Mycenaean kingdom on a small scale or as
a segment cut loose from it is not clear. Redistributive institutions, in any case,
survived, but no longer form a bureaucratically organized system. The chief must justify his wealth by
generosity; beggars and strangers come to his house for entertainment, he
provides for feasts and sacrifices, and leads in expeditions abroad to raid,
trade, or exchange gifts with other princes. It is he who provides for the few specialists
who remain in the Greek world - the expert shipwrights, poets, and doctors who
travel from one patron to another.
The main emphasis in the Homeric poems, however, is on
reciprocal gift-exchange between these leaders. Hospitality and generosity to equals is far
more important than relations with inferiors. (Similarly, Hesiod stresses the necessity for
the peasant to be generous in his dealings with his neighbor, but prefers to
keep clear of the “gift-devouring basileis.” [149] The
poor man, it seems, now only approaches the rich with gifts out of fear or
desire for favor - he has no regular obligation to pay dues, he is predominantly
a “householder.”) But the stress on
generosity in the gift-giving system of the rich includes the obligation to give
to those who cannot make returns; reciprocity and redistribution are linked in
the system of values. Both patterns no doubt were inherited from the
Mycenaean age, but the basileus now has to rely mainly on his own
resources and exertions for the wealth needed to live up to his ideals, and the
gift-exchange and displays of wealth which were part of the courtly pattern take
on a competitive edge in an age of more fluid
148. C. G. Starr, The Origins of Greek Civilization (New York,
1961), 79 cf.; Finley, “Homer and Mycenae: Property and Tenure,” Historia 6 (1957), 133-159.
149. See the discussion
of gift-prestation in ancient Thrace by Mauss, “Une Forme archaique du contrat
chez les Thraces,” Revue des etudes grecques 34 (1921), 388-397.
209
status
distinctions and a struggle for power and prestige among a class of equals.
By a process which we are not yet able to trace
clearly, the competition for power and prestige among the Greek nobility, from
about the seventh century onward, moved away from the display of wealth at home
and attraction of a personal following to displays of munificence in the city
center and contests for political office and political support independent of
personal ties. In view of this increasing
differentiation of the political structure, and the structural differentiation
of the economy which will be discussed below, it is interesting to see that
Athens relied on the redistributive ethic to supplement her taxation system.
Distribution to dependents was replaced by gifts made to the people as a
whole, and the transaction was depersonalized on both sides - not only was no
individual recipient put in an inferior position, but the givers were shorn of
much of the prestige of giving: the class who had once set up fine buildings
under their own names and commanded their own warships in battle [150] were
restricted to the limited possibilities of display in the upkeep of a state
trireme or paying for a dramatic performance whose success was credited to the
playwright rather than to the choregus. Yet the speeches from the fourth-century
lawsuits reveal the constant pressure on the rich to justify the possession of
their wealth by undertaking more of these liturgies than the minimum prescribed,
and spending more generously on them than was strictly necessary.
The kinship system, so far as can be seen, did not have
important economic functions. The rules
of inheritance were naturally important in the transmission of land, and clans
had religious functions which provided occasions for sacrifices and feasting,
but the reciprocal prestations of gifts between relatives familiar from
primitive societies seem to have no counterpart in ancient Greece. Hesiod is concerned with relations among
neighbors; there is no suggestion in the Works and Days that kinship
groups play an important part in the life of rural Boeotia. [151] Nor do kinship ties play much part in the
relationships of the Homeric nobility; they are replaced by the elaborate
linkages of guest-friendships, often themselves inherited from one generation to
another.
The peasant householder therefore had few occasions to
exchange with others. If his neighbor
asks for a loan he must be generous, lest he need one
himself later, but he should try to be independent of such aid. If he exhausts his neighbors’ goodwill, no one
will help him; if he turns to the rich for aid or protection, he may risk losing
the land which is the mark of his free status in
150. Herodotus v.47,
viii.17.
