ABSTRACT
Anthropological economics can respectably claim one theory of value on its own, fashioned from empirical encounters in its own province of primitive and peasant economies. Here, in many of the societies, have been discovered "spheres ofexchange" which stipulate for different categories of goods differential standing in a moral hierarchy of virtu. This is anything but a theory of exchange value. The diverse values put on things depend specifically on barriers to their interchange, on the inconvertibility of goods from different spheres; and as for the transactions ("conveyances") within anyone sphere, no determinants of the rates have yet been specified (cf. Firth, 1965; Bohannan and Dalton,1962; SalisburY,1962). So ours is a theory of value in nonexchange, or of nonexchange value, which may be as appropriate to an economy not run on sound business principles as it is paradoxical from a market standpoint. Still it is plain that anthropological economics will have to complete its theory of value with a theory of exchange value, or else abandon the field at this juncture to the forces of business as usual: supply, demand, and equilibrium price.
