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Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is an amalgamation of economics and anthropology . It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. [ 1 ]
Political economy in anthropology is the application of the theories and methods of historical materialism to the traditional concerns of anthropology, including but not limited to non-capitalist societies. Political economy introduced questions of history and colonialism to ahistorical anthropological theories of social structure and culture.
The formalist vs. substantivist debate was not between anthropologists and economists, however, but a disciplinary debate largely confined to the journal Research in Economic Anthropology. In many ways, it reflects the common debates between etic and emic explanations as defined by Marvin Harris in cultural anthropology of the period.
An anthropological approach to economic processes allows us to critically examine the cultural biases inherent in the principles of modern economics. Anthropological linguistics is a related field that looks at the terms we use to describe economic relations and the ecologies they are set within. Many anthropological economists (or economic ...
In this branch of anthropology, the term development refers to the social action made by different agents (e.g. institutions, businesses, states, or independent volunteers) who are trying to modify the economic, technical, political, or/and social life of a given place in the world, especially in impoverished, formerly colonized regions.
This economic specialization leads to divisions of labor. The economic transition from an agricultural economy to a division of labor is the most basic explanation of how societies go from primitive to complex. [5] Before the rise of complex societies, there was little need for a strong, centralized state government. The increase in populations ...
Cultural ecology as developed by Steward is a major subdiscipline of anthropology. It derives from the work of Franz Boas and has branched out to cover a number of aspects of human society, in particular the distribution of wealth and power in a society, and how that affects such behaviour as hoarding or gifting (e.g. the tradition of the potlatch on the Northwest North American coast).
Today the dominant form of economic organization at the world level is based on market-oriented mixed economies. [5] An economic system can be considered a part of the social system and hierarchically equal to the law system, political system, cultural and so on.