This is a powerpoint presentation based on ideas presented by Gudeman in his article Community and economy : economy's base

1. Community and economy:
economy’s base
BY STEPHEN GUDEMAN
PRESENTATION PREPARED BY ANGELITA B. RESURRECCION
ANTHRO 280
SPECIAL PROBLEMS IN PHILIPPINE COMMUNITY

2. The Context : Gudeman as author
Education :
◦ Ph.D. Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, 1970.
Teaches at Department of Anthropology
◦ Universtiy of Minnesota
Specialties
◦ Culture and economy, Latin America, Social theory
Relevant publications
◦ The Anthropology of Economy: Community, Market, and Culture. Gudeman, Stephen,
Blackwell, 2001.
◦ Economics as Culture. Gudeman, Stephen, Routledge, 1986.
◦ The Demise of a Rural Economy. Gudeman, Stephen, Routledge, 1978.
Research Activities
◦ Mutuality and Trade
◦ Cultural economics

3. Gist of article
•
Economists view humans as rational and
solitary agents, selecting goals based on
constraints and judgements on what will
maximize self-interest or welfare. Trade is
impersonal.
•
Anthropologists view humans as social
beings, who build and destroy relationships,
communicating by language and materials
things. Trade is social and cultural.
•
The anthropological view requires a new set
of conceptual tools built on an
understanding the base as one that
underlies all economies and is connected to
capital.

4. Two realms of
economy
COMPLEXLY INTERTWINED WITH INDISTINCT BORDERS

5. Economy
Acquisition
Production
Resources
Goods/
Services
Transfer
Use
Resources
Survival
Market-like exchanges too!
Social allotment, apportionment, inheritance, dowry, bridewealth, bloodwealth,
indenture, reciprocity

6. Market & Community

7. Community
NETWORKS OF RELATIONSHIPS
Small groups (actual or imagined) with a
common interest
Community
3
Base : connects people in the network of
relationships
Linked to economic processes, but not all
performances are economic but also
social/cultural.
Community
2
Community
1

8. Markets : Impersonal trade or
exchange
Products/ Material things/ Services
Money, support, donations
But! Happen in communities that enable it
Rules of trade/communal agreements : size dependent

9. What each realm offers the other
COMMUNITY
MARKETS
Security and a rampart against
uncertainty
Solvent of community.
But can be home to inequalities, the
exercise of unconstrained power and
exploitation
Each is a partial critique of
the other
Offers new connections to material things,
services and others
◦
◦
◦
◦
Enjoying freedom
Enhancing standard of living, longevity
Degrading the environment
Creating inequalities and marginalization
Breaks immutable bonds among people forged
in material goods and services

10. Concept : The Base
SHARED INTERESTS THAT HOLD COMMUNITY TOGETHER

11. Nature of the base
Shared heritage formed locally and historically. Social & material space people make.
Transmitted through
Socialisation
Formal and informal teaching
Intentional or unintentional acts
Consist of entities that people appropriate, make, allocate and use in relation to one
another
Internal to the person
May cover skills and , knowledge and practices necessary for market trade.
External to the person
May include material accumulations to support future returns for consumption & sale – house, crops
May specify space in which activities may occur - land, library, sea, communication system
May epitomise a prototypical or essential good on whose existence a community relies – symbol

12. Skills and knowledge
The base is a people’s heritage of knowledge
and skills, often developed in relation to the
material space they occupy.
◦ Shared resource (lighthouse): each use not
depleting another’s
◦ Common resource (research, internet) : one
contribution builds on another
◦ Limited resource (guild, trade group) : skills
limited to the group as private property.
What happens when
knowledge is privatized and
turned to capital advantage?

13. Distribution and allocation of the
base
• Distribution
• Poverty means having no base.
• Lack of base afflicts large numbers of people.
• Allocation : when and who uses the base, for
market and community
• Prohibited spaces
• Regulations for use

14. Justification : cultural stories
SYMBOLS
• Prototypical good
• Essential for community to exist
Contributions
from distant
past
Other
peoples’
Contributions
Person’s base

15. Person & the base
PERSON AS INDIVIDUAL
• Connection to others only by the constraints
they impose on means in his/her utility
function
• Dividual (Strathern)
• People seen as divisible and porous or
unbounded

16. Person-in-community
• People seen in relation to others and the base
• Personhood shared with others, repository of
features from others
• Connections forged through bonds
◦ Kinship
◦ Friendship
◦ Residence
• Identity is defined in terms of that which they
share.

17. Dialectic : Being and Making
EXAMPLE FROM PANAMA
EXAMPLE FROM CUBA
• A person’s base reflected factors both within
and without, reflecting
• A person’s base (access to physical resources)
can be
• Community of origin (ancestry)
• Community now current ( family ‘breeding’)
• Held and distributed by the state
• Obtained by personal ties on which one relies

18. Implications for
economic
anthropology
ADDRESS COMMUNITY AND WELL-BEING AS PART OF
ECONOMY

19. Conceptual : Base concept to better
understand intertwining of market &
community
• Redistribution
• Communal processes of allotment of the base and apportionment of flows from it
• Reciprocity
• Transfer of base that leads to communal inclusion in various degrees
• Autarky
• Communal autonomy, closed economy, self-sufficiency
• Transfers (bridewealth, dowry)
• Ways of rearranging the base and maintaining community, modes of local power

20. Practical : Critique /provide
alternative account of economy’s
dynamics
1. Rethink the meaning of ‘development’ and well-being, local participation and
discourse.
•
IMF Loans (Rate of Return, No deficit spending, Inflation) vv build a base, innovate,
2. Environment (conceived as base) lies outside market arena
•
Limited rights to log, mine, use water, fish vs communities specify actions and products
about what must remain and what cannot be used
3. Address the notion of property in terms of social connections (community)
rather than just a relationship between person and thing (market)
•
•
Base is not market property.
Every sale, every purchase is a market act, and a communal action that affects identity

21. Conclusion
STUDY & UNDERSTAND CONTOURS OF MARKETCOMMUNITY INTERACTIONS, INCORPORATING THE BASE
CONCEPT