In: Economics
What conclusions might we draw about the Substantivist-Formalist Debate itself? Draw from observations by Frank Cancian, Hann & Hart, and lecture to summarize problems of each position. What issues may have been missed entirely by both positions?
Formalists (aka rationalists) consider "primitive" economies as underdeveloped versions of modern capitalist economies, with the premises that all humans are rational and all behavior can be explained rationally. The desire to maximize profit is rational and universal. Depending upon social structural organization--kin-mode, tributary, or rationalist--people follow rules consistent with the "principle of least effort" and caluculated self-interest that transcend culture, though the rules or protocols might be different for each level of development.
Substantivists (aka culturalists or "romantics") view economics as a category of culture as a "sense-making system" that determine human behavior; economics is organized by domestic groups and kinship relations. Economic behavior is a "cultural construction." Our bourgeois economic values are not universal, argues Marshall Sahlins, they are a product of culture. "The primitive order is generalized. A clear differentiation of spheres into social and economic does not there appear." Marshall Sahlin's, Stone Age Economics, p. 182.