151. This is hardly due
to Hesiod’s own position as an immigrant’s son, but the mobility of the
colonization period has to be taken into account.
210
the
community. His main economic aim is to
support his family with as few dealings with others as possible. The few village craftsmen make little
difference to this pattern; probably they barter their products at fixed
equivalencies.
But overseas trade between Greece and the Near East,
which had almost entirely ceased during the “Dark Age,” had been resumed by the
ninth century, and the trader was the first “market” element in the Greek
economy. Long-distance traders, as
opposed to the few peasants who ventured to ship a cargo to the nearest town,
were probably landless men, detached from their own community, often no doubt
combining piracy with trade. It has been
observed that all Homer’s traders are non-Greeks; this does not reflect the
actual situation in the eighth century, but was an idealized solution, which
persisted for centuries (Athenians in the fourth century still tended to speak
as if all traders were non-citizens) to the contradiction felt between the
behavior of the trader and the Wirtschaftsethik of the community. It was recognized that the trader felt no
obligation to be generous in selling his wares, and that his transactions were
not embedded in any social relationship; even if he was not a foreigner,
dealings with him were conducted as if he was not a member of the community. This solution of the contradiction between the
ethics of reciprocity and of market dealing was facilitated and for a
considerable time limited in its effects by the fact that the rich regarded the
trader as an inferior creature and the peasant had little to do with him; but it
had the consequence that as trade increased there was an increasing tendency to
the differentiation of “economic” situations, roles, norms of behavior, and
motives. [152] When the Peloponnesian War forced the peasants of Attica to
take refuge inside the city, the market grew rapidly in importance, and with it
came the extension of the “market mentality.” The uprooted peasant had few opportunities for
wage labor even if he had been willing to compete with non-citizens and slaves;
his needs were at least partly met by the pay he received as soldier, rower, or
juror, and if he needed more money his easiest course was to turn petty trader -
the Sausage-Seller of Aristophanes’ Knights. Cut off from the restraints of his old
local community, he would adopt the ethic of the market; and as he no longer
produced for his own subsistence, but relied on a cash income, he would tend to
extend his “economic” attitude to all questions where money was concerned. Political conflicts between rich and poor
sharpened; the rich tended to blame the greed and irresponsibility of the
demos
for mistakes in policy, and became less willing to contribute financially. In the fourth century there were men
152. Denis Twitchett,
“Merchant, Trade and Government in the Late T’ang,” Asia Major N.S. 14
(1968), 63-95, provides interesting comparative material.
211
who sold
land to make their wealth “invisible” to the eye of the informer and so avoid
taxation. Demosthenes complains that
politicians are making money out of their position in office, and that they are
more interested in ostentatious houses for themselves than in the adornment and
prosperity of the city. [153] Wealth and the traditional status hierarchy were becoming
increasingly separated; some of the richest men in Athens at this time had begun
their careers in banking or trade as slaves. One of the most significant instances of the
structural differentiation of the economy was the development of a separate
legal category of commercial suits in which not only foreigners but even slaves,
who normally had no legal capacity, could appear.
[154]
Thus, what disturbed the philosophers of the fourth
century was not, as Polanyi thought, an increase in profit-making on price
differentials, but the disembedding or structural differentiation of the
economy, leading to the application of “economic” criteria and standards of
behavior in a wide range of situations recognized as economic above all by the
fact that money was involved; the old civic virtues of generosity and
self-sufficiency were being replaced by the market attitudes of the trader. [155]
The value of Polanyi’s categories here is that they
provide a rough-and-ready classification of economic institutions and the
different values maintaining them, and indicate the areas in which
contradictions and conflict are to be looked for. The use of Parsons’ theory of structural
differentiation instead of Polanyi’s crude contrast between embedded and
disembedded economic systems gives the outlines of a dynamic analysis. [156] But from this a new question arises. Would a decrease in the importance of market
institutions in a society which had reached this level of differentiation
produce a revival of the attitudes whose loss Aristotle and Polanyi deplored? In the Roman Empire the state
increasingly had to take over the functions of the market system in order to
ensure an adequate supply and distribution of food to the city popu-
153. Demosthenes iii. 29, xxiii. 207.
154. L. Gernet, Droit
et société dans la Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1964),
151-172, “Aspects du droit athénien de l’esclavage.” The change was part of a general trend to
classify legal proceedings by the matter concerned instead of the status of the
actors.
