Economic organization

Abstract

An economic system can be divided into three basic components: production, exchange, and consumption. Most things that are produced have two basic types of values: an economic value and a social value. Economic values can be immediate, diminishing, stable, or increasing. Generalized reciprocity is rather informal, where the precise value of the material not specifically calculated nor is the time of repayment specified. In large societies, any redistribution would have to be adjunct to another exchange system. Although barter can involve just the direct exchange of a good or service, such as ten fish for one pig, it commonly involves the use of money. Barter is common in most societies, even in Western ones such as buying a car or a house that involves personal negotiation over price. Societies are commonly characterized by anthropologists (and others) by their basic subsistence strategy, generally the most visible or important aspect of how they make their living.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.