Content uploaded by B. Orlove
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by B. Orlove
Content may be subject to copyright.
Barter and Cash Sale on Lake Titicaca: A Test of Competing Approaches
Abstract
The coexistence of barter and cash sale offers an intriguing theme for economic anthropologists to explore. Two examples of this pattern are found in southern highland Peru. In the marketplaces, villages, and fields around Lake Titicaca, some vendors sell fish for cash and others barter them for potatoes and grains. In the snow capped cordilleras that ring the lake, herders load their llamas and donkeys with dried meat, wool, and textiles and travel from the high grasslands to agricultural valleys often a number of days away and thousands of meters below to barter their products for maize and other agricultural foodstuffs.The presence of barter in a peasant economy may not seem unusual, but close inspection of these cases raises questions. In the case of exchange of fish, why is barter concentrated among the poorer peasants and in the area adjacent to the lake? Why are native fish bartered more often than introduced species? The herders appear more difficult to understand, since they derive income from the sale of wool and could purchase needed foodstuffs. They complain of the rigors of their trips, whether through muddy insect-infested canyons to the upper reaches of tributaries of the Amazon or across bleak arid wastes to the oasis valleys in the Pacific coastal desert. They could obtain more maize with less difficulty by selling instead of bartering more of their products. Why do they reject this opportunity? An explanation might also be sought for the persistence of barter in the face of the expansion of marketplace systems in the highland Andes in the last several decades. Pryor (1977:158) points out one difficulty of barter by stating that "as trade expands, it becomes increasingly difficult for a person wishing to barter A for Z to find another person wishing to barter Z for A, a problem enshrined in the phrase 'the double coincidence of wants.'" The advantages of money as a medium of exchange are numerous: it is divisible and storable and can be exchanged for a wide variety of goods. Why has barter continued at all? Is it to be explained solely as a relic, an example of cultural lag?Economic anthropology offers several ways to examine cases such as these. This article adopts a double task: to explain the patterning of barter and cash sale in the Andes and to use this patterning to evaluate rival approaches in economic anthropology. The latter endeavor is relatively unusual, since debate within economic anthropology has tended to be carried out at a theoretical rather than an empirical level. The particular case in hand, the exchange of fish for money and foodstuffs in the Lake Titicaca area in Peru, is of interest because it lends itself well to the testing of rival explanations. Before undertaking the comparison, this article reviews briefly some developments in economic anthropology that have made such efforts infrequent. It explains the formation of the competing hypotheses. Then it presents some background information on the Lake Titicaca region, discusses data collection, tests the hypotheses, and offers some evaluations of the different approaches.
... The most important economic resource from Lake Titicaca is fish. Orlove (1986) estimates the total modern annual catch on the Peruvian side alone to be more than eight thousand metric tons of fish-a significant figure given that nearly this entire amount is harvested by individual fishers organized at the community or household level. ...
... There are both endemic and introduced fish species in Lake Titicaca. 16 Levieil and Orlove (1990), Orlove (1986), and Parenti (1984) note that the lake contains more than twenty species of Orestias, the main endemic genus harvested by modern fishers. They also note that Aymara fishers distinguish four main Orestias types. ...
... They also note that Aymara fishers distinguish four main Orestias types. Another endemic is Trychomycterus, a catfish genus that accounts for less than 4 percent of the endemic harvest (Orlove 1986). The two main introduced species are the rainbow trout and the silverside, or pejerrey, introduced in the middle of the twentieth century (Orlove 1986). ...
