ECONOMY
Kero village

People in Tarabuco


The term economy refers to the organization of human labor for the purpose of providing people with their basic subsistence needs (foods, shelter, and protection), as well as other goods and services they may desire. All economies, from the most simple hunting-and-gathering society to the most sophisticated and complex high-tech, multinational global industries that characterize today's capitalist market economies, have the same basic underlying structure. They are concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and/or services.

All economies also include at least one of the following forms of exchange, if not some combination of all three: (1) barter and reciprocity: either the immediate (barter) or delayed (reciprocity) exchange of one or more items for another item or items of equal value: (2) redistribution: the pooling of resources by a central authority (a leader, or social group, or institution) and subsequent distribution of these resources to members of a particular group and (3) market system: the most complex form of economic exchange in which some form of specialized group or instituion (set of social relations)-'the market'- is organized primarily for the purpose of regulating the exchange of goods and services. The stock exchange is the most sophisticated and complex form of market exchange today, but farmer's market are also examples of the same principle of an institution that exists primarily for the exchange of particular kinds of goods.


Nancy C. Lutkehaus, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology
Center for Visual Anthropology
University of Southern California
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