...are significant for acephalous political orders that eschew any section of society exercising control over resources or capital needed by others for livelihood, so exerting hegemony over them. Spheres of exchange intimate the disconnection of subsistence from wealth production, effectively inhibiting relations of domination, promoting egalitarian distribution of livelihood resources. The introduction of (all-purpose) money, in the process of historically interrelated colonial, globalizing, and economic development interventions ruptures the insulation of spheres, marking the arrival of capitalist market arrangements and associated antithetical hierarchical rich and poor relations. (Economic anthropology, spheres of exchange, production, acephalous politics)

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The topic of spheres of exchange is standard fare in anthropology courses. It is presented as descriptive ethnography, commonly in the spirit of "this is something that you need to know as part of your anthropological education," and invariably leaves students puzzled as to the import of such arrangements. The information is filed away with an appropriate ethnographic example for subsequent recall in an examination (e.g., see Plattner 1989:175-78; Narotzky 1997:71-75; Gudeman 2001:133-37). Like several other pieces of anthropological exotica, such knowledge seems incomplete.

My experience as an instructor delivering lectures on economic anthropology has confirmed this impression, as curious students regularly ask why some people have spheres of exchange. One increasingly feels obliged to give more explanatory attention to the "why spheres of exchange" question and not expect students to find the answer themselves in the ethnography. Perhaps a formulation offered here might satisfy students' curiosity.

What are spheres of exchange? They are an arrangement where material objects are assigned to different spheres for transactional purposes. People freely exchange items within the same sphere and readily calculate their comparative values. But things in different spheres are not immediately exchangeable against one another, such that between spheres there is no ready conversion (Bohannan and Dalton 1962:3-7). The question students regularly ask is why do some populations place such restrictions on the exchange of things? That in West Africa one cannot give yams in return for cloth, or in the Solomon Islands taro for turmeric cylinders, is a puzzle. There is no obvious reason why some cultures should institute such barriers to the transaction of things that might otherwise change hands. This is the key problem addressed here.

The argument focuses on the independent circulation of subsistence items and wealth valuables, as necessary to the constitution of the egalitarian sociopolitical orders in which ethnographers have identified spheres of exchange. The thesis, briefly, is that while all households can produce necessary subsistence consumables, which are not scarce, they cannot produce wealth items at will, which by definition are scarce and which originate either externally or come into being through the process of exchange itself. Consequently, politically ambitious persons cannot seek to control wealth production, either indirectly by stepping up output of subsistence goods to exchange for valuables, or directly by controlling manufacture of valuables. Furthermore, in effectively disconnecting the sphere of subsistence (food, etc.) from the sphere of wealth (valued objects), the spheres of exchange arrangement promotes an egalitarian distribution of livelihood resources for all, inhibiting domination. The introduction of (all-purpose) cash may serve as an externally-produced valuable (particularly in regions remote from the capitalist market), but may also upset sphere arrangements by making items commensurate, linking the previously disconnected levels, which is an aspect of the undermining of the acephalous order (particularly in regions connected to markets).

The actors themselves do not necessarily distinguish these spheres as labeled categories (Bohannan 1955:61). They are a device, used by ethnographers in describing the transactional behavior they observe and possibly comments by individuals to the effect that one should not exchange object X for object Y. People may not apparently be interested in formally identifying spheres or engaging in abstract debates on restrictions on the transaction of certain items against others, being too busy living the political-economy to reflect on it. This article likewise seeks to use the spheres of exchange formulation as a heuristic device to further an understanding of the political economic implications of such limitations on transactions.

SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND

The ethnography known to me, where authors postulate the existence of spheres of exchange, is predominantly Pacific. The interpretation offered draws heavily on New Guinea, where it has wide applicability and appears to fit some of the African exchange spheres, but this is not to suggest that it has universal applicability to stateless orders. It may be possible elsewhere to produce wealth through individual labor, which may feature in people's subsistence regimes such as livestock wealth among East African pastoralists. Presumably there are other mechanisms that prevent enterprising and ambitious persons seeking some control that they can convert to political power and undermine the acephalous order. It is conceivable however that the spheres of exchange formulation has wider applicability than the limited body of ethnography to which it has been applied. The Kwakiutl of northwest America, to take a classic body of work that may lend itself to such an interpretation, with the production of valued coppers dependent on the import of raw materials and their manufacture an affair of community interest (as with the carving of valued wooden objects featuring numaym totemic symbols), whereas subsistence activities such as salmon fishing were undertaken by independent households with equal access to necessary resources. A test of the model proposed here, and a search for possible variations on the theme of spheres of exchange and their implications (as suggested by a reader of this article) would demand a review of a wide body of literature on stateless political economies, with a carefully reasoned case for imposing the spheres model on each body of ethnography. This requires a monograph as opposed to a brief article.

A favorite ethnographic example is the Tiv of Nigeria (Bohannan 1955, 1963:248-53; Bohannan and Bohannan 1968:227-37), who have three spheres of exchange (Table 1). One comprises foodstuffs, including yams, grains, vegetables, small livestock, and everyday utensils and tools. A second sphere includes brass rods, cattle, tugudu white cloth, and slaves. The third is rights in "dependent persons," primarily marriageable female relatives. According to Bohannan and Bohannan (1968:227-28), "In calling these different areas of exchange spheres, we imply that each includes commodities that are not regarded as equivalent to those commodities in other spheres and hence in ordinary situations are not exchangeable. Each sphere is a different universe of objects. A different set of moral values and different behavior are to be found in each sphere."

However, the ethnography is somewhat contradictory and maybe not the best to introduce the idea of spheres of exchange. It possibly reflects colonial authority disruption some decades before fieldwork, introducing money and prohibiting certain marriage exchanges (Bloch and Parry 1989:12-16; Hart 2005:164). (1) Bohannan (1963:249) reports that the second sphere "was tightly sealed off from the subsistence-goods sphere ... no one, save in the depths of extremity, ever paid brass rods for domestic goods." Yet there are also "conversions" between spheres, ambitious men seeking "to convert food into prestige items; to convert prestige items into dependents--wives and children" (Bohannan 1955:64). (2) The moral of the system is to transact within spheres. Tiv frown upon transacting higher sphere objects for lower ones, such as brass rods for food, but they talk of those who achieve the reverse as showing "strong heart." That "converting" down is morally reprehensible in fiercely egalitarian Tiv society is a key to the meaning of spheres of exchange.

Elsewhere in Africa, Barth (1967) describes spheres of exchange among the Fur of Sudan. They have two: one embracing many material goods and featuring the use of money, and the other the exchange of beer for labor. Barth (1967:164) also introduces two other spheres related to social standing: one covering feasts and pilgrimages, and another represented by marriage exchanges. These spheres of exchange are quite different to those described in other ethnographies as money can feature in all material transactions, except for the payment of labor in millet cultivation and house construction, which demands beer, and "the sale of beer is regarded as immoral" (Barth 1967:165). Elsewhere money destroys sphere arrangements--another key to their possible import.

These African accounts of spheres of exchange were not the first. In the Pacific, Firth (1939:340-44) used the idea to order his ethnography of the Tikopia, formalizing in some measure previous accounts of transactions in the region. Before then, on the Trobriand Islands, Firth's teacher Malinowski (1922) famously distinguished gimwali "trade" from kula "ceremonial exchange," among other transactions such as laga "purchase" and urigubu "yam exchange." According to Isaac (2005:17-18), the Trobriand "economy" features three spheres of exchange: subsistence products; prestige goods; and kula wealth. Indeed, the spheres of exchange model expands on the distinction between trade and exchange reported throughout Melanesia, where people use a complex vocabulary to distinguish purchase-like transactions from those where they hand around valuables.

The Tikopia operate three spheres of exchange (Table 1). In the lowest sphere are foodstuffs and...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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