Theory in Economic Anthropology

For many of the contributors to this volume, theory is a method for describing preindustrial societies, rather than a set of testable propositions derived from a model. Nevertheless, a number of the essays on different societies may be of interest to comparative economists. Joseph Henrich presents a sophisticated argument against the use of cost/ benefit analysis to explain peasant agricultural practices, such as systems of intercropping of corn and sorghum or of slash and burn. Using the results of various experiments in psychology, he argues the farmers do not have the requisite knowledge to make such analyses but rather rely on biased cultural transmission, that is, copying of the techniques of the most successful farmers in their area who do things slightly differently than the prevailing norm. Among other things, such an approach can explain the diffusion of innovations. He supports his arguments with data from Mapuche farmers in Chile and Machiguenga farmers in Peru. Jean Ensminger reports on the results of playing the 'dictator game' and the 'ultimatum game' with the pastoral Orma of Kenya, an exercise which was part of a much larger project of experimental economics in a number of preindustrial societies to obtain quantitative information on societal norms. The conventional wisdom is that the populations in advanced capitalist societies are greedier or more self-interested than those in less developed economies, but she provides evidence from the large-scale project against this view, suggesting that 'there appears to be more fair-minded or altruistic behavior in developed societies than in less-developed, small scale societies.' In a study of the Kenyan Maragoli people, Edwins Laban M Gwako examines the relationship between property rights in agricultural land and the incentives for utilization of advanced inputs such as the government's extension service, fertilizers and hybrid seeds. Decisive are not the formal property rights, which are held by men, but rather their arrangements for sharing the crop with their wives, who actually do most of the agricultural work. The higher their wives' share of the crop, the more intense is their work and their use of advanced inputs.