Economies and Cultures: Foundations of Economic Anthropology

Citation

Wilk, R. R., & Cliggett, L. C. (2007). Economies and Cultures: Foundations of Economic Anthropology (2nd ed.). Westview Press (now published by Routledge).

Chapter Summary

The second edition is a short synthesis of about 250 pages: a preface to the second edition, seven chapters and an appendix. Richard Wilk wrote the first edition alone (Westview, 1996); Lisa Cliggett joined him for this revision. The publisher describes the book as identifying the fundamental practical and theoretical problems of economic anthropology, tracing the dialogue between anthropology and economics, and moving the field beyond the narrow concerns of earlier debates. Its organising idea is visible in the contents: after two framing chapters, three chapters each take one model of human nature that economic theories assume, the self-interested, the social and the moral, before a new chapter on gifts and a conclusion that combines the three. The publisher stresses economic anthropology as a meeting place for symbolic and materialist approaches and for seeing people as both practical and cultural.

Chapter 1: Economic Anthropology: An Undisciplined Discipline

The opening chapter introduces the subfield, and its title signals the book's starting point: economic anthropology as a field without settled boundaries or a single method, which constantly questions the practical motives of people in their daily lives, in the publisher's words.

Chapter 2: Economics and the Problem of Human Nature

This chapter sets up the framework for the rest of the book. Its title identifies human nature, the assumptions about what people are like and what moves them, as the problem that divides approaches to economic life, and the following three chapters each take up one such assumption.

Chapter 3: Self-Interest and Neoclassical Microeconomics

The first model treats people as self-interested decision-makers, the assumption behind neoclassical microeconomics. The chapter title links the model to that body of economic theory.

Chapter 4: Social and Political Economy

The second model treats people as social beings whose economic lives are shaped by groups, institutions and relations of power. The title joins the social approach to political economy.

Chapter 5: The Moral Human: Cultural Economics

The third model treats people as moral and cultural beings, whose economic behaviour is guided by values and meanings. This model corresponds to the symbolic side of the meeting of symbolic and materialist approaches that the publisher describes.

Chapter 6: Gifts and Exchange

An entirely new chapter in the second edition, which, according to the publisher, approaches the recent literature on gifts and exchange critically. It extends the book from its three models into one of the subfield's classic topics.

Chapter 7: Conclusions: Complex Economic Human Beings

The conclusion's title states the book's resolution: no single model is sufficient, and people are economically complex. The publisher adds that the authors argue for the relevance of economic anthropology to applied anthropology and for further exchange with economics, sociology and the other social and behavioural sciences.

Appendix

The publisher notes a thoroughly updated bibliography and a guide for students to finding case studies in economic anthropology, the practical material that closes the book.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: The field and its problem

• An "undisciplined" discipline: economic anthropology as a field that crosses boundaries and lacks a single method.
• Models of human nature: the assumptions about human motivation that, in the book's framework, underlie each economic theory.

Chapters 3–5: Three models

• Self-interest: the rational individual of neoclassical microeconomics.
• Social and political economy: economic life as shaped by society, institutions and power.
• The moral human: economic action guided by cultural values and meanings, the domain of cultural economics.
• Symbolic and materialist approaches: the two broad traditions the book seeks to bring together.

Chapters 6–7: Exchange and synthesis

• Gifts and exchange: the classic anthropological topic, reconsidered in the light of newer literature.
• Complex economic human beings: the conclusion's view that people are at once self-interested, social and moral.
• Applied economic anthropology: the use of the subfield's insights outside the academy, which the authors defend.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear organising framework. Grouping theories by their assumptions about human nature gives students a single question to carry through the field: what does each approach suppose people are like? The contents show the structure plainly, with one chapter per model and a conclusion that brings them together.
• Balanced between traditions. The publisher presents the book as a meeting place for symbolic and materialist approaches rather than an argument for one side, and the three models receive a chapter each.
• Accessible and useful at two levels. Benjamin Orlove's endorsement calls it thorough, accessible and original, an excellent introduction for newcomers and an equally good review for those who know the field.
• Practical for courses. The appendix and updated bibliography are designed to help students find case studies, which suits a course in which the textbook is read alongside ethnographies.

Limitations

• Short on ethnographic detail. At about 250 pages, organised by theoretical model, the book is a synthesis rather than a collection of case studies; the guide to finding case studies points students elsewhere for ethnography.
• Dated. The second edition appeared in 2007. Routledge's current listing is still this 2007 edition, so work after the mid-2000s, including on the 2008 financial crisis and digital economies, is not covered.
• Models can become boxes. The three-model framework is a teaching device; the conclusion's call for "complex" economic human beings is the authors' own warning against using it as a rigid classification, and students should read it that way.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the economic and political anthropology list, Wilk and Cliggett is the systematic introductory textbook. Chris Hann and Keith Hart's Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique covers similar ground in a different way: a short, chronological history of the subfield organised around development, socialism and global capitalism, with an openly argued position on the subfield's future. Wilk and Cliggett is the better first map of theoretical positions; Hann and Hart is the better account of how those positions arose and what is at stake in them. Reading both, in either order, works well.

The classic works on the list give the primary material. Marcel Mauss's The Gift and Bronisław Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific are the foundational texts behind the topic of Chapter 6 and are best read with that chapter. E. E. Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer, a study of livelihood and political institutions in a society without a centralised state, can be read against Chapter 4's social and political economy. David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything is a recent large-scale reinterpretation of human history and the origins of hierarchy; its arguments about human freedom and social organisation make an interesting test case for the book's models of human nature.

How to Use This Book

The book assumes no economics; an introductory course in cultural anthropology helps. It suits undergraduates in a first economic anthropology course and graduate students from economics, development studies or sociology who need an anthropological perspective.

• Core: Chapters 1–2 for the framework, then Chapters 3–5 in order. Read these as a set, noting for each model what it explains well and what it leaves out.
• Then: Chapter 6 on gifts and exchange, ideally alongside Mauss and Malinowski.
• Synthesis: Chapter 7 draws the models together; reread it at the end of the course.
• Appendix: use the guide to finding case studies when choosing ethnographies for essays or presentations.

A useful exercise is to take one ethnography from the course and analyse it three times, from the self-interested, social and moral perspectives of Chapters 3–5, then decide which combination the case requires. Pair the book with Hann and Hart for historical depth, and supplement it with recent articles for developments since 2007.