Economic and Political Anthropology
Economic anthropology studies how societies produce, distribute and consume, while political anthropology studies power, authority, order and conflict. The exam tests subsistence types, exchange systems, and the band-tribe-chiefdom-state sequence.
Subsistence and exchange
Modes: foraging, pastoralism, horticulture (shifting cultivation), intensive agriculture, industrialism. Exchange: reciprocity (generalized, balanced, negative), redistribution (goods flow to a centre and back), and market exchange. Mauss showed that gifts create obligations to give, receive and repay. The formalist-substantivist debate asks whether neoclassical scarcity models fit non-market economies.
Political organisation
Service's typology: band (small, egalitarian foragers), tribe (village-level, horticultural, segmentary lineages), chiefdom (ranked, centralised redistribution), state (centralised, stratified, monopoly of force). Distinguish power (ability to impose) from authority (legitimated right). Social control may be informal (gossip, shame) or formal (courts, police). Legal anthropology compares dispute settlement.
Worked example
A Kurumba family returns from honey collection and distributes comb to every household without keeping accounts. This is generalized reciprocity. If a feast is held and guests are expected to bring grain later, the exchange is balanced reciprocity. If a trader offers salt only at an exploitative rate to a group with no alternative, that is negative reciprocity. The reasoning turns on timing, obligation and expectation of return.
Traps
Do not describe foragers as permanently starving or 'primitive'; bands are not states; not all tribes are egalitarian; do not assume gift-giving is altruistic; do not apply market assumptions to all economies.