ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY

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1 Brief Communications MAXIMIZATION AS WOKM, STHATEGY, AND THEORY: A COMMENT OK PROGRAMMATIC STATEMENTS IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY The impetus for this comment is Scott Cook s paper, The Obsolete Anti- Market Mentality: 4 Critique of the Substantive Approach to Economic Anthropology, in this issue. In it he shows (with more or less success depending on your point of view) : 1. That most societies by now participate in active market economies, and that therefore any significance the substantivist position may have for the study of non-market economies is of little importance as a guide to present field research (Section 11); 2. That the substantivists have not understood economic theory and are unfair and unscientific in their rejection of the possibility that it will be useful in the study of non-western economies (Section I11 and V); 3. That the substantivists, and especially Polanyi as their leader, are romanticists who see primitives as altruistic and naturally cooperative (Section IV). Cook s paper, and the many that have gone before it? in this debate, show that many questionable statements have been made by both teams. The literature is heavy with lengthy quotes showing that we) understand and they do not, but it often seems that the insolvable problems are being discussed while the basic issues from which they stem are never joined. In this paper I will not quote or cite extensively; further textual analysis will only make it more difficult for the next man. Rather I will tr). to suggest that there are at least two legitimate positions, and that the issues really at stake are not the ones that the combatants explicitly address themselves to. For the most part I will assume the reader is familiar with the literature being discussed. ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY The formalists say that economics in the study of the allocation of scarce means to alternative ends. That is, it is the study of economizing, or the way in which people maximize personal satisfactions. Economists have some theories about how people do this, say the formalists, and there is no reason to think that these theories are not general enough to be helpful in the study of non-western societies. In fact, say the formalists, some scholars have shown that they are helpful in understanding events in non-western societies. No, say the substantivists, economic theory is based on the study of market economies where the point is maximization of profit by both parties to a transaction, and non-western societies are not all like that, so the theory is not general enough and will not apply to non-western societies. We must study the unique configurations of non-western societies, their institutions. Econoniic anthropology is about the institutions surrounding the provision of the material necessities of existence to man. 465

2 466 American Anthropologist [68, But, says the formalist, you cannot prove that non-western man does not maximize, he clearly is subject to some kinds of scarcity, if only the scarcity of human energy; and therefore he must allocate scarce means to alternative ends. And besides, material and non-material goods are often exchanged for each other, so you cannot hold to your definition of economic anthropology. The bystander may think: Yes, but if everybody maximizes and the realms of material and non-material goods cannot be separated, economic anthropology must be the study of all human behavior, and that seems strange. I thought it was a small subfield of anthropology. Insofar as this caricature is accurate, it should be clear that: 1. Some people seem to be interested in maximization processes, and others in the study of institutions, but they all say they are interested in whether economic theory is applicable to non-western societies. 2. Neither approach, given its starting point, provides an intuitively satisfactory definition which delimits the field of economic anthropology, and the effort to do this is probably hopeless. The controversy, it seems to me, has little to do with the applicability of economic theory to non-western society. It has to do with the belief by one group that maximization is a good way to approach human behavior, and the belief by the other group that human institutions are varied and difficult to categorize, and that many Leconomic ones are quite distinct from certain Western institutions in which maximization of something (usually profit ) is the norm. The root of the misunderstanding is best seen by examining three meanings of maximization. MAXIMIZATION AS A NORM There are certain Western institutions which involve maximization as a norm. For example, in a buying-selling situation both parties are expected, in fact enjoined, to allocate resources so as to maximize their profits, In this case, maximization is part of an institution; it is a norm. The buyer role and the seller role are institutionalized roles. As I understand them, the substantivists argue that there are many institutions in which maximization is not a norm. Presumably this is true in any society. Furthermore, they say, in non-western society, in many of the situations involving provision of the material necessities of life, it is not a norm for the parties to a transaction to maximize material things or any nonmaterial things that may be exchanged for material things. This contention of the substantivists has nothing to do with whether the parties to the transaction are maximizing or not. The parties almost certainly may be seen as maximizing adherence to some norm or set of norms, but none of these norms is itself a prescription to maximize in terms of the very objecls being exchanged. This contrast is seen in two American institutions: buying in a store and giving a Christmas gift. In the store it is considered appropriate for the owner and the customer to maximize in terms of money (getting the most or giving the least), and this is the norm (in the context of other norms that

