This article proposes a research programme devoted to examining ‘processes of economization’. In the current instalment we introduce the notion of ‘economization’, which refers to the assembly and qualification of actions, devices and analytical/practical descriptions as ‘economic’ by social scientists and market actors. Through an analysis of selected works in anthropology, economics and sociology, we begin by discussing the importance, meaning and framing of economization, as we unravel its trace within a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. We show how in combination, these works have laid the foundations for the study of economization. The second instalment of the article, to appear in the next volume of Economy and Society, presents a preliminary picture of what it might mean to take processes of economization as a topic of empirical investigation. Given the vast terrain of relationships that produce its numerous trajectories, we will illustrate economization by focusing on only one of its m...

Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization

Egalitarian society is \"explained\" chiefly in terms of ecological or social factors that are self-organizing. However, egalitarian behavior is found in a wide variety of social and ecological settings, and the indications are that such societies are deliberately shaped by their members. This paper looks to egalitarian behavior as an instance of domination of leaders by their own followers, who are guided by an ethos that disapproves of hierarchical behavior in general and of bossiness in leaders in particular. A substantial cross-cultural survey reveals the specific mechanisms by which the political rank and file creates a reverse dominance hierarchy, an anomalous social arrangement which has important implications for cross-phylogenetic comparisons and for the theory of state formation.

Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy [and Comments and Reply]

In many areas of the world, current theories for agricultural origins emphasize yield as a major concern during intensification. In Africa, however, the need for scheduled consumption shaped the development of food production. African cattle were domesticated during the tenth millennium BP by delayed-return Saharan hunter-gatherers in unstable, marginal environments where predictable access to resources was a more significant problem than absolute abundance. Pastoralism spread patchily across the continent according to regional variations in the relative predictability of herding versus hunting and gathering. Domestication of African plants was late (after 4000 BP) because of the high mobility of herders, and risk associated with cultivation in arid environments. Renewed attention to predictability may contribute to understanding the circumstances that led to domestication in other regions of the world.

Cattle Before Crops: The Beginnings of Food Production in Africa

The literature on economic growth and development has focused considerable attention on questions of risk management and the possibility of multiple equilibria associated with poverty traps. We use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to study stochastic wealth dynamics among a very poor population. These data yield several novel findings. Although covariate rainfall shocks plainly matter, household-specific factors, including own herd size, account for most observed variability in wealth dynamics. Despite longstanding conventional wisdom about common property grazing lands, we find no statistical support for the tragedy of the commons hypothesis. It appears that past studies may have conflated costly self-insurance with stocking rate externalities. Such self-insurance is important in this setting because weak livestock markets and meager social insurance cause wealth to fluctuate largely in response to biophysical shocks. These shocks move households between multiple dynamic wealth equilibria toward which households converge following nonconvex path dynamics. The lowest equilibrium is consistent with the notion of a poverty trap. These findings have broad implications for the design of development and relief strategies among a poor population extraordinarily vulnerable to climatic shocks.

Stochastic wealth dynamics and risk management among a poor population

Examines the motivation for achievement as a psychological factor that shapes economic development. Refuting arguments based on race, climate, or population growth, the book instead argues for cultural customs and motivations - especially the motivation for achievement - as the major catalysts of economic growth. Considering the Protestant Reformation, the rise of capitalism, parents' influences on sons, and folklore and children's stories as shaping cultural motivations for achievement, the book hypothesizes that a high level of achievement motivation precedes economic growth. This is supported through qualitative analysis of the achievement motive, as well as of other psychological factors - including entrepreneurial behavior and characteristics, and available sources of achievement in past and present highly achieving societies. It is the achievement motive - and not merely the profit motive or the desire for material gain - that has advanced societies economically. Consequently, individuals are not merely products of their environment, as many social scientists have asserted, but also creators of the environment, as they manipulate it in various ways in the search for achievement. Finally, a plan is hypothesized to accelerate economic growth in developing countries, by encouraging and supplementing their achievement motives through mobilizing the greater achievement resources of developed countries. The conclusion is not just that motivations shape economic progress, but that current influences on future people's motivations and values will determine economic growth in the long run. Thus, it is most beneficial for a society to concentrate its resources on creating an environment conducive to entrepreneurship and a strong ideological base for achievement. (CJC)

