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. This chapter examines three areal exchange networks, constituting besides three different structural and ecological forms: the Vitiaz Straits and Huon Gulf systems of New Guinea, and the intertribal trade chain of northern Queensland, Australia. For the kind of market competition that alone in economic theory gives supply and demand such power over exchange value is completely absent from the trade in question. Seasonal fluctuations of supply generally leave the terms of trade untouched. The economic diplomacy of trade is "something extra" in return. Supply and demand are operative in the self-regulating market, pushing prices toward equilibrium, by virtue of a two-sided competition between sellers over buyers, and between buyers over sellers. This double competition, symmetrical and inverse, is the social organization of formal market theory.
