Creole Economics: Caribbean Cunning under the French Flag

Chapter 3: Cultural Economies: Relating Social Values to Economic Theory in Martinique

any [economic] model . . . whether local or universal, is a construction of the world and not an indisputable, objective truth about it. this is the basic insight guiding the analysis of economics as culture. —Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development, 1995 three Cultural Economies relating social values to economic theory in martinique My first day in Martinique, a charming young man helped me navigate the French public phones. I laughed at my ignorance, he laughed at my laughing, and before I knew it, we were off on an unexpected journey that involved the next several hours. The story of my encounter with Patrick is relevant for understanding the cultural dimension of Martinique’s informal economy. But before I tell this story, and before we zoom in to see what has cultural meaning in the fascinating and complex world of Martinique, I want to show how many anthropologists have come to view economies as cultural in nature. The first part of this chapter is thus laid out like a series of stepping stones, designed to help unacquainted readers manage academic waters that go much deeper. The relationship between anthropological studies and eco- frameworks 44 nomic theory has long been troubled, and remains so today. But it is my hope that the case of Martinique’s cultural economy will contribute to a more unifying perspective of the value of both anthropology and economics in understanding human behavior. As we will see, cultural motivations to work off the books in Martinique interact with a host of economic realities compelling people to do so. What difference does it make how local people think about their undeclared activities? To most development planners and economists, the “ideology” of noncompliance is not important: the point is that people respond to the incentives created by too much regulation or too few legitimate opportunities. Because in their view these “structural” realities spawn informal economies, it is logical to assume that the way to manage these economies is through structural-level inputs. For anthropologists, however, the question concerns not that people earn off the books, but rather how they do it: what kinds of cultural factors channel their choices, how people explain what they are doing, and what these activities might mean besides income. If the way people earn undeclared income relates to a system of local values, then any attempts to alter behavior or “harness” informal operators without consideration of such values are unlikely to succeed. In our society, local values do not provide validation for people’s undeclared income schemes or tax avoidance . Except for the small jobs that people do for cash, like babysitting, yard work, or house cleaning, most cheating on taxes takes place quietly and alone.1 Here, there is no widespread pattern of work off the books and there is no status derived from one’s ability to act outside the law to earn more money.2 In Martinique, the game is different. economics and anthropology— finding culture in economy When North Americans think about the “economy,” they are likely to think about the cost of things they want to do or buy, whether their jobs are secure, how their investments are doing, and what the future holds for their children. These individual concerns are important to US economists as well, for modern economic theory, known today as “neoclassical economics,” is strongly tied to western ideas about the importance of individual desires and actions to fulfill them.3 The central assumption in Cultural Economies 45 neoclassical economics is that individuals make “rational” (calculating) choices in order to maximize their own self-interest. Until recently, most economists also assumed that an individual’s self-interest concerned material gain. Individuals were seen to make choices that would best satisfy their own material wants for the least effort.4 By the 1960s, problems with neoclassical assumptions about human nature had emerged as anthropologists tried to apply the logic of western economic systems to non-western societies. Where neoclassical theory assumed that choices are individual, that “wants” are material, and that economies can be analyzed as a separate domain from other domains of life, anthropologists like George Dalton and Marshall Sahlins claimed otherwise. Positioning themselves in contrast to the dominant “formalist ” logic of economic theory, these “substantivist” economic anthropologists asserted alternate logics to neoclassical theory.5 Substantivists were inspired by their own research findings as well as those of earlier anthropologists like Bronislav Malinowski, who had conducted fieldwork...