To the extent that a functionalist view of
economics provides a static model
it is inadequate
An interesting passage out of the substantivist-formalist debate of the 1950s to early 1970s concerned the use by one formalist contender of the label of 'statism' as a slur against the substantivists. In an atmosphere where to be a functionalist spoke of anachronism and to support a model of society as static was seen as positively ignorant, Schneider
1 fused functionalism and substantivism together and criticised the former of indulging in circular logic, seeing the system as functional because it was static and static because it was functional. For good measure he later on allied Marxism with substantivism, an association also made by others.
2
Theories, said Schneider,
3 in the nineteenth century tradition like Marxism and substantivism (implying their out-of-datedness), created large static pictures of society on its way from primitive to modern, simple to complex, less differentiation to more differentiation:
4 both differed only in the way they saw the changes come about. Indeed, social anthropology had generally been marked by a lack of social change "powerful enough to have practical consequences. Certainly it has nothing like the penetrating model of economics." Schneider thus reveals his criteria for what constitutes change – it lies within a theory's ability to be predictive.
5 What makes this debate significant insofar as this essay is concerned is the earlier remark by another formalist that substantivism was diachronic as compared with formalism's synchronism.
6
Two conclusions may be drawn from this. First, that the concept of change is one that can be approached from different angles and levels of inclusiveness. Secondly, that the topic of change is the arena in which opposing interests of a deeper political nature contest each other. The formalist micro-level model of Schneider, set up as a closed system, might well be able to deal with short term changes on the capitalist market, but with its assumption of maximisation would have problems with a change in societal values or of shifting political domination and history.
7
Rather than attempting to show that outside its static stance the functionalist view of economics is 'adequate', I would like to examine instead the criticism that it is static and if so whether it is inadequate. This means looking at the main protagonists of the Functionalists and, in the light of the above passage, what it is that causes them to label Functionalism in such a way.
For the purposes of this essay I have chosen the few Functionalists who are more or less self proclaimed. Since one anthropologist's functionalism is another's structuralism it was better to play safe!
The emergence of economic anthropology as a serious specialisation within the discipline coincided with what David Seddon
8 has called the "crisis" in the social sciences. Up until the mid-1950s what treatment of economics there was in anthropology had mainly been descriptive: how people lived and managed their economic affairs under different conditions and the principles underlying their behaviour.
9 Malinowski stipulated that functionalism should study "systems of production, distribution, and consumption".
10 Harris criticises him for largely writing a work on magic and ritual, rather than economics – as Malinowski purported to do,
11 but at least this was in keeping with Malinowski's justification that the totality of all social, cultural and psychological aspects of the community should be studied.
12
The major offensive against functionalism certainly comes from the New Left, whose attacks often seem more than academic; as if the anthropologists who had preceded them were personally responsible for the destruction of traditional life under the colonialists, or the creation of dependency under international capitalism (the two synonymous). The main criticisms levelled were that functionalism was empirical (Gough, Goddard, Forster), atheoretical (Gough, Beneji, Seddon, Anderson) because of its practical emphasis, that it didn't look at the actions of the colonialists (Gough, Goddard, Anderson and Banaji) and was itself a "child of colonialism, which had a vested interest in portraying indigenous societies as static and better off that way"
13 while it claimed to be value-free (Asad, Maquet, Gjessing and Leclerk). For the New Left functionalism, as a child of Durkheim and pragmatic political reformism, had produced a pseudo-theoretical attitude with stress on social order, government, political and social control
14 – as well as a holistic view of the colonised peoples.
15 In short, its approach was thoroughly "inadequate" and partial
16 — as Harris put it, the functional organism as laid out on the table always seemed incomplete.
17
Its adoption of the equilibrium model, according to its critics is not unconnected with its empiricist stance. Both result from subscribing to the actor's model and/or given relationships in a society. The assumption that group life was a social system implied balance in all its parts. That society should be seen as a complete system resulted from the adoption of an organic model of society – as a self regulating body. To be seen as a system all parts must be held still long enough to observe their interconnection (and by describing it as static gives rise to the assumption that it is static). According to the New Left, the real dynamics of change, located in the dialectic of hidden domination, were either ignored or unobserved, and the normative emphasis and concentration on jural statuses encouraged this assumption of structural balance, any deviation seen as 'disease' or 'anomie'.
