Economics of Marketing Systems

Models From Economic Geography

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2296017
AutoresCarol A Smith (autor de correspondencia)
Año1974
Volumen3
Número1
Páginas167-201
Fecha de publicación1974-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnnual Review of Anthropology (BOOK_SERIES)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0084-6570 • E-ISSN: 1545-4290
EditorialAnnual Reviews (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1146/annurev.an.03.100174.001123
OpenAlexW2160964479
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas57
Referencias citadas37

The economics of marketing systems seems a likely subject for anthropological research, particularly for students of agrarian (peasant) economies and societies. As Mintz stated some time ago (92), marketing systems are major arenas of economic decision making, as well as mechanisms of social articulation in societies. Yet by and large anthropologists do not tackle markets as systemic phenomena. They either produce ethnographies of individual mar ketplaces and their settings, e.g. Dewey (31), Fox (41), Sinha (116), Waterbury ( 142), and many of the contributors to Markets in Africa ( 1 5); or they debate certain aspects of peasant market exchange, e.g. Belshaw (7), Nash (98), Beals (3, 5), Cook (28), Swetnam (133). In both kinds of studies marketing is usually described from a peasant or peasant-community perspective. The assumption seems to be that the economic problems of concern are common to all levels of analysis and thus universal and general. But as Samuelson points out (III), this is a Type 1 error or the fallacy of composition-what is true of a part is not necessarily true of the whole. In the case of market studies, this flawed assumption results in unusually parochial problem orientations such that the general dynamics of market (and economic) organization are not treated. To make the problems and concerns of economic anthropology productive and of general interest, we must examine such things as marketing systems (and economic systems) as well as markets (and economies). Skinner's study of marketing and social structure in rural China (l18) stands as a notable exception to anthropological parochialism in market studies. The system perspective provided by central-place theory allowed Skinner to move beyond particular events of market behavior to a general model of market process. This perspective also allowed him to view peasant market behavior in its proper

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