The Obsolete "Anti-Market” Mentality: A Critique of the Substantive Approach to Economic Anthropology Scott Cook American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 68, No. 2, Part 1. (Apr., 1966), pp. 323-345. Stable URL: http://lnks,jstor.org/sie?sici=0002-7294% 28 196604%292%3A68% 3A 2%3C323%3ATO%22MAC%3E2.0,.CO%3B2-1 American Anthropologist is currently published by American Anthropological Association. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.huml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hhup:/www jstor.org/journals/anthro. html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Wed Aug 23 15:17:24 2006The Obsolete “Anti-Market” Mentality: A Critique of the Substantive Approach to Economic Anthropology SCOTT COOK University of Pitsburgh “Analytie work begins with material provided by our vision of things, and this vision is Ideological almost by definition. It embodies the picture of things as we see them, and wher ever theres any possible motive for wishing tose them ina given rather than another Hight, the way In which we see things can hardly be distinguished from the way in which we to ace them. The more honest and naive out vision is, Uhe more dangerous it i to the eventual emergence of anything for which general validity can be caimed. The inference for the socal scence is obvious, and its not even true that he who hates a social system wil form an objectively more corect vision of it than he who loves it. For lave distorts indeed, but hate distort tll more.” Joseru Scxowreren 1. THE PROBLEM! CONOMIC anthropology, # major sub-area of anthropological inquiry, is plagued by a serious communi the impact on the field of the writings of Karl Polanyi and his followers, a clear-cut dichotomy has emerged between scholars who maintain that ‘for- mal” economic theory is applicable to the analysis of “primitive” and “pe ant” economies and those who believe that it is limited in application to the market-oriented, price-governed economic systems of industrial economies Prior to the publication of Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Polanyi, et al., 1957), economic anthropology (to the extent that it dealt with behavioral theory as opposed to being exclusively concerned with material goods and/or subsistence technology) represented a single field of inquiry, with the majority of its practitioners believing that formal economic theory could contribute to anthropology. However, after the publication of this substantivist magnum ‘opus, the ficld underwent a bifurcation into two discrete spheres of discourse. Although several attempts have been made by various scholars to provoke a meaningful dialogue with the substantivists, their critiques have failed to clicit any such exchange of views.* Thus the field is presently characterized by a “split-level”’ dialogue in which the proponents on the two dominant views of economics-in-anthropology are talking past one another and are operating within separate spheres of discourse, ‘Many anthropologists are still apparently unfamiliar with the scope and content of the critiques of substantivist economics, while substantivist views continue to find expression in the literature without manifesting any noticeable concessions to the arguments of their critics (e.g., Dalton 1961; Dalton 1962; Bohannan and Dalton 1965a, Bohannan 1963; Dalton 1964). The present critique is intended to supplement its predecessors by elaborating on the thesis that the substantivists’ intransigency concerning the cross-cultural applicabil- 323324 American Anthropologist [68, 1966 ity of formal economic theory is a by-product of a romantic ideology rooted in an antipathy toward the “market economy” and an idealization of the “primitive.” ML A “PARADOX” IN THE RECENT SUBSTANTIVISE LITERATURE In their introduction to Markets én Africa Paul Bohannan and George Dalton (1965a), two of the most articulate and sophisticated representatives of that group of economic anthropologists who take the writings of Karl Polanyi as their major theoretical point of departure, make an effort to adapt the typology of economies first formulated by Polanyi for the analysis of a series of extinct societies (1957a, b:250-256; 1959:168-174) to a body of concrete data from eight societies of contemporary Africa. The alteration ofthe original Polanyi typology reflects their attempt to cope with the fact that in Africa those economic activities organized on the market principle are expanding with a concomitant attenuation of redistribution and reciprocity” (1962:24) or that “multicentric economies are in the process of becoming unicentric” ).4 Moreover, these two authors commit themselves to the following. ‘It seems safe to predict that the process will continue, and that African economies are becoming like our own in the sense that the sectors dominated by the market principle are being enlarged” (1962:25). There is every reason to believe that the trend so succinctly described by Bohannan and Dalton for Africa is @ process which has world-wide ramifications. ‘Unfortunately, neither of these substantivist writers deals with the obvious theoretical implications of the discerned developmental trend in empirical economies nor with its significance for future inguiry in economic anthropol- ogy. To cope theoretically with this trend would necessarily entail a basic revision of a key tenet in the substantivist ideological system—a concomitant ‘of the simplistic dichotomy between “market” and “primitive-subsistence” ‘economies, namely, the dogma that formal economic theory, being a creature ‘of the market economy, is, ipso facto, inapplicable to the analysis of primitive- subsistence economies (Polanyi, et af, 1957; Polanyi 1959:166; Dalton 1961: 25; Bohannan 1963:229-231). While the recent postulation of “subtypes” of rimitive-subsistence or non-market economies (i.c., the “marketless” and the “peripheral market” types in Bohannan and Dalton 1962; Bohannan 1963; Dalton 1964) can be considered as an attempt by the substantivists to escape from the restrictions imposed by the polar dichotomization of econo- ries, Dalton’s position vis-d-vis formal economic theory remains essentially the same as that enunciated in 1961, although he has re-phrased it to fit the new typological accretions.* One slight variation on the Polanyi theme which can be detected in the writings of Bohannan (1963:263-265) and Dalton (1964) is a concern with “transitional” or “peasant” economies. Nevertheless, a re- cent statement by Dalton leads one to believe that what the “market-econ- omy” construct is in Polanyi's scheme, the “peasant economy" construct is in Dalton’s ie.;itis postulated asa type of economy studied by those economic anthropologists who successfully utilize concepts and principles from formal