Certainly the critics were justified in pointing out the previous stress on the practical application of anthropological research.
18 But both Seddon
19 and Forster
20 advise caution on complete identification of the functionalists with the colonial administrators, and while those working for the government were hardly likely to write reports accusing the hand that fed them of exploitation, they did at least mention the destruction of traditional life (
cf. Gulliver, Schapera, Malinowski, Firth, Mair). However, this too has come under attack: Malinowski's concern for the native
21 is not unconnected with his concern that the application of colonial rules and administration should occur without problems. We may of course point out that the New Left too had its practical orientation.
If the Marxist critics and the 'Functionalist' defenders should differ at least in principle in these areas, their differences over the interpretation of change are more problematic — especially if we consider Malinowski's accusation that Lucy Mair limits the functional method of study to "a study of a stable, balanced culture, in which all systems of social co-operation are in a state of equilibrium".
22
Before continuing with an analysis of the Functional notion of moving equilibrium and an examination of how the ethnographies deal with change (if they do) we should perhaps raise the question of just what exactly is meant by a functionalist argument. This is especially so in the light of Gellner's statement that it might well have been the colonialists who supplied the anthropologists with functionalist views,
23 implying that there is more to functionalism than just a 'school'.
As a type of explanation it appears we should include Marxism, since what is common between Marx and such British 'structural' functionalists as Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes, Firth, etc., is that all see society as a system and are interested in showing the contribution one part makes to another. At this level Godelier, a 'structuralist-Marxist', can quite happily quote the archetypal Functional sociologist Talcott Parsons when he says the economic system is an element of the social system.
24
The functional type argument may also be termed explanation through final causes
25 : institutions, or institutions and their functions, are observed and both are presumed to contribute to the maintenance of the other. Meillassoux, a Marxist, can from this perspective say that functional families amongst the Guro are those "whose members are associated more by economic obligations than by relations of consanguinity".
26 In other words, for a family to survive it must have other relations, just in case it doesn't produce enough children to do its economic tasks. The elements appertaining to this conclusion are families (obviously surviving) and their extra-familial economic relations.
By itself such a view of society and its mechanisms for maintenance finds it difficult to explain change without external stimulation, but internal movement is allowed for.
If the British structural-functionalists lacked the theoretical expression of this equilibrium (and just merely assumed it), the 'Grand American Theorist' Talcott Parsons
27 and other sociologists certainly didn't (for example, Krupp 1968). The goal of the system was always towards stasis and, like an organism, changes in the environment produce adaptations within it. Parsons applied this theory in a brief analysis of the market system where the stability of the structure depended on the stability of the normative patterns (for example, definitions of money, norms of contract, that is, institutional norms). Under these conditions why does a system necessarily occupationally differentiate? External promotion of the change comes from such environmental factors like population rise. The goal of the system is efficiency and this is achieved by differentiation of production tasks. But this leads to adaptations throughout the whole system, especially since the values of society must agree with the new situation which demands a freedom of choice and action not available before. The problem in analysis is to determine how the institutionalised values now come to consider the alternative organisations (those that have sprung up in place of the kinship unit as a productive cell) as good and not just self-motivated.
The difference with the Marxist systemic model emerges at the theoretical level and has implications for the different approaches to change. What we have in the 'standard' Functional model is a system where equal weight is given to all institutions – all appear complementary. And since institutions appear to persist in the face of change they appear adaptive and selective, like their biological counterparts – organisms. Thus conformity and not conflict is stressed. It would be impossible in this approach for the parts of the system to be out of tune with one another unless provoked from outside. As Parsons' model of differentiation suggests, there is a stress (as Schneider pointed out earlier) on Darwinian evolution from simple to complex, less differentiation to more – in other words, long-term gradual change.
