ABSTRACT
The social anthropologists are interested in the map of relations between social roles. There are many ways of examining the quality of relations, for example jurally or affectively, and there is some disagreement (based mainly on the training, taste, and preference of the anthropologist) as to which of these is most satisfying. But there is one approach which is of particular significance to economic anthropology, since it offers the possibility of placing economic propositions in the same nexus as propositions which have usually been held to describe different or supplementary aspects of relations. This is the analysis of social transactions. We need in economic anthropology a general theory, either similar to or a replacement of that in economics, which will explain why it is that it is sometimes advantageous, desirable, or customary to integrate or to distribute productive tasks in particular ways.
