Stone Age Economics

Marshall Sahlins is Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

"Sahlins’ forays into economic anthropology are full of interest." Cyril S. Belshaw, American Anthropologist"Stone Age Economics, while not a survey of the economic anthropology, is as of now the most sophisticated, extensive presentation, and argument in and about, the field." Walter C. Neale, Science"This book is subversive to so many of the fundamental assumptions of Western technological society that it is a wonder it was permitted to be published. Calling on extensive research among the planet's remaining stone-age societies—in Africa, Australia and South-East Asia as well as anecdotal reports from early explorers, Professor Sahlins directly challenges the idea that Western civilization has provided greater 'leisure' or 'affluence,' or even greater reliability, than 'primitive' hunter-gatherers." Whole Earth Review"His book is rich in factual evidence and in ideas, so rich that a brief review cannot do it justice; only another book could do that." E. Evans-Pritchard, Times Literary Supplement

• Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition (David Graeber) Introduction 1. The Original Affluent Society 2. The Domestic Mode of Production: The Structure of Underproduction 3. The Domestic Mode or Production: Intensification of Production 4. The Spirit of the Gift 5. On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange 6. Exchange Value and the Diplomacy of Primitive Trade