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The Purchase Society: Adaptation to Economic Frontiers
Abstract
A sociocultural category, termed the Purchase Society, is proposed as a framework within which to analyze adaptations by simpler societies living on the economic frontiers of both agrarian and industrializing states. Unlike peasantry, purchase societies maintain their political autonomy and are not enmeshed in the political controls characteristic of agrarian states. Consequently, their involvement with a wider society is characterized not by coercive demands for payment of various rents to the state, but solely by engagement in trade or wage labor to obtain items of foreign manufacture which have become cultural necessities. In order to participate successfully in this wider economic network, internal socio-political and economic structures may adapt in any number of ways so as to facilitate the formation of outside economic ties.
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“Mary W. Helms (1969-a:329) llama a esta existencia de frontera “purchase society” o sean grupos compradores que tienen que vivir de los recursos naturales de su habitat.”
From La cultura negra del litoral ecuatoriano y colombiano: un modelo de adaptacion etnica (1974) · cites this paper as Mary W. Helms (1969-a:329)
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Research works printed but not linked: 11
- FOSTER, GEORGE M. 1967-Introduction: what is a peasant? In Peasant society, a reader. J. M. Potter, M. N. Diaz, G. M. Foster (eds.) Boston, Little Brown and Co. Pp. 2-14.
- HELMS, MARY W. 1967-Frontier society: life in a Miskito village in eastern Nicaragua. Ph.D. dissertation. Ann Arbor, Michigan, University Microfilms. 1969a-The cultural ecology of a colonial tribe. Ethnology 8:76-84. 1969b-Peasants and purchasers: preliminary thoughts on a differentiation of intermediate societies. In Philip Bock (ed.) Peasants in the modern world. University of New Mexico Press pp. 69-74.
- n.d.-Matrilocality and the maintenance of ethnic identity: the Miskito of eastern Nicaragua and Honduras. Proceedings of the XXXVIII International Congress of Americanists (In press).
- KROEBER, ALFRED L. 1948-Anthropology, (revised edition). New-York, Harcourt Brace.
- LEACOCK, ELEANOR 1954-The Montagnais "hunting territory" and the fur trade. American Anthropological Associaton, Memoir 78. 1955-Matrilocality in a simple hunting economy (Montagnais-Naskapi). Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 11:31-47.
- LEHMAN, FREDERICK K. 1963-The structure of Chin society. Illinois Studies in Anthropology No. 3. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
- MURPHY, ROBERT 1956-Matrilocality and patrilineality in Mundurucui society. American Anthropologist 58:414-434. 1960-Headhunters heritage. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press.
- SPICER, EDWARD H. 1961-Perspectives in American Indian culture change. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
- STEWARD, JULIAN H. 1955-Theory of culture change. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
- VANSTONE, JAMES W. 1960-A successful combination of subsistence and wage economies on the village level. Economic Development and Cultural Change 8: 174-191. 1962-Point Hope, an Eskimo village in transition. Seattle, University of Washington Press. 1965-The changing culture of the Snowdrift Chipewyan. Bulletin No. 209. Ottawa, National Museum of Canada.
- WOLF, ERIC R. 1964-The study of evolution. In Horizons of anthropology, S. Tax (ed.) Chicago, Aldine Publishing Co. Pp. 108-119. 1966-Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Cited by
La cultura negra del litoral ecuatoriano y colombiano: un modelo de adaptacion etnica
Whitten, N. E., & De Friedemann, N. S. (1974) · Revista Colombiana de Antropología · doi:10.22380/2539472x.1563 · Cited by 50
Metadata
- Authors
- Helms, M. W.
- Venue
- Anthropological Quarterly
- Publisher
- JSTOR
- Published
- 1969-10
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 325
- ISSN
- 0003-5491
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 0
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