ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the economic variable, concentrating on control and utilization of the basic factors of production: land, labor, and capital. Because of the structure of Sherbro society, some high-status women are able to transact in all the things human societies value most: rights over land, labor, and capital; and rights over people in marriage, clientage, and, in the past, slavery. The task of writing about productive and distributive activities of men and women is easier in communities where the process is partially monetized, and money serves to some extent as a measure of value for goods and for alternative uses of labor time. As interesting as this synchronic statistical picture is, we need models to explain the dynamics of rural to-rural migration and the absorption of immigrants. Farmers in the Sherbro country cannot produce without use rights to land, the corporate estate of cognatic descent groups.