28
Marx, unlike the functionalists, was interested in the
internal relations of things (and here we are reminded of the criticisms of 'empiricism' against the latter). He also gave particular stress to a certain part of the system – a kind of structural dominance and turning moment (to use a mechanical analogy) in the relations and forces of production. This principle, of the dialectical relations between the economic infra-structure of society and its super-structure, should not be confused with giving mere predominance to the economic aspect of society. If it were we should be able to call Epstein, a self-proclaimed Functionalist,
29 a Marxist since for her economic change constitutes the independent variable. What the Marxist analysis does allow for is the notion of change arising from
internal 'causes' – although there are few examples to show of this valuable aspect of Marxist theory.
The treatment of so-called traditional societies by the early anthropologists at once reflects the notion of self-containedness and atemporality. What is also significant, from the critics' point of view, is the lack of mention of the colonialists in some of these monographs.
Malinowski's later statement that the "'uncontaminated' Native does not exist anywhere"
30 hardly applies to his first study on the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia. Here the presence of the "white man" is merely implied and his presence associated with the advent of peace, in place of the "inveterate" cannibalism of the olden days,
31 it is thus difficult to tell how far the presence of colonialism has affected the structure of the Kula exchange, except by close examination of the text. For example, towards the end of the book he mentions some places have given up Kula expeditions for working in the pearling industry (promoted by whites),
32 and that depopulation has affected the canoe industry of Woodlark.
33 Earlier he implies their part in the Kula ring when he mentions a certain subclan had special privileges in canoe making.
34 We are left to wonder about what happened in-between and why the island suffered depopulation. There is one other mention of the effects of colonialism where he writes that the chief of Omarakana will be the last chief of Kiriwina due to the undermining of his power base by government officials and missionaries who have stopped the chief's source of wealth through the acquisition of wives (and thus prestations of yams by her family).
35 Rather than analysing the process of this change and its implications the passage is lost in the bulk of description of 'traditional' exchange. It is implied that this is still current and unchanged.
The overall picture that Malinowski gives in this particular study of the Trobriands is thus misleading. This especially so when we consider that since 1892 the British had reversed their policy of live and let live to allow natives to be transported from one area to another for labour on the plantations in New Guinea.
36 Indeed, disease brought by the foreigners often brought havoc on the islanders and "wrought complicated changes in indigenous way of life" since the epidemics meant garden care stopped, infant mortality rose and thus an eventual decline in the working age population.
37
While Malinowski's micro picture deals with time as seasonality the larger background of colonialist activity is omitted to give a sense of timelessness.
The same sort of criticism raised against Malinowski may be applied (with caution) to Mary Douglas' article on the Lele. Despite Dalton
38 listing it as part of a growing literature on change, he is inaccurate insofar as Douglas is really talking about why the Lele didn't change.
Douglas is, like Malinowski, constructing a situation which apparently held some twenty years before fieldwork began
39 as I understand it. We do not therefore know whether the society she labels as 'traditional' has been thus for a long time or whether the life she describes for the Lele was merely a transient phase. As for Lele
resistance , her data relies on old informants for at the time of her survey, 1954, the Lele were keen to be hired for plantation labour or cutting oil-palm nuts. In 1949 to 1950 they were indeed reluctant to work, but the process of change and why it happened is described in a single enigmatic phrase: "The restrictive influence of the old social system was already weaker."
40 Only three other brief mentions are made of change but without an analysis of the effect they had or the larger framework in which they took place or which structured them. She notes that a Lele chief had tried to protect the native textile industry at the beginning of the century (by threatening death for anyone who wore European cloth) but not the circumstances surrounding it or its effects.
41 The cycle of work she describes as Lele practice is what the old men said they had done before it was modified by the agricultural officers of the Belgian Congo.
42 Lastly, that growing cash crops and selling oil palm fruits to lorries passing by the villages interfered with their hunting.
43 As an article on resistance it serves very well, but the impression is that certain very important changes and events concerning the Lele are being passed over.
