How Does an African Student of Economics Make Sense of Robinson Crusoe?

The ethic that embraces social obligation, sharing and personal commitment instead of individual accumulation, hording and contractual liability is generally theorized in economics as an obsolete remnant of “traditional,” “pre-modern,” or “pre-capitalist” societies. But there is evidence that this is a contemporary serviceable phenomenon not only in societies perceived to be traditional or underdeveloped (Mansbridge 1990; Frank et al. 1993). ¹ In Africa, anthropologists have long documented the central role of commitment to family and reciprocal kinship obligations as being essential to economic processes (Dalton [1962] 1972). At the height of the era of development economics and the rush to understand or model “less developed” economies, a great deal of literature (see Miracle and Fetter 1971) debated the “African’s uneconomic behavior” (Jones 1960: 109). Today, mainstream economists note that, in Africa, social solidarity and mutual support form the cornerstone of economic provisioning (Serageldin and Taboroff 1994; Trulsson 1997; Fafchamps 2004).