In Economics, What Is Mutualism?

Economic anthropology is a branch of cultural anthropology that studies the economic life, economic systems, and evolution laws of various human societies. Its founder was Bronislaw Malinowski. After studying the Kura trading circle, he believed that the purpose of the so-called economic behavior of traditional western economics-the principle of making money or obtaining use value, was in the primitive economy. It does not exist; primitive economy is just a reflection of other social behaviors, such as kinship system and ritual behavior; people in primitive society engage in economic activities to maintain and complete interpersonal social relationships and responsibilities.

Economic anthropology

Economic anthropology explores the processes of production, distribution, and consumption in different societies. Production is the process of mining resources and transforming them into useful items and behaviors, including food, shelter, crafts, and symbols from totem poles to pyramids. Livelihood methods are often divided into collection, hunting, horticulture, agriculture, and industry. Humans use simple techniques and tools during the acquisition phase. Horticulture refers to the cultivation of hundreds of domesticated animals' domesticated and domesticated plants, when iron tools were used. Agriculture as a whole refers to the agriculture of farmers, which mainly grows one or more crops, such as rice, wheat, and corn. all of these

For a long time, economic anthropology and political anthropology, religious anthropology, kinship research, etc. have been called the four branches of social (cultural) anthropology. However, this division is only for the needs of today's classification of disciplines. In fact, based on the anthropological holistic methodologies, there are not only clear boundaries between economics, politics, religion, and kinship systems. In many cases, they are even clear. One, such as the case from Oceania, shows that the so-called economic phenomenon is actually the content of religious practice in local society, such as "

For more than a century, anthropologists have studied the economic lives and institutions of people around the world. The results of their research and reflection on economy have generally stayed within the discipline and have not been available in an accessible form to a broader readership.

The main schools of economic anthropology are divided into different schools of economic anthropology. On the one hand, they should adhere to the "Four Basic Consensus" principle, that is, theories are basically the same, the research methods are basically the same, the policy ideas are basically the same, and the interest claims Basically the same; on the other hand, we should also pay attention to the generalized development trend of the discipline after the 1980s, then economic anthropology should be divided into formalist schools, realist schools, neo-Marxist schools, and new generalists (or called Neo-comprehensive) four main factions. A summary of the schools of economic anthropology theory The formalist school is the oldest, most influential and most popular school in economic anthropology. Its characteristics are: based on western economics theories of market economy research and western economics methodologies as its own methodological guidance, consciously applying the above theories and methods to the study of people s economic behavior and economic life in Western society field. There are many representatives of the formalist school, such as Fushi in the 1940s and 1950s, Cook in the 1960s and 1970s, Snyder in the 1980s, and Pletner at the present stage. The realist school, which emerged from the wave of academic debate in the 1960s, is another school with a large number and extensive influence in the economic anthropology field besides the formalist school. Since Hungarian economic history thinker Karl Polanyi was the founder of this school, it is also known as the Polanyi school. The most prominent feature of the realist school is that they do not agree with the formalist views on economic behavior and economic systems, but advocate that economic issues should be examined from the perspective of the interaction and exchange relations between society, ecological natural environment and human beings. Polanyi put forward the important point of view of "the economy is embedded in society", considering that all aspects of human society are intricately intertwined. Therefore, although it may not be noticed by people, it is caused by kinship, religion or society In fact, the behaviors of people determined by customs actually imply economic functions such as production, distribution, and exchange; and for each person's natural survival, society needs to continuously supply goods and services, and thus form a certain structure. A structured lifestyle is the "economy" in the eyes of realists. The neo-Marxist school The so-called neo-Marxist school or Marx's economic anthropology is divided into two major branches, namely the French school represented by Marice Godelier, Claudio Merassex, and others. The American school represented by Kenshard, Rick Wolf, and Sid Nimitz. In the early 1980s, the New Broad School (New Comprehensive School), the famous scholar Harold Snedell and others co-founded the Economic Anthropology Association (SEA). In the 1980s and 1990s, in this trend of generalized development, a group of scholars emerged in economic anthropology. They both agreed with a more systematic and comprehensive use of theoretical analysis methods in formal economics and emphasized the tradition of realist anthropology Empirical investigation; although they are not neo-Marxists, they are influenced by Marxist doctrine. These scholars with broad research horizons and multiple theoretical perspectives are difficult to accurately classify into any of the three aforementioned schools. Representatives of the New Broad School include Richard Wilk, who inherited Sneijder's faculty at Indiana University (also the current president of the SEA Society) and economic anthropologist John Clark (John Clammer) and so on.