Dalton is right of course in his justification of synchronic studies, that they help us gain a firm understanding of the socio-economic organisation. It would be impossible to understand the nature of the impact of Western money on subsistence economics in Africa unless we first understand how they functioned before the money incursion: "Change is always change of what is; and what is depends on what has been...".
44 Indeed Meillassoux reconstructs Guro traditional life.
Equally, to denigrate the whole 'functionalist' treatment of change by reference to just a few articles is somewhat unfair. Writers like Gulliver (1955) and Schapera (1928) did indeed mention the colonial situation, and the latter with a perceptive analysis not equalled for a number of decades. But we are faced with the fact that others, Fortes amongst them – and despite his discussion of change (1949) – underestimated the economic forces at work when they wrote about the societies they visited. Worsley (1956) in particular has taken Fortes to task for separating the social structure from economics. By describing the ideal Tallensi vision of their society, praising the solidarity of the lineage and its attachment to its land, Fortes failed to give due weight to economic events which were breaking up that ideal solidarity. Land was degenerating through overpopulation which led to movement of the lineages and selling, pledging, borrowing of land: ancestral acreage did change hands despite the sentiment Fortes mentions for it. Some were leaving home and migrating to the towns: thus new social patterns were emerging that did not conform to Fortes' model of cyclical change.
With the coming of independence of countries previously under colonial rule, some anthropologists found existing theories too limited to deal with the changes ensuing and turned to Marxist theories to provide a more satisfactory alternative to functionalism — especially in the latter's treatment of socio-economic change. This change has variously been described as a crisis caused by introspection of the discipline's previous rationale,
45 or that – in the 'liberal' view – anthropologists were now merely broadening their theoretical interest by taking a greater interest in different specialisations and theorists as "the ideas of other major sociological figures have been worked through".
46 Asad
47 criticised the functionalist defence that it was modernisation in the ex-colonial territories which had caused them to look for fresh ideas at other disciplines,
48 while Firth
49 saw the new interest in Marx rising as the power structure changed in the newly independent countries. The novel centralisation these countries were undergoing together with the emergence of the effects of development made Marxist analyses more appropriate. From this perspective the Functionalist 'school' had not then missed anything – it was the object of study which had changed.
What is significant about later writing is that, at a more general level (and keeping in mind that Malinowski talked about culture and not structure), the way change is reported as occurring differs little from those three phases of culture contact that Malinowski described before 1945.
50 While he framed his analysis in terms of acculturation, the later anthropologists still assumed a native society in equilibrium disturbed by the outside, and its subsequent adaptation marred in some instances by dysfunctional features.
Dalton
51 stated that a small-scale community cannot develop independently of a larger one, that all change means dependence on external groups. With his emphasis on exchange, any growth in income, if it is to be sustained, needs enlarged production for sale to regional markets and then the use of outside technology. What appears first is the stimulus, then the growth. The question that he mentioned should be asked (as Douglas and Epstein did) are those that Malinowski was stipulating some thirty years earlier: what features in the receiving society make for receptivity or resistance to new things, what is the impact on traditional organisation when Western innovations are adopted, and how does the initial incursion shape the changes that follow?
52 For Dalton, anthropological study differs from conventional economics in that it has time for local change studies — but by this he means how the small groups become part of the regional economy.
53 Native creativity is included in this economic anthropology, but never in the sense of changing the relations or forces of production in any radical manner by themselves.
A good example of what Dalton meant by local change studies is contained in Bohannon 's interesting account of exchange spheres amongst the Tiv. This also conforms to the Parsonian model of change: the introduction of an outside stimulus upsets the stability of a normative pattern system (the institutions).
54 Here Bohannon talks about the introduction of money into a system of three spheres of exchange. However, this general-purpose money – initially adapted to the system by making it into a fourth sphere – is contradictory to it and destroys the whole system.
55 The institutions in Bohannon's equilibrium model are held in check by other institutions and when disturbed were "swamped" or spread to spheres from which they were formerly excluded.
