Abstract
IF it were necessary to classify Miss Hoyt's “Primitive Trade” as anthropological, economic, social, or psychological science, it would be difficult to assign it to its proper category, for it belongs to all. It is essentially a study of values, and all the various influences, social, religious, customary, and personal, which can be held to bear in determining values have been brought into the account. Miss Hoyt visualises the central problem of economics as a study of the attempt to arrive at a ‘perfect price.’ This involves a full satisfaction of needs, while how it is to be attained necessitates a study of the underlying psychological processes and their development. This in turn is dependent upon a survey of the facts-the data provided by the anthropologist showing what people actually do at various stages of culture when they fix ‘price’ either explicitly or implicitly. She begins with the consideration of interests and passes on to the objectifying of needs, and shows how these interact and are brought into operation in the beginnings and extension of trade. Miss Hoyt has clearly been strongly influenced by Dr. Malinowski's studies of primitive trade and economic conditions in the Trobriands, which demonstrated clearly that in determining the factors of value, we must extend our vision far beyond the vistas of the economist of the schools. Her treatise is a stimulating and really original contribution to the literature of economic science.
Primitive Trade: its Psychology and Economics.
Prof.
Elizabeth Ellis
Hoyt
By. Pp. vi + 191. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd., 1926.) 7s. 6d. net.
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Primitive Trade: its Psychology and Economics . Nature 119, 117 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119117a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119117a0