Thurnwald / Schmidt Economics in Primitive Communities

Extract of essential statements
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-7557-4135-0
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 28, 68 Seiten

Reihe: REdition Schmidt

ECONOMICS IN PRIMITIVE COMMUNITIES By RICHARD THURNWALD, Professor of Ethnology and Sociology in the University of Berlin OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1932 Authors who, from today's perspective and in the face of current research, were far ahead of their time were often misunderstood or simply ignored by their contemporaries. And even if an excerpt from an extensive work is always subjective, it still offers a middle ground between subsuming under a catchphrase on the one hand, and intensive preoccupation with the author and his work on the other. If you want to deal intensively with the work, please refer to www.archive.org, where the full version is available for free.

He was born 18 September 1869 in Vienna, and died 19 January 1954 (aged 84) in Berlin. Thurnwald was an Austrian anthropologist

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thurnwald, Richard

Schmidt, Bernhard J.

Leseproben

Economics in Primitive Communities
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. In discussions on the economics of primitive society the problem of food-supply has until recently been the only one taken into account. Furthermore, thought in the last century was dominated by the theories of Darwin and Spencer, which tended to conceive cultural development along one line only. Consequently, we find economics treated from the same point of view, and this led to the theory of ‘the three stages’, by which all primitive economic development was traced through evolution from hunting to pastoral life and thence to agriculture. This has lasted until the present day.
§ 2. It is unquestionable that the provision of food is of greater importance and demands a larger percentage of energy in the economic field among primitive communities than in our own. But the science of economics is not confined to the providing of food. Of what then does it consist ?
The devouring of newly killed beasts and the eating of freshly picked fruits and roots, pulled from the soil, certainly cannot be called economics. More than this is implied in the term.
If there ever was a time when man, or his ancestor, lived from moment to moment on what he killed or caught, it was a time without economics.
Economics is concerned not merely with the direction of the instincts, with the plans and calculations of the individual: it is a social affair, dealing with different men as parts of a piece of interlocking machinery. The economics of the community practically consist of the economics of individual households.
The traditional hunting-grounds, the cultivated soil, and, among pastoral people, the pasture lands are similarly defended by mutual agree ment and co-operation.
A characteristic feature of primitive economics is the absence of any desire to make profits either from produption or exchange. If money exists at all, its function is quite different from that fulfilled by it in our civilization. It never ceases 'to be concrete material, and it never becomes' an entirely abstract representation of value.
Consequently economic transactions refer more to the quality and kind of the real articles than to abstract values. The ambition of individuals, therefore, is not directed towards the acquisition of wealth, but is more interested in the kind of the work.
The whole theoretical system, however, may be completely altered by certain personal factors, if these happen to suit the exigencies of the moment. The importance of such alterations must not be under-estimated in the lives of the natives, since they are the germs of change in customs and institutions. We are accustomed to overlook them because we usually deal with only one recent phase of native existence.
In each primitive society all aspects of life are harmonized into a complete whole. This is undoubtedly the consequence of a long adaptation of mental and institutional life to technical conditions. However adventurous the fate of the migratory tribes in Africa, Oceania, or Asia, &c., may have been, all their fights and wanderings brought relatively few acquisitions in new knowledge, abilities, and technical skill. They moved—spiritually and socially—there fore more in a circle than on a progressive line, and petrified mentally to some extent. They always fell back upon the same ways of procuring and caring for their livelihood. This indicates the enormous momentum of their traditional economics.
Progress needs contact and intermingling of ideas, institutions, and men as inciting factors. But regularly, after a period of impregnation, a combination and consolidation is required in order to establish a harmonized and balanced system of new mental habits, usages, and social institutions. Progress is a rhythm of human life, not a mechanical line, and it passes through stages of impregnation, of consolidation, and of dissolution.
PART I  - CONDITIONS OF PRIMITIVE ECONOMICS
I - GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS - THE PROBLEMS OF PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT
§ 1. In building up these types we shall chiefly use ethnographical material, always remembering that we have to do with the results of a long period of development, the history of which is for the most part unknown to us. We have for the present purpose treated the facts which form our data as if they stood by themselves, without roots in the past.
§ 2. On the other hand, these types also imply diverse attitudes towards economic questions, that is to say, attitudes different from our own and differing among themselves. These are accounted for by alien scales of value and by points of view depending on particular conditions of life. In economic research this point has often been overlooked under the dominance of an abstract homo oeconomicus. I think we have to construct several homines oeconomicos, each representing the economic tendency of one type, or even of one stratum within it.
§ 3 In elaborating the details of these types a special point is made of the division of labour between the sexes. The attitude of the sexes towards the main occupations about to be studied varies at the outset on account of physical conditions. This has led to a complete systematization of the distinct functions of men and women. It has also been extended to handicrafts and even to the use of certain tools and implements.
The development of any one of the many types to be discussed is not necessarily dependent on the preceding one. For instance, an agricultural mode of life does not originate in cattle-keeping or vice versa. Each single type, moreover, contains many variants.
Pastoral life similarly varies according to the kind of animal kept, for the breeders must adapt their habits to the requirements of the beast they tend. This means that the lives of reindeer herdsmen, shepherds, goatherds, cattlemen, and camel-drivers, &c., although classed as pastoral, are in detail far apart. Each type, therefore, includes many sub-divisions.
Very often a society appears to be homogeneous, but investigation afterwards shows that in fact it is compounded of the special traditions of several ethnic bodies. In the course of time the dividing lines between distinct cultures have gradually become effaced, so that now the observer is presented with one harmonious whole.
§ 4. These considerations strengthen the conviction that it is impossible to bring any given type into a genetic relation with the preceding one.
The probable development of cattle-keeping from hunting may be deduced from the consideration of the following facts. Among the Indians of the North-American plains we know that whole communities used to follow one particular herd of buffaloes, with which they thought themselves connected in a mystic way.
There is, for instance, the case of the Bergdama of South-west Africa. Many of them had been serfs of the Herero (cattle-breeders), who used them as watchmen for their cows. When they returned to their own tribe they were sometimes allowed to take some cows with them, but the possession of these never induced the Bergdama to keep them for their milk or to let them breed. Instead they very soon slaughtered them for food. Thus, even in spite of their close neighbourhood and intimate connexion with cattle-keepers, whose customs and methods of treating the beasts they had learnt, they could not be persuaded to keep cattle, although the natural conditions of their country would have been as favourable for the purpose as those of the Herero country.
§ 5. It follows from this that these changes must have been brought about by special conditions, and the tracing of these conditions to their source would seem to be the most important part of our task.
§ 6. The procedure just sketched must, however, not induce us to lose sight of the fact that, while a certain proportion of commodities circulate after this collective fashion, barter and trade are going on at the same time, either associated with social exchanges of the potlach type, or as a private affair distinct from the paying of taxes in kind. Private barter and trade become more important as the clan regime breaks down, as pointed out in section I. But we have to bear in mind that the importance of trade is persistent throughout. Even concurrently with the system of distribution we observe a considerable, both extensive and intensive, development of trade. Looking back, we may be surprised, from our modern point of view, to find that progress in these primitive technical stages was so slow, and may be at a loss to conjecture the cause of this tardiness. If we remember how difficult it is for any given people to change their mode of life (as may be seen in the case of the Bergdama, the Berber,...