... Los resultados obtenido evidencia que la práctica del trueque en la región altiplánica de Puno permite proveer de bienes de consumo que son vitales en los aportes de proteínas (trueque de pescado), vitaminas (frutas y verduras), generalmente, los demandantes del trueque son los segmentos vulnerables, mujeres de mayor edad que buscan alimentar a su familia de la mejor manera posible y por la escasa liquidez monetaria para comprar alimentos complementarios que no se produce en sus lugares de origen. (Orlove, 1986(Orlove, , 2010. Por otra parte, los ofertantes del trueque, también son mujeres en su gran mayoría y de escasos recursos económicos, para ellas el trueque es una actividad principal, y constituye un refugio de ocupación, que de alguna manera buscan algún beneficio económico, que permita la supervivencia familiar, lo que les permite ser parte de la reciprocidad y solidaridad de intercambio, tanto de bienes como de servicios liderada por mujeres que constituyen uno de los mecanismos fundamentales de articulación social y económica de amplios sectores del campesinado peruano más pobre, tanto entre sí como con los intermediarios del sistema económico nacional (Alberti & Mayer, 1974). ...
... El modelo económico del trueque, presentado bajo el enfoque de antropología económica (Orlove, 1986), puede que sea dificultoso para entender, dado que las transacciones de demanda y oferta son similares a la compra y venta con dinero y los precios de éstas mercancías están sujetos a libre mercado, si bien es cierto en momentos de transacción, hay equilibrio entre dicha demanda y oferta; sin embargo, por situaciones de globalización, las mejoras tecnológicas en la producción de frutas y verduras que provienen de la costa, en casos de abundancia de estos productos los precios disminuyen, hacen que la curva de la oferta se desplace hacia la derecha (en una relación de cantidad en función al precio), esta situación favorece a los consumidores de verduras y frutas trocados (proteínas y vitaminas) con productos de la zona (carbohidratos), caso contrario en situaciones de escasez, los precios se elevan y lógicamente en nivel de la utilidad agregada de consumo de frutas y verduras disminuye por lo tanto, la curva de la oferta se desplaza hacia la izquierda. También ocurre situaciones similares con productos de la zona, por ejemplo, la subida del precio del producto quinua, ha ocasionado una medición casi mínima de los puñados de quinua para el trueque, es decir la dinámica del trueque está inserto en las reglas de libre mercado (Orlove, 2010). ...
Algunas familias ubicadas en los sectores pobres no tienen recursos monetarios suficientes para la sobrevivencia, por ello, desde épocas ancestrales se practicó y lo siguen practicando el trueque como una forma de dar y recibir algún bien o servicio que carecen; cambiar un objeto por otros por necesidad sin la intervención dinero. Por ello, este estudió buscó evidenciar de qué manera el trueque se practica con mayor frecuencia como medio de subsistencia a la pobreza para cubrir la demanda insatisfecha, básicamente de alimentos. El procedimiento metodológico consistió en la aplicación de una encuesta a las familias que realizan el trueque en los distritos de Acora e Ilave, entre los meses de diciembre del 2015 a diciembre del 2017 en épocas de campaña agrícola; la información recolectada fue procesado con SPSS. Los resultados evidencian que el trueque tiene plena vigencia de intercambio de objetos disponibles con otros bienes requeridos para garantizar la seguridad alimentaria en la que no interviene el dinero. Proceso que se le denomina también permuta, dar lo suyo (propiedad) para recibir otros bienes equivalentes al bien dado. En la antigüedad se usaba más el intercambio de materia prima por artesanía o productos para la alimentación. La ventaja radicaba en que se mantenía stock de productos para propender a otros canales de comercialización. Se concluye, que a pesar de la persistencia del trueque con resultados favorables no siempre fue posible encontrar los otros bienes buscados, al igual que la equivalencia de los bienes no siempre calculan la valía real del bien en cuestión del trueque, de que se corren riesgo de perder por valor.
... The latter was enhanced by the Velasco regime's explicit endorsement of the legitimacy of squatter settlements in Peru's metropolitan regions. These studies, which spanned urban and economic anthropology, paid attention to the causes and consequences of migration and demographic shifts (Matos Mar 1988), the emergence of new kinds of roles for Andean dwellers as entrepreneurs and brokers (Long andRoberts 1978, 1984), how involvement in commodity markets affected peasant calculations of the value of their labor and agricultural products, as well as their exchange practices (Aramburu 1983;Figueroa 1983;Gonzales de Olarte 1982;Mayer 2002;Orlove 1977bOrlove , 1986, and how gender and ethnicity were implicated in urban and rural labor segmentation. The work of Florence Babb (1989), Elsa Chaney and Mary Garcia Castro (1989), Carlos Iván Degregori, Cecilia Blondet and Nicolás Lynch (1986), Jürgen Golte and Norma Adams (1987), and Susan Lobo (1982) systematically began to explore the roles of women as household workers, market vendors, and leaders in urban land seizures. ...
