Pooling as a contemporary phenomenon

1. As a development sociologist, one is neither fully involved in the sociological tradition, nor a full-fledged anthropologist. Normally this is an uncomfortable position, like that of any m?tis, but it also enables one, from time to time, to suggest links. This paper is about three such suggestions. One is that pooling, or redistribution, is a contemporary form of exchange that is rather widespread in industrialized as well as developing societies. The second suggestion is that four ideal-types of pooling system can be distinguished which differ mutually with regard to the rules that the participants appear to follow. The construction of the typology is based on both anthropological and sociological authors. The types are figurations, to borrow a term from Elias (1971), that is to say, patterns of relations between interdependent people whose actions are deter mined by certain rules. As models the types can be used cross culturally, I believe. The third suggestion is that a considerable number of patterns of interdependent relationships, from peasant households to socialist nation-states, can be profitably analyzed with the help of the pooling typology. Perhaps one can even go further and maintain that all forms of cooperation are also forms of pooling, and that accordingly problems relating to cooperation may be comprehended by means of the latter concept. This is important, since processes of modernization in developing countries are marked not only by an extension of direct exchange in markets, but also by the introduction of new, and the modification of existing forms of cooperation

Economics · Epistemology · Extension (predicate logic · Ideal type · Interdependence · Modernization theory · Peasant · Phenomenon · Political science · Pooling · Positive economics · Redistribution (election · Social science · Sociology · Typology · Anthropology · Computer Science · Economic Theory and Institutions · Global Economic and Social Development · Law · Philosophy · Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition

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