分配の起源 : 文化生態学の観点から

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1. TWO MODES OF DISTRIBUTION The primitive mode of distribution has been debated by two schools of social thinkers and scientists for the last two centuries. One group puts emphasis on the communal aspect of the primitive distribution, a conception popularly phrased as "primitive communism." This distribution, based on the work-to-ability-and-given-to-necessity principle, is called here "provision." The other school asserts that the distribution carried on the rational, ego-centrically motivated basis, here called "exchange, " is not limited to civilization or capitalism but universal for all human societies. This opposition has lead to the conventional substantivist-formalist controversy in economic anthropology. The author suspects that both of those distribution modes are very old human behavior patterns going back to pre-sapiens stages of the hominid evolution. 2. THE PROVISION DISTRIBUTION Provision occurs almost universally within the family, and the further the network extends beyond the family boundary the less frequent and the less intensive it tends to become. This fact points out that provision has its origin in the family. Family-forming animals such as carnivores or birds, as well as man, have a common characteristic that they bear very premature young which need intensive care and food supply by the parents. Feeding the young requires food-carrying ability from the place of gain to the nest or lair where they stay. That is why family-forming animals commonly have an extraordinary carrying ability by biting, regurgitation, or other means. Man does not carry things by mouth but he does with his hands. We stood up to liberate our hands from the ground in order to carry things, especially food and babies, in our hands. Namely, our erect posture is an indicator of our family organization in which father and mother jointly feed and protect their immature offspring. Our bipedal locomotion is traced back to australopithecine times, at least, the earliest of which (A. afarensis) is dated ca. three to four million years ago. Our provision distribution, then, seems to be originated in the parental feeding behavior to the young in the australopithecine families in late Pliocene or earlier. In Pleistocene hominids evolved into the genus Homo and came to live on big game animals such as elephants and mammoths by hunting them in bands. Provisiion distribution, in which each works to his utmost with little concern for his own benefit, is an excellent adaptive strategy on the band-level, too. So, this mode of distribution, once firmly established within the family, was extended to the band-level social organization as Homo increasingly came to rely on collective teamwork for their subsistence and def ense during the middle Pleistocene. 3. THE EXCHANGE DISTRIBUTION The exchange distribution in human societies fundamentally differs from various forms of symbiotic exchange behavior of animals in the following two points: Firstly, we exchange with more or less conscious forethought for the return benefit in the future, whereas no nonhuman animals seem to have this mental capacity to any comparable extent to ours. The other difference is that our exchange presupposes the concept of "ownership." No one can legitimately make a present out of someone's else property. Ownership, distinguished from sheer physical holding, is a social agreement to be acknowledged by all concerned persons, that is, a norm. No animals but man can behave with norms. Such highly symbolic thinking involved in ownership recognition or foresight of future benefit, as in language manipulation, does not seem to have existed in the australopithecine stage whose cranial capacity falls well under the ranges of great apes (ca. 500 c. c.). Symbolic thinking which enabled human-type exchange behavior must have begun with the genus Homo with their brain expanded twice or three times as much as that of the great apes. The exchange distribution, then, may well be originated in Homo habilis, the first stone tool user of two million years ago, or at least, Homo erectus, the big game hunter of several hundred thousand years ago. 4. THE STRUCTURE OF THE PRIMITIVE DISTRIBUTION Evolution did not take place to replace provision by exchange, however. As mentioned above, provision is a good distributing strategy on the band-level as well as in the family. It is especially good at supporting the weak members of a band such as children, women, the aged, and the sick, who otherwise could be important assets for its group survival. However, provision tends to create freeloaders, which would hamper the group productivity. Exchange is, on the other hand, good at removing loafers, but has a limit in enhancing teamwork and group welfare. To maximize the group productivity by drawing utmost devotion from every member and by supporting truly-important weak members at the same time as expelling freeloaders, both provision and exchange were retained by the Pleistocene hunting bands. When we appeared in the present shape of Homo sapiens sapiens a few tens of thousands of years ago, this binary structure of distribution already had been established as our deep-seated behavior pattern. So provision and exchange are both known in every present-day normal human society, civilized or primitive. This conclusion suggests that attempts to abolish either one of those two modes of distribution could not attain a stable success in the long run.
神奈川県立外語短期大学の論文

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木山英明
文化人類学

分配の起源 : 文化生態学の観点から

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