3 Brief Communications 467 bar fraud). In the exchange of Christmas gifts (in my American culture) it is appropriate to maximize equality of exchange. Given adjustments for obvious differences in resources, both parties to the exchange are most satisfied when they manage to guess correctly the level at which they are exchanging with each other. Individuals who grossly deviate from the established standard of the relationship, or people who imply that their gifts are uncommonly expensive, are not behaving appropriately and are sanctioned. Granted that, in contradiction of I olan\ri s romanticist views, the exchange of Christmas gifts may be full!. as antagonistic, competitive and unaltruistic as the purchase of an article in a store, what is interesting about the two situations in that in one maximization of the objects being exchanged is the norm, and in the other it is not. When, in non-western societies, substantial quantities of life-sustaining goods which would be considered economic goods in Western societies are transferred in the absence of a norm that both parties maximize the quantity of such goods finally in its possession, it is the absence of that norm that is interesting. The fact that the interaction may be seen as economizing or maximizing in terms of some set of means and ends like yams, kinship obligations and prestige does not obviate the normative or institutional differences. MAXIMIZATION AS A STRATEGY That the participants in a transaction can be seen as maximizing something is true by definition. Maximization is one of the standard restatements of the a priori truth that all human behavior is patterned; that all human behavior has a reason. This use of maximization as a scientific strategy involves seeking out the norms or motives (or whatever the investigator sees as the impetus of behavior) and attempting to rank order them so as to see the behavior as the (conscious or unconscious) maximization of these things. They become the ends being maximized. When using maximization as a scientific strategy, the investigator knows that his analysis is complete when he has stated the norms, motives, etc. and the conditions (means and their limits, the scarce factors) such that every act may be seen as a predictable maximization of the ends. If he cannot see the act as maximization, he immediately assumes that his statements of norms, motives, etc., and conditions are not yet correct and seeks to balance the equation so that it wili work. He does not reject the idea that people will maximize, for it is the basis of his scientific strategy. It is in this sense that all people always maximize or economize. There can be no argument about it, hut knowing this helps very little in achieving the end of predictions about empirical cases. MAXIMIZATION AND THEORIES The two principal formalist articles to appear in this journal (Burling 1962 and LeClair 1962) agree in seeing economizing or maximization as the scientific strategy characteristic of economic anthropology, but insofar as they propose concrete research programs they are quite different. Burling takes

4 468 American Anthropologist [68, note of some theories that involve maximization of factors like power, and comments that single factor theories are usually untenable. He goes on to suggest that economic anthropology be the search for the multiple factors that people maximize, i.e., he proposes that studies of human behavior using maximization as a scientific strategy constitute economic anthropology and leaves it at that. LeClair, though his title is Economic Theory and Economic Anthropology, does not refer to theory at all in the positive part of his paper. He states the economizing principle and then takes up a number of concepts used by economists and generalizes them so they may apply to all human behavior. When he comes to citing examples he very quickly shifts to a material definition of economics. George Homans has used the idea of maximization in a theory that applies to all human behavior. A brief look at the problems Homans encounters in his Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (1961) will suggest that, whatever the virtues of the maximization idea, the research problems still lie in the area of the study of institutions. For Homans elementary denotes that aspect of social behavior that is independent of institutions. He calls it subinstitutional (1961: 6). Homans wishes to state general propositions about social behavior that are independent of cultural convention and individual differences. He uses concepts and ideas like L cost, reward, profit and maximization and others about hunger, satiation and conditioning. In thinking about cost and reward he comes to the idea of value, and in thinking about measuring values he arrives at the idea that values vary according to the cultural and individual past of the person involved (1961 : 39-49). Mired again in institutional behavior, he deftly invokes the dictum that the best guess we can make is that the future will be like the past and that thus a person s future valuing will be like his past valuing, and often like the past valuing of other people who share his culture. This places Homans more squarely in the middle of institutional variations and is really no help in making the long step from his subinstitutional theory to measures of the values exhibited in human behavior. In the theory all valuing is placed on a single dimension according to its intensity; in behavior value is expressed in terms of local custom (disregarding the further complications introduced by variations in personal preference). The related problems of learning to read local customs and learning to equate local custom in one place with local custom in another place have no automatic solution that will permit Homans to test his theory. In this situation Homans merely states that he will be crude about measuring values and gets on with his task. In short, he does not solve the problem of operationalizing his subinstitutional theory.3 The formalists say that economic theory is not bound by the market principle, that it is logically free from limitations of time and place, that it is, in effect, subinstitutional. Insofar as this is true, the theory should be equally useful in the study of non-western and Western societies; and, insofar as this is true, it faces the same problems of operationalization faced by Homan s theory and any other very abstract theory.

