The Formal Paradigm

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is methodological, in the sense that its primary purpose is to define the formal paradigm in economic anthropology. In the course of the discussion, however, some key moments in the history of economic anthropology receive considerable treatment. I refer specifically to the work of some of the founders of the subfield: Melville Herskovits and Raymond Firth. There is also a section in the Chapter dealing with Max Weber, particularly his concepts of formal and substantive rationality, and his principal methodological contribution to the social sciences, the concept of the ideal type.