Brief Communications

MAXIMIZATION A S WOKM, STHATEGY, A N D THEORY:

A COMMENT O K
PROGRAMMATIC
STATEMENTS
IN ECONOMIC
ANTHROPOLOGY
The impetus for this comment is Scott Cooks paper, The Obsolete AntiMarket Mentality: 4 Critique of the Substantive Approach to Economic
Anthropology, in this issue. I n it he shows (with more or less success depending on your point of view) : 1. That most societies by now participate in active
market economies, and that therefore any significance the substantivist
position may have for the study of non-market economies is of little importance as a guide to present field research (Section 11); 2. That the substantivists have not understood economic theory and are unfair and unscientific in their rejection of the possibility that it will be useful in the study
of non-Western economies (Section I11 and V); 3. That the substantivists,
and especially Polanyi as their leader, are romanticists who see primitives
as altruistic and naturally cooperative (Section IV). Cooks paper, and the
many that have gone before it? in this debate, show that many questionable
statements have been made by both teams. The literature is heavy with
lengthy quotes showing that we) understand and they do not, but it often
seems that the insolvable problems are being discussed while the basic issues
from which they stem are never joined. I n this paper I will not quote or cite
extensively; further textual analysis will only make it more difficult for the
next man. Rather I will tr). to suggest that there are a t least two legitimate
positions, and that the issues really a t stake are not the ones that the combatants explicitly address themselves to. For the most part I will assume the
reader is familiar with the literature being discussed.
ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY

The formalists say that economics in the study of the allocation of scarce
means to alternative ends. That is, it is the study of economizing, or the way
in which people maximize personal satisfactions. Economists have some
theories about how people do this, say the formalists, and there is no reason
to think that these theories are not general enough to be helpful in the study
of non-Western societies. I n fact, say the formalists, some scholars have shown
that they are helpful in understanding events in non-Western societies.
No, say the substantivists, economic theory is based on the study of
market economies where the point is maximization of profit by both parties
to a transaction, and non-Western societies are not all like that, so the theory
is not general enough and will not apply to non-Western societies. We must
study the unique configurations of non-Western societies, their institutions.
Econoniic anthropology is about the institutions surrounding the provision of
the material necessities of existence to man.

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But, says the formalist, you cannot prove that non-Western man does not
maximize, he clearly is subject to some kinds of scarcity, if only the scarcity
of human energy; and therefore he must allocate scarce means to alternative
ends. And besides, material and non-material goods are often exchanged
for each other, so you cannot hold to your definition of economic anthropology.
The bystander may think: Yes, but if everybody maximizes and the realms
of material and non-material goods cannot be separated, economic anthropology must be the study of all human behavior, and that seems strange. I
thought it was a small subfield of anthropology.
Insofar as this caricature is accurate, it should be clear that:
1. Some people seem to be interested in maximization processes, and others
in the study of institutions, but they all say they are interested i n whether
economic theory is applicable to non-Western societies.
2. Neither approach, given its starting point, provides an intuitively
satisfactory definition which delimits the field of economic anthropology, and
the effort to do this is probably hopeless.
The controversy, it seems to me, has little to do with the applicability
of economic theory to non-Western society. I t has to do with the belief by
one group that maximization is a good way to approach human behavior, and
the belief by the other group that human institutions are varied and difficult
to categorize, and that many Leconomicones are quite distinct from certain
Western institutions in which maximization of something (usually profit)
is the norm. The root of the misunderstanding is best seen by examining three
meanings of maximization.
MAXIMIZATION AS A NORM

There are certain Western institutions which involve maximization as a

norm. For example, in a buying-selling situation both parties are expected, in
fact enjoined, to allocate resources so as to maximize their profits, I n this
case, maximization is part of an institution; it is a norm. The buyer role and
the seller role are institutionalized roles.
As I understand them, the substantivists argue that there are many
institutions in which maximization is not a norm. Presumably this is true in
any society. Furthermore, they say, in non-Western society, in many of the
situations involving provision of the material necessities of life, it is not a
norm for the parties to a transaction t o maximize material things or any nonmaterial things that may be exchanged for material things. This contention of
the substantivists has nothing to do with whether the parties to the transaction are maximizing or not. The parties almost certainly may be seen as
maximizing adherence to some norm or set of norms, but none of these norms
is itself a prescription to maximize i n terms of the very objecls being exchanged.
This contrast is seen in two American institutions: buying in a store and
giving a Christmas gift. In the store it is considered appropriate for the
owner and the customer to maximize in terms of money (getting the most
or giving the least), and this is the norm (in the context of other norms that

