ABSTRACT
The ethnographic cases show a tendency for successful entrants to put up protective barriers around the circle in which they control information. Partitioning among goods appears clearly as the expression of social partitioning and results in big discrepancies in the scale of consumption. The question of the relevance of economic anthropology to our own case turns upon whether anything like distinct spheres of consumption may be found in this country in this day and age. If there are social spheres in the modern industrial society, there is no need to prejudge the question of whether the top sphere is deliberately and consciously excluding with a view to exercising monopoly. The pattern of life based in different periodicities in itself makes a natural if unintended barrier to free social intercourse.