155. This analysis owes
much to that of Otto Erb, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft un
Denken der hellenischen Antike (Berlin, 1939). Maxime Rodinson has drawn on Polanyi’s ideas in
a similar way in his account of the disembedding of the economy in medieval
Islam, Islam et capitalisme (Paris, 1966),
45-73, as P. Brown pointed out to me.
156. For a different
application of the concept of structural differentiation to the history of the
ancient world see Keith Hopkins, “Structural Differentiation in Rome (200-31
B.C.); the Genesis of an Historical Bureaucratic
Society,” History and Social Anthropobogy, ed. I. M. Lewis (London, 1968;
AS.A. Monograph 7), 63-79; idem, “Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire,”
Past and Present 32 (1965), 12-26; P. R. C. Weaver, “Social Mobility in the
Early Roman Empire: The Evidence of the Imperial Freedmen and Slaves,” ibid.
37 (1967), 3-20.
212
lation. This change was accompanied by an
increase in private redistribution (which had always been more important in Rome
than in classical Greece).
[157] The process of bureaucratization of the economy and the rise under the
influence of Christianity of new attitudes to economic matters has never really
been studied. Although Polanyi never
faced the difficulties of applying his theories to the history of economic
institutions and attitudes in Europe between the fourth century B.C. and the
beginning of market capitalism, it is not impossible that they may have
something to contribute here as well as in the study of primitive and archaic
societies.
If Polanyi exaggerated the contrast between primitive
Gemeinschaft
and modern Gesellschaft and so failed to deal with intermediate
forms, some of his critics have erred in the opposite direction. They find no difficulty in comparing the
“extensive credit facilities” of primitive society with those of the modern
economy. Yet there is an immense gulf
between the personal economic relationships of a small community and the
impersonal modern transactions resting on legal institutions which have taken
centuries to develop. At the present
time, when culture contact and development programs bridge the gap in a short
period, it is perhaps especially tempting to look at the similarities between
“custom and contract” rather than at the differences. But the history of the long and tortuous
process of evolution needed to produce contractual forms of such apparently
simple operations as sale, loan, and credit
[158] must not be forgotten. The main danger in the separation of
anthropological from historical comparative studies seems to be that the study
of social change is split into two separate departments; historians, until very
recently, have concentrated on evolution and ignored acculturation, [159] while
anthropologists study the changes in primitive societies produced by contact
with the ideas and economic institutions of “developed” countries, and lose
sight of the questions about the origins of institutions which originally
stimulated the growth of anthropology.
University College, London
157. B. Laum, “Über die
soziale Funktion der Münze. Em Beitrag zur Soziologie des Geldes,” Finanzarchiv 13 (1951-52), 120-143; R. Duncan-Jones,
“Wealth and Munificence in Roman Africa,” Papers of the British School at
Rome 31(1963), 159-177.
158. Cf. F. Pringsheim, The Greek
Law of Sale (Weimar, 1950), and the
discussions by Gernet, “Le Droit de la
vente et la notion du contrat en Gréce” and “Sur l’obligation
contractuelle dans la vente helldnique,” Droit et société, 201-224,
225-236. The problem of the origins of contract was a
central one for the Durkheim/Mauss school to which Gernet belonged (cf. Mauss, Essai sur be don, G. Davy, La Foi jurée, etc.). The material from the ancient Near East
is even richer than that from Greece; cf. e.g., E. Cassin, “Symboles de cession
immobilière dans l’ancien droit mésopotamien,” L’Année sociologique (1952), 107-161.
159. See now A. Dupront,
L’Acculturazione (Turin, 1966).
The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
October 2003