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bar fraud). I n the exchange of Christmas gifts (in my American culture)

it is appropriate to maximize equality of exchange. Given adjustments for
obvious differences in resources, both parties to the exchange are most satisfied when they manage to guess correctly the level a t which they are exchanging with each other. Individuals who grossly deviate from the established
standard of the relationship, or people who imply that their gifts are uncommonly expensive, are not behaving appropriately and are sanctioned.
Granted that, in contradiction of Iolan\ris romanticist views, the exchange
of Christmas gifts may be full!. as antagonistic, competitive and unaltruistic
as the purchase of an article in a store, what is interesting about the two
situations in that in one maximization of the objects being exchanged is the
norm, and in the other it is not.
When, in non-Western societies, substantial quantities of life-sustaining
goods which would be considered economic goods in Western societies are
transferred in the absence of a norm that both parties maximize the quantity
of such goods finally in its possession, it is the absence of that norm that
is interesting. The fact that the interaction may be seen as economizing or
maximizing in terms of some set of means and ends like yams, kinship obligations and prestige does not obviate the normative or institutional differences.
MAXIMIZATION AS A STRATEGY

That the participants in a transaction can be seen as maximizing something is true by definition. Maximization is one of the standard restatements
of the a priori truth that all human behavior is patterned; that all human
behavior has a reason. This use of maximization as a scientific strategy
involves seeking out the norms or motives (or whatever the investigator sees
as the impetus of behavior) and attempting to rank order them so as to see
the behavior as the (conscious or unconscious) maximization of these things.
They become the ends being maximized. When using maximization as a
scientific strategy, the investigator knows that his analysis is complete when he
has stated the norms, motives, etc. and the conditions (means and their limits,
the scarce factors) such that every act may be seen as a predictable maximization of the ends. If he cannot see the act as maximization, he immediately
assumes that his statements of norms, motives, etc., and conditions are not
yet correct and seeks to balance the equation so that it wilI work. H e does
not reject the idea that people will maximize, for it is the basis of his scientific
strategy. It is in this sense that all people always maximize or economize.
There can be no argument about it, hut knowing this helps very little in
achieving the end of predictions about empirical cases.
MAXIMIZATION AND THEORIES

The two principal formalist articles to appear in this journal (Burling 1962
and LeClair 1962) agree in seeing economizing or maximization as the scientific strategy characteristic of economic anthropology, but insofar as they
propose concrete research programs they are quite different. Burling takes

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note of some theories that involve maximization of factors like power, and
comments that single factor theories are usually untenable. He goes on to
suggest that economic anthropology be the search for the multiple factors that
people maximize, i.e., he proposes that studies of human behavior using maximization as a scientific strategy constitute economic anthropology and leaves
it a t that. LeClair, though his title is Economic Theory and Economic
Anthropology, does not refer to theory a t all in the positive part of his paper.
He states the economizing principle and then takes up a number of concepts
used by economists and generalizes them so they may apply t o all human
behavior. When he comes to citing examples he very quickly shifts to a material definition of economics.
George Homans has used the idea of maximization in a theory that applies
to all human behavior. A brief look at the problems Homans encounters in
his Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (1961) will suggest that, whatever
the virtues of the maximization idea, the research problems still lie in the area
of the study of institutions.
For Homans elementary denotes that aspect of social behavior that is
independent of institutions. He calls it subinstitutional (1961: 6). Homans
wishes to state general propositions about social behavior that are independent
of cultural convention and individual differences. H e uses concepts and ideas
like Lcost,reward, profit and maximization and others about hunger,
satiation and conditioning. I n thinking about cost and reward he comes to the
idea of value, and in thinking about measuring values he arrives a t the idea
that values vary according to the cultural and individual past of the person
involved (1961 :39-49). Mired again in institutional behavior, he deftly invokes
the dictum that the best guess we can make is that the future will be like the
past and that thus a persons future valuing will be like his past valuing, and
often like the past valuing of other people who share his culture. This places
Homans more squarely in the middle of institutional variations and is really
no help in making the long step from his subinstitutional theory to measures
of the values exhibited in human behavior. I n the theory all valuing is placed
on a single dimension according to its intensity; in behavior value is expressed
in terms of local custom (disregarding the further complications introduced by
variations in personal preference). The related problems of learning to read
local customs and learning to equate local custom in one place with local
custom in another place have no automatic solution that will permit Homans
to test his theory. I n this situation Homans merely states that he will be crude
about measuring values and gets on with his task. I n short, he does not solve
the problem of operationalizing his subinstitutional theory.3
The formalists say that economic theory is not bound by the market principle, that it is logically free from limitations of time and place, that it is, in
effect, subinstitutional. Insofar as this is true, the theory should be equally
useful in the study of non-Western and Western societies; and, insofar as this
is true, it faces the same problems of operationalization faced by Homans
theory and any other very abstract theory.