The Achieving Society

O NE of the most notable characteristics of East African people is the behavior relating to cattle, which Herskovits has labeled the cattlecomplex (1926). As he described it, the cattle-complex consists of a strong attachment to cattle, which leads to their use in areas of life to which they are foreign among other people who possess many cattle. This attachment is frequently shown in affection for and identification with these animals and dislike of killing them (ibid: 256ff) except in rituals. They are associated almost universally with birth, death, and marriage ceremonies, are the chief form of wealth, the most prominent measure of power, prestige, and status, and the proper animals for feasts or ceremonies. Sex taboos are present in their handling, women being forbidden to have much to do with them, and there are special customs and taboos relating to their milk (ibid: 650, 653). In Herskovits' words, " ... it is the cattle that have become the dominant element in the cultures of these people" (ibid: 653). He adds that cattle "gather about them" other cultural elements such as birth, death, marriage, and other events in such a way that the complex can be recognized wherever it exists (ibid: 653). With some slight revisions and qualifications from one culture to another, this statement still holds good for East African pastoral people. The cattle-complex is sometimes summarized as being chiefly an extensive religious or ritual use of cattle. Our summation of Herskovits' position shows clearly that while ritual use (but not specifically religious ritual) is recognized, the essential element of the complex is not this, but rather a kind of identification with cattle which leads to their association with ritual (and presumably religion) as well as many other things. The cattle-complex concept has become widely used in anthropology (although the term is seldom used by British scholars), but along with the use the impression has been intentionally or unintentionally conveyed that cattle are exploited only partially for subsistence. Those who have written about East African people in comparatively recent times have all drawn different pictures of the economic role of cattle. Some, whom we will discuss, recognize great subsistence utility; others minimize it (see for example: Herskovits 1952; Huntingford 1950, 1953; Evans-Pritchard 1953; Kenya Land Commission 1934). The overall impression given by these latter is that milk production is important to subsistence but other possible subsistence functions of cattle (notably meat production and exchange for subsistence) are often not. The purpose of this paper is, first, to attempt to show that cattle are more extensively exploited in the subsistence economy of the Pakot of Kenya than this interpretation of the cattle-complex indicates. Secondly, it will be postulated, by reference to available data, that more extensive subsistence use of

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1957.59.2.02a00080

The Subsistence Role of Cattle Among the Pakot and in East Africa

Economic anthropology : readings in theory and analysis

This book is an introduction to East Africa as well as a treatise on stateless societies and the origins of states, especially with regard to hierarchy and equality as they emerge from the dynamics of an economic system. It is based on extensive fieldwork with the Pokot and Turu and describes and examines social and cultural traits characteristics of the area: languages, arts, and world view; patterns of production and exchange; marriage, descent, and kinship customs and practices; and the formation of states.

Livestock and equality in East Africa. The economic basis for social structure.

Livestock and Equality in East Africa: The Economic Basis for Social Structure

certain elements of African life which have bearing on an economic approach. These include in particular the matters of the role of livestock, the relation between people and livestock, the nature of rights in people, the nature of so-called corporate groups, and the nature of food production and exchange. In making this reassessment, I am drawing heavily upon the results of my study of the Wanyaturu or Turu of central Tanganyika in 1959 and 1960 and on an extension of the conclusions to other pastoral societies, based upon the feeling that there is sufficient evidence from ethnographic sources to warrant such an hypothetical extension, even though it is oversimplified. One of the most distressing barriers to the development of a comparative economics with the sophistication of Western economics is often said to be the lack of precise pricing of values in non-Western societies. Prices represent values and by means of them values can be accurately compared. But I do not believe that such a barrier exists in studying the economics of pastoral Africa simply because it is now apparent that livestock fill the role of money. Livestock in pastoral Africa have various uses of which the most important are those of food, production of young and repositories of value whereby they are utilizable as money. As money, livestock are graded in value and precise ratios of value are established between the types so that various combinations of animals can be equated with each other, just as various denominations of money can be. Few single societies possess the full range of types of livestock, which over the whole of pastoral Africa includes horses, camels, cattle, goats and sheep as well as some less important ones, like chickens. However it seems clear that taken all together the values of these animals are in the rank just listed, i.e., horses are the most valuable and goats and sheep least valuable. Otherwise, female animals are more valuable than males (except in some societies, like Turu, where the sex of goats and sheep is ignored), and mature animals are more valuable than immature ones. A heifer is less valuable than a cow, or at least than a young cow, because the chief value of a female animal is her reproductive capacity and a cow has proven her ability to re-

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0010417500003443

Harold K. Schneider

Papers

The Subsistence Role of Cattle Among the Pakot and in East Africa

Economic anthropology : readings in theory and analysis

Livestock and equality in East Africa. The economic basis for social structure.

Livestock and Equality in East Africa: The Economic Basis for Social Structure

A Model of African Indigenous Economy and Society