56
Epstein's article on two Indian villages sought to explain why structural changes occurred in one village as opposed to another when various external economic opportunities for development were presented to them.
57 Just as for Bohannon it was the market aspect of economic relations that constituted a catalyst, for Epstein it was a matter of diversification.
58 Since Dalena was unable to benefit from a new irrigation scheme, need for cash (I presume) led to diversification in the economic structure where men sought work in the town and expanded their network of relationships. The interdependence between Peasant masters and Untouchable clients decreased as income from the town meant that cultivation of (what I take to be) marginal land became seen as uneconomical for the Peasants with respect to returns from the land 'paying for' the obligations they owed their clients. Thus with, and concomitant to, the closer integration into the wider economy hereditary economic relations broke down. However, in Wangala the land was such that the new irrigation scheme was compatible with promoting agricultural growth and, through cash crops, obtaining income without a change in the hereditary relations. But, if we look closer at Epstein's account, we do see incipient structural change relating to the economic role of wives, since now (as in many other countries
59 ) men were able to do without their help and by instituting the ideal, where women stayed at home, could acquire prestige. In another passage Epstein mentions that the political structure persisted because the economic structure did. However, she does mention briefly that two younger, economically powerful lineages have combined against two ritually and politically dominant, but economically declining lineages.
60 Economic status here becomes political dominance. But is it a case of a new development where economic and political aspects are combined? What are the processes that have led to the increase in the economic power of these two lineages? By concentrating on the persistence in general of the agricultural technology and land use in Wangala Epstein has, it appears from this article, failed to give due weight to more subtle alterations in the balance of economic power.
Two important conclusions may be drawn from this. One, it is obvious that Epstein does explore the changes in the village in reasonable detail, but, two, it is her concentration on economic determinism in its technological aspects that allows her to reject certain alterations in structure as not relevant to her thesis. We therefore see that any inadequacy here stems from the initial decision of what constitutes significant data to assess change. Further, this problem is not confined to Functional analysis. Meillassoux
61 mentions with respect to the Guro that the change in economic relations occurs when a community goes over to agricultural production. Thus the feature he picks out as significant for a change in relations – technology – differs little from Epstein's independent variable.
The criticism that all functionalist accounts are static appears therefore to be unfounded when we consider the above examples. It may be justifiable to say that they provide a certain model for change that eliminates other possibilities for alteration in the economy, for example, internal motivation – but we must ask whether other examinations of the processes of economic change in its relational, technological, and so on, forms are any more enlightening.
If we compare Firth (upon whom I hang the label structural-functionalist rather uneasily, but for the purposes of this essay adequate, I think) with some Marxist discussions of change the difference appears, at a more general level, to be astonishingly little. Both see change as coming from the outside, both see their societies as initially constituting an enclosed system, but for Firth it is the market which acts as catalyst, leading to diversification and alteration in relations of economic power.
Comparing him with Meillassoux here, the latter describes the evolution of the relations of production from individual elders and juniors to relations between socially defined groups, and the category of elder developing into aristocratic lineage with prestations due to the elder now becoming tributes due to lord.
62 This is concomitant with a development from kinship as a basis for economic relations to its being used as an ideology for supporting political domination. But how does this happen? With the domination of a foreign lineage.
63 Like Firth (and the Tikopeans) he has set up the Guro as an enclosed system and, like Firth, the abuse of the kinship economic base and the tensions inherent in it act to change relations of economic power. In Meillassoux's case the tensions lie in the power of the elder's control of the reproduction of wealth.
Firth has set up a tension-management model where the antagonistic kinship interests were balanced by strong institutionalised sanctions (ties of common residence, economic co-operation, and so on.
64 The missionaries upset this by disturbing customs which kept the population growth under control.
65 Thus with rising population pressure, the egalitarian land tenure system becomes an issue of control by the lineages
66 and at the same time possibilities of increased earnings through migration alters the lineage balance of power.
67 Like the Guro elders whose power increased after domination, the Tikopean chief received backing from the missionaries and increased his power while still maintaining his position under the old ritual ideology. Associated with his rise in power was the reduction in the ritual elders' influence – which had previously acted as a counterweight to him.
