Capital, Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies

Description

Contemporary problems of economic and social change have obliged social scientists from different fields to learn much about each others' work as well as about the specific problems they are together seeking to solve. The bearing of economic conditions on the character of a social system has become more apparent to anthropologists, and, similarly, economists have become more aware of the relevance of social factors to economic decisions. This pioneering book is at the point of contact between these two disciplines, presenting detailed studies from many societies of the interaction between social and economic relationships. The studies in this volume--all by social anthropologists --focus on the formation and management of capital, since this process is central to the economic functioning and growth of all societies. With this central theme, the essays cover a very wide geographic range and an equally wide range of social and economic structures. The book begins with an essay by Firth, who provides an extended outline discussion of the main problems and issues to be covered, and ends with an essay by Yamey, who provides summarizing comments and queries. The volume will be especially useful to those concerned with the problems and prospects of economic and social change in underdeveloped areas, in addition to economists and anthropologists concerned with what each can learn from the other. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page EDITORS' PREFACE CONTENTS THE AUTHORS 1. Capital, Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies:A Viewpoint from Economic Anthropology 2. Some Aspects of Credit, Saving and Investment ina 'Non-Monetary' Economy (Rossel Island) 3. Personal Capital Formation among the Tolai ofNew Britain 4. Capital, Investment and the Social Structure of aPastoral Nomad Group in South Persia 5. Capital, Saving and Credit among Lao Peasants 6. Capital, Saving and Credit in Highland Orissa(India) 7. Capital, Saving and Credit in a Malay PeasantEconomy 8. Capital, Saving and Credit among Indigenous RiceFarmers and Immigrant Vegetable Farmers inHong Kong's New Territories 9. Institutions for Capital Formation and Distributionamong Fijians 10. Rural Local Savings Associations (Maori Komiti)in New Zealand's Far North 11. Capital, Credit and Saving in Javanese Marketing 12. The Employment of Capital by Market Womenin Haiti 13 Capital Saving, and Creditin a Guatemalan and a MexicanIndian Peasant Society 14 Ethnic Difference andPeasant Economyin British Guiana 15 Capital, Saving and CreditamongMauritian Indians1 16 Capital Formation, Saving and CreditinIndian Agricultural Society 17 The Study of Peasant Economic Systems :Some Concluding Commentsand Questions BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX