[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nub/occpap/4.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Anthropology and Economic Imperialism: The Battlefield of Culture

Author

Listed:
Abstract
The concept of culture is traditionally the home turf of anthropologists. However, economists have become increasingly interested in culture, using the language of culture to study both macro- and micro-level economic phenomena. Anthropologists view this as an encroachment into their territory and are battling to keep the `economic imperialists' out. This paper examines, from a philosophy of science perspective, the inherent differences between the disciplines of anthropology and economics that lie at the heart of this battle. It concludes by observing how a greater appreciation of and respect for each other?s view of culture can foster closer collaboration and further enrich both disciplines.

Suggested Citation

  • Swee-Hoon Chuah, 2003. "Anthropology and Economic Imperialism: The Battlefield of Culture," Occasional Papers 4, Industrial Economics Division.
    • Handle: RePEc:nub:occpap:4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/%7Elizecon/RePEc/pdf/imperialism.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCloskey, Donald N, 1983. "The Rhetoric of Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 481-517, June.
    2. Weimann, Joachim, 1994. "Individual behaviour in a free riding experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 185-200, June.
    3. Frederking, Lauretta Conklin, 2002. "Is there an endogenous relationship between culture and economic development?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 105-126, June.
    4. Hausman, Daniel M, 1989. "Economic Methodology in a Nutshell," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 115-127, Spring.
    5. Uskali Maki, 1995. "Diagnosing McCloskey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 1300-1318, September.
    6. Cochran, Thomas C., 1960. "Cultural Factors in Economic Growth," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(4), pages 515-530, December.
    7. Altman, Morris, 2001. "Culture, human agency, and economic theory: culture as a determinant of material welfare," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 379-391.
    8. Joseph Henrich, 2000. "Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 973-979, September.
    9. Joseph Henrich, 2000. "Does culture matter in economic behavior? Ultimatum game bargaining among the machiguenga," Artefactual Field Experiments 00067, The Field Experiments Website.
    10. Burlando, Roberto & Hey, John D., 1997. "Do Anglo-Saxons free-ride more?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 41-60, April.
    11. Roth, Alvin E. & Vesna Prasnikar & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Shmuel Zamir, 1991. "Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1068-1095, December.
    12. Boulding, Kenneth E, 1970. "Is Economics Culture-bound?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(2), pages 406-411, May.
    13. Temin, Peter, 1997. "Is it Kosher to Talk about Culture?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 57(2), pages 267-287, June.
    14. Ockenfels, Axel & Weimann, Joachim, 1999. "Types and patterns: an experimental East-West-German comparison of cooperation and solidarity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 275-287, February.
    15. Edward P. Lazear, 2000. "Economic Imperialism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 99-146.
    16. Stigler, George J, 1976. "The Xistence of X-Efficiency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(1), pages 213-216, March.
    17. Frank H. Knight, 1941. "Anthropology and Economics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(2), pages 247-247.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert & Jones, Martin & Williams, Geoffrey, 2009. "An economic anatomy of culture: Attitudes and behaviour in inter- and intra-national ultimatum game experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 732-744, October.
    2. Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert & Jones, Martin & Williams, Geoffrey, 2007. "Do cultures clash? Evidence from cross-national ultimatum game experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 35-48, September.
    3. Calvin Blackwell & Michael McKee, 2010. "Is There a Bias Toward Contributing to Local Public Goods? Cultural Effects," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 243-257, January.
    4. Horak, Sven, 2013. "Cross-cultural experimental economics and indigenous management research: Issues and contributions," Working Papers on East Asian Studies 92/2013, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute of East Asian Studies IN-EAST.
    5. Paul J. Ferraro & Ronald G. Cummings, 2007. "Cultural Diversity, Discrimination, And Economic Outcomes: An Experimental Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(2), pages 217-232, April.
    6. Ginny Seung Choi & Virgil Henry Storr, 2018. "Market institutions and the evolution of culture," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 243-265, December.
    7. Sturm, Bodo & Pei, Jiansuo & Wang, Ran & Löschel, Andreas & Zhao, Zhongxiu, 2019. "Conditional cooperation in case of a global public good – Experimental evidence from climate change mitigation in Beijing," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Faillo, Marco & Grieco, Daniela & Zarri, Luca, 2012. "Cultural Diversity, Cooperation,and Anti-social Punishment," AICCON Working Papers 102-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    9. Chen, Kang & Tang, Fang-Fang, 2009. "Cultural differences between Tibetans and ethnic Han Chinese in ultimatum bargaining experiments," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 78-84, March.
    10. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    11. Urszula Markowska-Przybyła & David Ramsey, 2014. "A game theoretical study of generalized trust and reciprocation in Poland. I. Theory and experimental design," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 24(3), pages 59-76.
    12. Ronald Cummings & Paul Ferraro, 2005. "Cultural diversity, discrimination and economic outcomes: An experimental analysis," Artefactual Field Experiments 00045, The Field Experiments Website.
    13. Chong, Alberto E., 2006. "Does It Matter How People Speak?," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 1946, Inter-American Development Bank.
    14. Liqi Zhu & Gerd Gigerenzer & Gang Huangfu, 2013. "Psychological Traces of China's Socio-Economic Reforms in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-6, August.
    15. Finocchiaro Castro, Massimo, 2008. "Where are you from? Cultural differences in public good experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2319-2329, December.
    16. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, "undated". "Pro-Social Behavior, Reciprocity or Both?," IEW - Working Papers 107, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    17. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gaechter, 2008. "Heterogeneous Social Preferences And The Dynamics Of Free Riding In Public Good Experiments," Discussion Papers 2008-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    18. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    19. Stefan Kohler & European University Institute, 2006. "Inequality Aversion and Stochastic Decision-making: Experimental Evidence from Zimbabwean Villages after Land Reform," Economics Series Working Papers GPRG-WPS-061, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    20. Kloosterman, Andrew & Schotter, Andrew, 2016. "Complementary institutions and economic development: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 186-205.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Culture; anthropology; methodology; modernism; relativism; post-modernism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • B12 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Classical (includes Adam Smith)
    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
    • N01 - Economic History - - General - - - Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nub:occpap:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Robert Hoffmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ienotuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.