5.4 Economy (economic anthropology)

The founding debates and concepts:1. The formalist–substantivist debate: is the economizing (maximising) logic universal (formalist), or is "the economy" embedded differently in different societies (substantivist — Polanyi: reciprocity, redistribution, market as integration modes — Economics-I Unit 6.4's table)? The substantivist answer won the anthropological day.2. The Gift (Marcel Mauss): gift exchange is not free — the obligations to give, to receive,and to reciprocate (the Trobriand kula; the potlatch) — the gift as total social fact (economic, legal, religious at once). Nepal's gift systems: the dhikuri/dhukuti (rotating credit — the gift that is finance); bhoj feast obligations (status built by feeding); the raksi exchanges of the marriage circuit; the yarsagumba economy's barter-and-labour customs.3. Commons and property: the tragedy of the commons (Hardin) and its anthropological refutation — Ostrom's community-governed commons (Nobel, 2009): Nepal's communityforestry as the world-taught success (user groups, rules, sanctions — local law working where both state and market had failed); farmer-managed irrigation as its twin. The law connection: these institutions are Nepal's living law (Jurisprudence Unit 2.3.3's custom; Sociology Unit 3's legal pluralism) — the draftsman's problem and resource both.