ABSTRACT
The economic man is a consistent player in a game, who assigns personal probabilities to events, and some sort of numerical utilities to the thought-of results of his actions, and advised by the chooses the action of the highest expected utility. In anthropology the notion of economic man was first attacked by Malinowski and other thinkers of a functionalist leaning, people who gave emphasis to institutions, exchange, and ritual, rather than to individual economic management. The chapter discusses how economic actors operate in and between such social artifacts as anthropologists generally refer to as customs and institutions. Rewards in terms of pleasantness and esteem, and punishments in terms of slighting and mockery are active components in any social and economic decision, but in themselves they have little explanatory power. Thus social knowledge and access to information over personal networks are important components in the economic man activities of the Sha Tin farmers.
