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Homo Africanus: Antiquus or Oeconomicus? Some Interpretations of African Economic History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
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From an inquiry into three distinct interpretations of African economic data, we have suggested that homo africanus is oeconomicus rather than antiquus. First, while substantivists (traditionalists) and modernists (developmental economists) appropriately subordinated homo africanus' economic behavior to social considerations, they mistakenly de-emphasized the role of markets, especially in economies where market contacts were peripheral. Consequently (since their model for comparative economic behavior was that of the traditional selfregulating market economy), they concluded that homo africanus antiquus est. Second, believing that when stripped of their cultural impedimenta, all economies conformed to the same laws, formalists 45 Both Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray have criticized him for argued that homo africanus oeconomicus est. Accordingly, they recommended modifications and applications of concepts such as rationalization, maximization, the scarcity postulate, surpluses, input, output levels, pricing and profits, and quantification in general.
Third, we examined the models of the French structuralist neo-Marxists who, by positing homo africanus within select categories of materialist history, have maintained that structurally, materially and existentially, he was oeconomicus. Beginning with an inquiry into modes of production, they averred that he produced, consumed and circulated material goods by virtue of his existence within a social structure and superstructure which was materially determined. Accordingly, they revealed his unique relationship to the market. Moreover, structuralist neo-Marxists have transformed the substantivist theory of social "embeddedness" (or the subordination of an economy to social constraints which act as cultural obstacles to change) into a social "realization" or reflection of change within production modes, whose inner structure is transformed according to the dialectic. Their model, therefore, not only has more depth and dynamism than that of the substantivists, but its structural linkages are causally related.
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- The Accommodation to Capitalism in Peasant Societies
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1977
References
1 We are referring to interpretations which, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, have focused on the nature of the economic process within so-called “primitive” societies (the antiquus argument), and the extent to which conventional economic theory can be applied in the study of them (the oeconomicus argument). The present interpretations are related to an earlier controversy about the “true nature” of the economies of antiquity, which began to emerge from as early as 1864–67, when Rodbertus, Karl’ Economic Life in Classical Antiquity appeared.Google Scholar In his “modern” analysis, Rodbertus argued that a monetarized economy required a different social structure from that of an economy in kind. In 1941, Rostovtzeff's, MichaelSocial and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 1941),Google Scholar another book in the “modern” genre, reinforced the earlier view by suggesting that “the difference between the economic life of this [Hellenistic] period and that of the modern world is only quantitative not qualitative” (p. 335). Before RostovtzefFs book, however, the issue had already been joined by the publication of Bücher's, KarlDie Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft (Tubingen: Verlag der H. Lauppschen, 1893),Google Scholar which linked economic life in the ancient world to primitive (antiquus) economies. Since then, the controversy has considered the antiquus arguments of Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1922),Google Scholar and Thurnwald, Richard, Economics in Primitive Communities (Oxford University Press, 1932)Google Scholar on the one hand; and the oeconomicus analyses of Firth and Herskovits etc., on the other hand. During the 1960s, the debate continued mainly between George Dalton, one of the main proponents of the antiquus tradition, and his opponents in Current Anthropology and the American Anthropologist. For a review of the main issues see Firth, Raymond, ed., Themes in Economic Anthropology (London: Tavistock, 1967);Google ScholarLeClaire, Edward E. and Schneider, Harold K., eds., Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968);Google Scholar and throughout this article. Recently, voices of the French structuralist, neo-Marxist economic anthropologists have been added to the debate. See for example, Godelier, Maurice, Rationalité et Irrationalité en Economie (Paris: François Maspero, 1966);Google ScholarHorizon, , Trajets Marxistes en Anthropologie (Paris: François Maspero, 1973);Google Scholar and Claude, Meillassoux, “Essai d'Interprétation de Phénomène Economique dans les Sociétés Traditionnelles d'Auto-Subsistance,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, no. 4 (12 1960), 38–67, and throughout this article.Google Scholar
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45 Both Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray have criticized him for his narrow interpretation of “modes of production,” which he defines as a single mode, more akin to forms of labor, rather than to an entire social structure, superstructure, and the material base. Terray particularly argues that his non-Marxist, restricted use of the term (Meillassoux excludes the juridico-political and ideological superstructure) makes the study of social and ideological relations and varieties, as well as a material-historical inquiry into lineage-based and segmentary societies, impossible. Terray also is critical of Meillassoux's apparent reluctance to admit to a potential for pre-market exploitation of producers by controllers. He cites Georges Dupré's and Pierre-Philippe Rey's unpublished material on exchanges in Congo-Brazzaville to demonstrate that “prestige-giving goods amount to a diversion of the product by the elders, who make special use of it to reinforce the dependence of the direct producers,” although he hesitates to apply class conflict appellations. Finally, Coquery-Vidrovitch, in her study of production modes, is critical of the narrow scope of his inquiry: that of subsistence economies to the partial neglect of the organization of production and of the social hierarchy.