... Sin embargo, existen estudios etnográficos e históricos importantes sobre el abastecimiento de alimentos y la agricultura en la región. Los trabajos preliminares de Alberti y Meyer (1974) y Orlove (1977Orlove ( , 1986 y el más reciente estudio de Meyer (2002) nos proporcionan ejemplos de cómo la producción agrícola y el aprovisionamiento de alimentos son el resultado de la participación de plantas, animales y personas. Con respeto a la producción campesina, tanto local como regional, autores como Larson y Harris (1995) y Weismantel (2001) sobre la región andina en general y Hugo sobre Ecuador, muestran que los indígenas, especialmente las mujeres, han estado ligadas a la elaboración y comercio de alimentos a lo largo de los siglos de la dominación española y luego en la República. ...
El “lupino paisano” se refiere no solo a la semilla andina (Lupinus mutabilis Sweet) sino también a una red alimentaria. Argumentamos que esta red no está basada en una ontología moderna que separa la cultura y la naturaleza sino en lo que consideramos como “ontología relacional u ontología rizoma-actante”. Fundamentándonos en la teoría del actor-red de Bruno Latour (Actor Network Theory (ANT). Seguimos la ruta recorrida por la semilla de lupino desde la comunidad andina de Guayama San Pedro (el lugar de producción) hasta los valles de Cotopaxi (lugares de procesamiento y consumo) y su retorno a Guayama San Pedro. Todo esto es analizado como una serie de alianzas entre actantes. Concluimos que la red de lupino paisano abarca un grupo de entidades y de relaciones dinámicas entre ellos; no tiene una disposición centralizada ni es una “organizing memory”.
... Fishers also participate in agricultural and other cash-generating activities to supplement their income (Levieil, 1987). About two-thirds of the catch is sold for cash, while the remainder is consumed directly and bartered for foodstuffs (Orlove, 1986). ...
This review presents summary information on 45 river and great lake basins of the world, which support inland fisheries. The information presented is drawn from published information in peer-reviewed journals as well as grey literature. Each basin summary is presented in a common format, covering the description of the fishery, estimates of catch and numbers of people engaged in the fishery, important biodiversity features and threats to the fishery. An analysis of the replacement costs of inland fish of the basin is also presented. This is expressed in terms of the water, land and greenhouse gas footprint that would arise if the inland fish that are currently produced had to be replaced with other forms of food (such as aquaculture fish, livestock or field crops).
... 74-78;Feinman and Garraty 2010;Garraty 2010), anthropologists and archaeologists have been slow to develop theoretical models for predicting how people begin to separate consumption from production to participate in mutually beneficial exchanges beyond the local group. Consequently, we lack approaches that examine how factors such as transaction costs, access to money, and the embeddedness of exchange relations in sociocultural norms affect market participation (Hann and Hart 2009;Orlove 1986). As a result, the origins of market exchange are obscure, explanations of missing-markets are incomplete, and the persistence of barter alongside trade even in money-based economies constitutes a puzzle. ...
While archaeologists now have demonstrated that barter and trade of material commodities began in prehistory, theoretical efforts to explain these findings are just beginning. We adapt the central place foraging model from behavioral ecology and the missing-market model from development economics to investigate conditions favoring the origins of household-level production for barter and trade in premodern economies. Interhousehold exchange is constrained by production, travel and transportation, and transaction costs; however, we predict that barter and trade become more likely as the number and effect of the following factors grow in importance: (1) local environmental heterogeneity differentiates households by production advantages; (2) preexisting social mechanisms minimize transaction costs; (3) commodities have low demand elasticity; (4) family size, gender role differentiation, or seasonal restrictions on household production lessen opportunity costs to participate in exchange; (5) travel and transportation costs are low; and (6) exchange opportunities entail commodities that also can function as money. Population density is not a direct cause of exchange but is implicated inasmuch as most of the factors we identify as causal at the household level become more salient as population density increases. We review archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence for premodern marketing, observing that the model assumptions, variables, and predictions generally receive preliminary support. Overall, we argue that case study and comparative investigation of the origins of marketing will benefit from explicit modeling within the framework of evolutionary anthropology.