5 Brief Communications 469 We cannot expect to borrow procedures for operationalization from the economists (as far as I know they are short on them anyway). The anthropological chestnut about the comparability of institutional forms in different cultures remains a lively topic of debate in discussion about cross-cultural research in anthropology. There is no reason to think that nieasures (operationalizations) devised by non-anthropologists (economists) for a part of our own culture (the economy) are less subject to difficulties than ineasi~res devised by anthropologists with a cross-cultural perspective. To the contrary in fact. THE SUUSTANTIVISTS AND THE FORMALISTS In the controversy that has developed it appears that the formalists have been arguing for the use of economic theory in its subinstitutional form as a general Scientific strategy, and that the substantivists have been arguing for the obvious differences among institutions associated with the transfer of the material necessities of life. The formalists have made sorties into the application of more concrete economic concepts and theory to non-western society and the substantivists have made parallel sorties into the study of the social coricomitants of types of exchangeboth with sonie success. By the time they had done this, however, they could no longer talk with each other, and the basic problem of operationalizing subinstitutional theoretical propositions or (from the other point of view) building general theory about varied institutions was for the most part cast aside. In the spirit of reconciliation it might be admitted that while Cook may he right about the dogmatism of the substantivists, he does not appreciate the distance between the abstractions of economic theory and the giving of Christmas gifts; and that while the substantivists are correct that maximization (of the material object being exchanged) is found as a norm only in some exchanges of material objects, they have not appreciated the usefulness of maximization as a scientific strategy in situations where maximization as a norm is not present. There i5 no contradiction between: Economics is the study of econoniizing. Economizing is the allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends (LeClaii 1962: 1188), and The economy, then, is an instituted process (I olanli 1957:248). FRANK CANCIAN Stafzfnrd University NOTES 1 I am grateful to may wife, Francesca Cancian, and to Roy D Andrade for coniments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2 Here I am principally concerned with the formalists as they are represented by Burling (1062), Conk (1966) and LeClair (1962), and with the suhstantivists as they are represented by Dalton (1961) and Polanyi (1957). 3 For those familiar with Homans charge that Talcott Parsons has written the dictionary of a language that has no sentences (1961:11), it is helpful to see Homans as a man who has written sentences in a language that has no dictionary.

6 470 Americait :1 nthropologist 168, REFERENCES CITED BURLING, ROBBINS 1962 Maximization theories and the study of economic anthropology. American Anthropologist 64: COOK, SCOTT 1966 The obsolete anti-market mentality: P critique of the substantive approach to economic anthropology. American Anthropologist 68: DALTON, GEORGE 1961 Economic theory and primitive society. American Anthropologist 63: HOMANS, GEORGE CASPAR 1961 Social behavior: its elementary forms. New York, Harcourt, Brace and World. LECLATR, EDWARD E., Jw Economic theory and economic anthropology. American Anthropologist 64: POLANYI, KARL 1957 The econoniy as instituted process. In Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensherg and Harry W. Pearson, eds. Glencoe, Illinois, Free Press. ISOMETRIC ADVANTAGES OF THE CRADLE BOARD: A HYPOTtIESIs As a rationale for binding their infants to cradle boards, the Navahosand probably other North American Indians-off er a magical explanation: cradle boards cause infants to grow strong, The purpose of this paper is to argue that this is, in fact, a magical explanation, but that the practice itself succeeds in doing what it is supposed to do. I shall present evidence that the cradle board is a device that induces isometric exercise in infants, and that this exercise effectively strengthens them. The swaddling customs found in many parts of the Old World probably also induce isometric exercise, but for convenience I shall omit a discussion of swaddling in this paper. The North American Indians custom of binding their infants to cradles has been of compelling interest to Europeans. Unlike European cradles, which are built to contain infants while allowing them freedom of movement, North American Indian cradles are flat boards or frameworks to which tightly wrapped infants are securely bound, thus restricting their freedom of movement to a minimum. Although these devices are not always constructed of wood, I shall for convenience refer to them as cradle boards in the remainder of this paper, The Navaho explanation of the way in which cradle boards produce strong children is magical because it is derived from false premises, but the practice itself, as we shall presently see, does succeed in doing what it is supposed to do. Because of the prevalent assumption that exercise necessitates free limb movement, it is puzzling, but nonetheless true, that infants bound to cradle boards for most of their first year of life do not atrophy. On the contrary, research shows that infants who are reared on cradle boards develop the same motor skills, in the same sequence, and at about the same times as infants who are not reared on cradle boards, Dennis and Dennis cite some figures suggesting that Hopi infants walk a little later than white infants, but they do not feel