68 Lineages were depleted of membership by migration, other lineages increased their wealth through remittances, the alteration in relations between the seniors' control of the younger men's economic product – where income from the migrants changed to one of gift and not by right – all contributed to this.
69 First sees his two accounts of the Tikopeans, published 1936 and 1959, as "dual synchronic" rather than diachronic.
70 But in effect it is as detailed a documentation of the changes as we can expect from some Marxists.
The similarity of evolutionary stages between substantivism and Marxism has already been mentioned. The classical model of the encroachment of capitalism on 'traditional' societies – a dualism criticised by Frank
71 – equally bears resemblance in its stages to the model proffered by Dalton, where the market invades the colonised territory.
I am not here attempting to suggest that Marxism (or the New Left) and Functionalism have anything more in common than in some of the formal aspects represented in the actual anthropologist's reports on economic change. What I am trying to indicate though is that criticisms of Functionalism as static bear further qualification. What we have is less that the real centre of the criticism lies in the 'statism' of Functionalism than in the interpretation placed upon the reasons for change of 'non-change'.
72
Firth,
73 Gulliver,
74 or Epstein can talk of 'modernising' forces and the benevolent attitudes of Government towards the native (
pace the unfortunate results it sometimes had), and document the subsequent changes. The New Left might talk in terms of exploitation and world capitalist economy. As Dalton comments, some studies described degenerative changes, but this development was not a result of economic exploitation but a "'disintegration of cultural environment of the victim'"
75 The crisis arose since there were no new ways to reintegrate society, and what people were witnessing was a malfunctioning of the system.
1 Schneider 1974:4, 21, 19.
2 Cf. Cooper 1978:142-143, also Seddon & Coppans (1978:17) who remark that Polanyi was indebted to Marx and admired by French Marxists.
3 Schneider 1975:284, 285.
4 Cohen 1967:111-115 also connects substantivism with evolutionism.
5 Barber mentions (1967) that the historical forbears of these particular formalists – the neo-classicists – were not concerned with themes of long-period change, but with the results of short-term decision making to explain fluctuations in market prices and to use their model to practical ends — their aim was pragmatic and not descriptive. Thus we could say that the formalists' treatment of the economic system is both static and diachronic: by setting up a closed system the effects of change could then be gauged.
6 Cook 1968:212.
7 Cf. Donham 1981:536.
8 Seddon 1978:1.
9 Firth 1967:21-24, Dalton 1969:194.
10 Malinowski 1945:44.
11 Harris 1968.
12 Malinowski 1922:xvi.
Firth (1967:1-2) explains this concentration on the social system's side of the economy – the relationships between people, and not people and things – as a result of the highly abstract nature of economic analysis, that Western and primitive societies were considered too different and the latter too small for the application of formal economic theory.
13 Maquet in Schneider 1975:271.
14 Seddon op cit: 8-14.
15 Anderson in Forster 1973:31).
See also Leach (1954) Political Systems of Highland Burma, p.7, where he states that borrowing concepts from Durkheim made anthropologists "prejudiced in favour of societies which show symptoms of 'functional integration', 'social solidarity'", etc. Both these views of anthropological history demonstrate the two biases: in that the New Left considered the Functionalists ignored the 'disorder', but Leach considered they just avoided 'anomic' societies.
16 Seddon op cit.
17 Harris 1968:527.
18 Malinowski, for instance, held seminars at London University specially aimed at the missionary and colonial administrator (Karberry intro in Malinowski 1945:7). Radcliffe-Brown, according to Firth (1972:25-26), wanted it to be relevant to "win funds and recognition by government, and for the purposes of British imperialism". However, he rejects the accusation that it was in any way a "bastard of colonialism".
19 Seddon 1978:14.
20 Forster 1973:37.
21 Malinowski 1945:7.
22 Ibid: 27-28.
This, however, makes more sense if we consider Malinowski's relationship to the Government. For Mair, present-day change was a pathological condition and distinguished it from the normal, well-balanced phase. Malinowski, on the other hand, seems to regard it as beneficial. It would be difficult not to see in this the principle of not biting the hand that feeds you!