... Por ello, cabe señalar que prevalece una marcada asimetría entre agricultores y pastores (en detrimento de estos últimos) y que se traduce, en términos económicos, en una suerte de distorsión de los términos del intercambio (dado que los pastores se llevan siempre los productos de la peor calidad, independientemente del volumen intercambiado y de la calidad de sus propios productos) puede ser un incentivo para que los pastores prefieran evadir las relaciones tradicionales de subordinación y dependencia que, a pesar de todo lo dicho con respecto al reconocimiento entre "pares culturales", prevalecen en el trueque. *** En un artículo publicado en el año 1986, Benjamin Orlove evalúa la pertinencia de las explicaciones "culturalistas" y "racionalista clásicas" para dar cuenta de la persistencia o desaparición del trueque en la región surandina(Orlove 1986). El análisis de Orlove busca, en primer lugar, tipificar las prácticas en cuestión y las "preferencias" de los agentes económicos, para finalmente ...
Tejedores de espacio en los Andes: Itinerarios agropastoriles e integración regional en el sur peruano 1 A la memoria de Javier Ernesto Ferradas Solari. A Pablo F. Sendón.
En este trabajo vamos a presentar la corriente que en Antropología
Económica se llama economía cultural centrándose en dos puntos primordiales.
Por un lado, se expondrán sus elementos básicos, prestando
especial atención a cómo se concibe lo económico y su estudio. Por otro
lado, abordaremos someramente su lado crítico. Debe tenerse en cuenta
que la economía cultural no sólo es un tipo de análisis antropológico de
la economía, sino también una forma de crítica, dirigida fundamentalmente
al tratamiento convencional de lo económico y a la propia Economá, que, como se verá, más que una disciplina científica que se ocupa
de un ámbito concreto de la realidad es, al menos en nuestra sociedad y
época, una cosmovisión
PALABRAS CLAVES: Economía, cultura, Antropología Económica
In this work we are going to present/display the current that in economic
anthropology is called cultural economy being centered in two
fundamental points. On the one hand, their basic elements will be exposed,
paying special attention to how the economic thing is conceived and its
study. on the other hand, we will approach its critical side briefly. It
must consider that the cultural economy not only is a type of
anthropological analysis of the economy, but also a form of critic,
directed fundamentally to the conventional treatment of the economic
thing and to the own economy, which, as it is seen, more than a scientific
discipline that takes care of a concrete scope of the reality is, at least in
our society and time, to cosmovisión .
KEY WORDS: Economy, Culture , Economic Anthropology
Barter is usually defined as the dyadic exchange of goods and services of similar kind without the intervention of money. Initially regarded as a simple bilateral transaction (equivalent to commodity exchange), it did not attract particular anthropological attention. However, a model of pure barter exists only in theory. The available ethnographic data show a wide array of barter modalities and functions conveying, beyond its pragmatic goal, social, political, and moral functions. When it takes place within the same community, barter is frequently found in coexistence with gift exchange, trade, or commodity exchange. While economists commonly regard barter as the origin of all exchange—eventually leading to the creation of money—the historical sequence could actually work in the opposite direction. Actually, barter is widely used not only in the past and traditional societies but also in contemporary societies where, to a certain extent, it can be considered a postmonetary phenomenon.
