ECONOMICS, PRIMITIVE. Comparatively little is known about the economic organization of savage peoples. Being appar ently one of the simplest and least interesting aspects of their social life, it has been the last to receive attention from the anthropologist, though in reality it presents complex problems of vital concern for native welfare. Most of our knowledge of the principles of savage economic life is due to the work of German scholars. The earliest studies in economic anthropology were largely of an evolutionary nature, attention being concen trated on the somewhat barren aim of fitting phenomena into schemes of stages of progress and constructing theories of de velopment from one stage to another. Best known of allcis the Dreistu f enschema, the three-stage scheme of society by which mankind, having first lived as hunters and fishers, advanced through the pastoral grade of existence to attain the state of agriculture, which represented the final achievement of primitive industry. This scheme of the economist Friedrich List persisted for several decades, though the idea of a universal course of evolution for all mankind soon disappeared. Rival theories, as that of the barter, money, credit periods of development of Bruno Hildebrand, were also advanced. In time the old three-stage pattern of economic progress was abandoned, owing to the de structive criticism of geographers such as Friedrich Ratzel and anthropologists like Eduard Hahn. Other schemes of classifica tion of culture, associated with the names of Hahn, Ernst Grosse, Alfred Vierkandt and Heinrich Schurtz, came in rapid succession, but the value of such work lay in the collection of data and the incidental analysis of native economic conditions—as in Hahn's distinction between hoe-cultivation and agriculture proper with plough and domesticated animals—rather than in the actual theories propounded.
The writings of Karl Bucher, by drawing the economy of primi tive man into relation with that of our civilization, have done much to provoke interest in the subject. His classification, how ever, of all savage economic life as being either a selfish indi vidual hunt for food or at best a sharing of goods within the closed circle of the household, does not conform to the facts as now known, nor do his theories of the development of exchange from the custom of giving presents and the origin of work in play find much modern support.
Exponents of the kulturhistorische method in anthropology, notably Wilhelm Koppers, have also laid due stress on the eco nomic factor as a prime determinant of culture. But their study of economic life is made subservient to their attempt to establish certain theories regarding the history of mankind which involve a hypothetical scheme of kulturkreise or stages of culture. This interest in the problematical origins of native custom has led to a neglect of its real place in native life.
Studies by such writers as M. Marcel Mauss, Prof. Richard Thurnwald and Dr. Bronislaw Malinowski have done much to retrieve the position. The attempt to establish evolutionary sequences has been discarded, and the imagined history of insti tutions left on one side. Primitive economic organization is studied for its relation to the existing social mechanism, for the ends which it serves in the present, not for what it may have been in past ages. In short, the "functional method" of inquiry is employed. The institution of the exchange of gifts, for ex ample, is shown to be part of the native economic system, not in virtue of being a transition stage from gift-making to trade, but because it satisfies certain practical needs and allows for the expression of social sentiments—ideas of rank, prestige, liberal ity and fulfilment of obligation. Recent work of this type in prim itive economics has thrown light upon such questions as the character of leadership in native labour, the social stimuli in volved, the part played by co-operation, the nature of economic reward, the action of the principle of reciprocity in exchange, the value of magic in industry, and the influence of wealth upon chieftainship and rank.
Such problems are concerned with vital issues, and the in vestigator here is grappling with the reality which lies at the foundation of the life and work of the native. Such study, apart from its interest to the economic historian in throwing light on the nature of less developed forms of institutions, has also a practical value. An adequate knowledge of the economic organ ization of a native people is essential before we can govern them, trade with them, utilize their labour, secure their co-operation in political affairs, or preserve them from the worst effects of contact with white civilization.