23 Seddon 1978:14.
24 Talcott Parsons (1978:57).
25 Cf. Maranda 1972:329, Dore 1961:68.
26 Meillassoux 1978/1964:321-322.
27 Talcott Parsons 1961:85ff.
28 The existence of change could not be denied though, and a number of writers attempted to accommodate this into their equilibrium-based system. Both Wilson and Geertz accepted the existence of tensions, but then saw the goal of the system to be 'tension management'. Or the conflict-inciting factors themselves can be viewed as functional in the statistical sense (Gluckman, for example). Other Functionalists support the notion of certain dysfunctional factors (Coser) which, under certain circumstances, cannot be accommodated – for instance, if the system is not flexible enough – and can thus lead to drastic structural change.
29 Epstein 1962:481.
30 Malinowski 1945:2-3.
31 Malinowski 1922:37.
32 Ibid: 500.
33 Ibid: 498-499.
34 Ibid: 231.
35 Ibid: 464-465.
36 Morrell 1960:417.
37 Farrell 1972:38ff.
The islands with few resources were, in the main, left alone from economic exploitation. But missionaries, for example, on Dobu, were constantly active; as Firth also points out with respect to Tikopea.
38 Dalton 1969:194.
39 Douglas 1962:338.
40 Ibid: 338.
41 Ibid: 334.
42 Ibid: 329-330.
43 Ibid.
44 Dalton 1969:194.
45 Cf. Forster 1973:24.
46 Firth 1972:24.
47 Asad 1973:10-12.
48 For example, Dalton 1971:181-182.
49 Firth 1972:6-7.
50 Here change was introduced from the outside and consisted of "adoption or rejection, the transformation of certain institutions and the growth of new ones". Conflict, if it occurred, resulted from the contact between the cultures as institutions were modified.
51 Dalton 1969:220 & 213.
52 Ibid: 195.
53 Ibid: 213.
54 Parsons op cit: 86-87.
55 Bohannon 1968:228.
56 A more substantive example of this 'destruction' could be seen in the way the market economy took over. With the introduction of colonial 'peace' trading developed as did the extension of market networks — going outside kin and friends was no longer dangerous. Before the introduction of peace, markets had existed as political entities with the pull between lineage and non-lineage principles working against one lineage dominating several markets. The foreign administration had removed this political function by creating offices. These became desirable ends and, together with the need to acquire cash for taxes, led eventually to the domination of non-lineage principles and trade (Bohannon ibid:242-244).
57 Epstein 1971:460-462.
58 Ibid: 463-467.
59 For example, Lebanon and Sudan.
60 Epstein op cit: 467-468.
61 Meillassoux 1972:101.
62 Ibid.
63 1978:166-167.
And from thence the development of class relations. Further change was due to the expansion of capitalism and transition of kin to commercial relations of production under colonialist power (Cooper 1978:144).
64 Firth 1936:57 & 64.
65 Ibid: 414ff.
66 Firth 1959:156ff.
67 Ibid: 251, 252.
68 Ibid: 226-227 & 297-298.
69 Ibid: 345.
70 Ibid: 22.
71 Frank 1967:238-242. Frank mentions that Marxist and bourgeois town born theories are similar: both maintain society has two independent sectors, one modern and capitalist, the other agrarian, backward and feudal.
72 Malinowski, Dalton, Gulliver or Epstein would not, given their background, regard an apparent traditional society in a colonial territory as anything more than one which had adapted to the cash economy. Marxists, on the other hand, would perhaps look at the wider relations of domination and suggest that the 'traditional' society was being maintained in a subtle manner by capitalism, for example, by using traditional kin functions, which provide for the welfare of their members, to bolster capitalism.
73 Firth 1959:29.
74 Gulliver 1955:15fn.
75 Dalton 1969:214-217, quoting Polanyi.
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