ABSTRACT
For some time now, there has been disagreement among anthropologists concerning the applicability of economic analysis to primitive and peasant societies. One view is that economic principles are universally true and therefore serve to explain and analyse the conduct of men in primitive and peasant societies. The other view is that such principles apply only to complex market economies: that is, to commercialized and industrialized societies, and perhaps only to capitalist societies among these. But the controversy is also possibly about something else: for those who favour the wider applicability of economic theory tend to stress the common characteristics of human conduct in all societies, and possibly even the common characteristics of all societies: while those who deny the wider applicability of economic theory seem to suggest that human societies are fundamentally different in certain important respects.