“Lupino paisano” refers not only to an Andean seed (Lupinus mutabilis Sweet), but also to a nature-culture food network. We argue that this network is based not on a modern ontology separating culture and nature but on what we refer to as a “rhizomatic association of actants.” Informed by Bruno Latour's actor network theory (ANT) and Tim Ingold's relational model of thinking, we follow the seed's path from the highland community of Guayama San Pedro (place of production) to the valleys of Cotopaxi (places of processing and consumption) and its subsequent return to the Guayama San Pedro, analyzing this as a series of actant transitions. We conclude that the lupino paisano network comprises a group of entities and the dynamic relationships among them; it is not centrally organized or an “organizing memory.” The geographies, the actants, and their relationships are defined during the work processes and dependent on the translation processes generated.
This essay argues that the central concept for analysis of agrarian social relations is the form of production. This is conceived through a double specification of the unit of production and the social formation. The approach allows for the analytical specification of simple commodity production and capitalist relations of production in a manner consistent with the development of new concepts within political economy for agrarian structures which do not correspond to modes of production. The latter have generally been referred to as ‘peasant’, a term derived through empirical generalisation and resting on a (usually) implicit contrast with simple commodity production. The contrast can be made more rigorous through the concept of commoditisation, defined as the penetration into reproduction of commodity relations. Simple commodity production is a concept within political economy, allowing for deduction of conditions of reproduction and class relations. ‘Peasant production is negatively defined as resisting commoditisation, and nothing can be deduced about reproduction or class relations. ‘Peasant’ must be replaced ty a comprehensive and mutually exclusive set of rigorously defined concepts specifying forms of production. Procedures for defining such forms of production are suggested.
Concerned with the relations among the population dynamics, social organisation, and culture of human populations and the environments in which they live, ecological anthropology provides a materialist examination of the range of human activity. This review examines the theoretical assumptions and methods adopted in each of the three stages of development in ecological anthropology, namely that characterised by the work of Julian Steward and Leslie White, the second which is termed neofunctionalism and neoevolutionism, and the third called processual ecological anthropology. -John*Sheail
'Onibara' relationships are long-lasting ties formed between individuals operating in the market place. Examines 'onibara' relationships formed by middlemen traders in 1 Yoruba market place. The existence, form, and social content of the relationships vary, depending on 1) the type of commodity being sold; 2) the level of trade; and 3) the source of supply. Suggests that the primary reasons for the existence of such relationships, and their form, may be explained by analysing the economic constraints of particular aspects of trade. -after Author Onibara relationships commodity Yoruba trade Nigeria
I argue against the currently popular view that a radical change in theory affects the meaning of theoretical terms, and hence render pre- and post-shift theories incomparable. I first show how to pose the meaning-change issue without appeal to meanings reified. I contend that arguments against theory-neutral observation languages are faulty, but that even if they were sound, there are semantic devices that allow a theory to refer to the factual basis of a competitor. This suggests a picture of science as the accumulation of truths, with each successive stage being more stable.
Ecological anthropology and substantive economic anthropology have developed along parallel fines during the past decade. They have both dealt with structured interrelationships between aggregate patterns of behavior on an institutional or subsystem level of analysis. Despite important differences, such as the relative emphasis on normative or behavioral data, they share a basic concern with functional explanations of these broad patterns in terms of their overall contribution to system-wide goals. In Fiji there are functional relationships among the aggregate village pattern of land use, shared norms about land tenure, and environmental patterns, which can be explained in terms of a cognized model of functionally significant technoenvironmental relationships. The unintended consequences of rational actions are also considered.
This paper describes how Mfantse fish sellers deal with choice under uncertainty. An alternative is offered to economists' cognitively unrealistic assumption that decision makers calculate probability distributions to assess the riskiness of uncertain outcomes. Fish sellers appear to minimize risks not by refusing to take risks above a minimum acceptable probability of loss, but by refusing to market their fish if any one of several discrete tests indicates unfavorable market conditions, a “multiple check” strategy derived from sellers' verbal reports.
Economists use the maximization assumption to explain changes in behavior, such as the adoption of new farming practices in Puebla, Mexico. But this tests the maximization assumption itself and does not test models of farmers' actual decisions. Better explanation results from using natural decision models of the adoption process. Economic models, such as the production function, may be used to show the efficiency of practices after adoption decisions have been made.