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We cannot expect to borrow procedures for operationalization from the

economists (as far as I know they are short on them anyway). The anthropological chestnut about the comparability of institutional forms in different
cultures remains a lively topic of debate in discussion about cross-cultural
research in anthropology. There is no reason to think that nieasures (operationalizations) devised by non-anthropologists (economists) for a part of our
own culture (the economy) are less subject to difficulties than ineasi~resdevised
by anthropologists with a cross-cultural perspective. T o the contrary in fact.
THE SUUSTANTIVISTS AND THE FORMALISTS

I n the controversy that has developed it appears that the formalists have
been arguing for the use of economic theory in its subinstitutional form as a
general Scientific strategy, and that the substantivists have been arguing for
the obvious differences among institutions associated with the transfer of the
material necessities of life. The formalists have made sorties into the application of more concrete economic concepts and theory t o non-Western society
and the substantivists have made parallel sorties into the study of the social
coricomitants of types of e x c h a n g e b o t h with sonie success. By the time they
had done this, however, they could no longer talk with each other, and the
basic problem of operationalizing subinstitutional theoretical propositions or
(from the other point of view) building general theory about varied institutions
was for the most part cast aside.
I n the spirit of reconciliation it might be admitted that while Cook may
he right about the dogmatism of the substantivists, he does not appreciate the
distance between the abstractions of economic theory and the giving of
Christmas gifts; and that while the substantivists are correct that maximization (of the material object being exchanged) is found as a norm only in some
exchanges of material objects, they have not appreciated the usefulness of
maximization as a scientific strategy in situations where maximization as a
norm is not present.
There i5 no contradiction between: Economics is the study of econoniizing. Economizing is the allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends
(LeClaii 1962: 1188), and The economy, then, is an instituted process
(Iolanli 1957:248).
FRANK
CANCIAN
Stafzfnrd University
NOTES
1 I am grateful to may wife, Francesca Cancian, and to Roy DAndrade for coniments on an
earlier draft of this paper.
2 Here I am principally concerned with the formalists as they are represented by Burling
(1062), Conk (1966) and LeClair (1962), and with the suhstantivists as they are represented by
Dalton (1961) and Polanyi (1957).
3 For those familiar with Homans charge that Talcott Parsons has written the dictionary
of a language that has no sentences (1961:11), it is helpful t o see Homans as a man who has
written sentences in a language that has no dictionary.

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REFERENCES CITED

BURLING,
ROBBINS
1962 Maximization theories and the study of economic anthropology. American Anthropologist 64:802-821.
COOK, SCOTT

1966 The obsolete anti-market mentality: P critique of the substantive approach to

economic anthropology. American Anthropologist 68:323-345.
DALTON,
GEORGE
1961 Economic theory and primitive society. American Anthropologist 63: 1-25.
HOMANS,
GEORGE
CASPAR
1961 Social behavior: its elementary forms. New York, Harcourt, Brace and World.
LECLATR,
EDWARD
E., Jw.
1962 Economic theory and economic anthropology. American Anthropologist 64: 11791203.
POLANYI,
KARL
1957 The econoniy as instituted process. In Trade and Market in the Early Empires,
Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensherg and Harry W. Pearson, eds. Glencoe, Illinois,
Free Press.
ISOMETRIC

ADVANTAGESOF THE CRADLE

BOARD:

HYPOTtIESIs

As a rationale for binding their infants to cradle boards, the Navahosand probably other North American Indians-off er a magical explanation:
cradle boards cause infants to grow strong, The purpose of this paper is to
argue that this is, in fact, a magical explanation, but that the practice itself
succeeds in doing what it is supposed to do. I shall present evidence that the
cradle board is a device that induces isometric exercise in infants, and that
this exercise effectively strengthens them. The swaddling customs found in
many parts of the Old World probably also induce isometric exercise, but for
convenience I shall omit a discussion of swaddling in this paper.
The North American Indians custom of binding their infants to cradles
has been of compelling interest to Europeans. Unlike European cradles, which
are built to contain infants while allowing them freedom of movement, North
American Indian cradles are flat boards or frameworks to which tightly
wrapped infants are securely bound, thus restricting their freedom of movement t o a minimum. Although these devices are not always constructed of
wood, I shall for convenience refer to them as cradle boards in the remainder
of this paper,
The Navaho explanation of the way in which cradle boards produce strong
children is magical because it is derived from false premises, but the practice
itself, as we shall presently see, does succeed in doing what it is supposed to
do. Because of the prevalent assumption that exercise necessitates free limb
movement, it is puzzling, but nonetheless true, that infants bound to cradle
boards for most of their first year of life do not atrophy. On the contrary,
research shows that infants who are reared on cradle boards develop the same
motor skills, in the same sequence, and at about the same times as infants who
are not reared on cradle boards, Dennis and Dennis cite some figures suggesting
that Hopi infants walk a little later than white infants, but they do not feel