All the companies have a currency, that it is intrinsic or not. This currency has a price, this last being fixed relative at the other companies. The traditional standards of the economy want that the old individual receives wages higher than that of young person (if they follow the same occupation).

The study of the economy of the traditional companies is inaugurated by Marcel Mauss and its famous Essai on the gift . The gift seems the first form of exchange. The economic one then is not separated from not crowned. The gift is a total social phenomenon which calls a counterpresent.

Bronislaw Malinowski studies also the economy of the traditional companies of the people of the Pacific, in his work Argonautes of the Pacific Occidental .

Later, economic anthropology is constituted like disciplines with whole share. One can still quote the economic work of sociology of Karl Polyani the great transformation capital and Femmes, attics and of Claude Meillassoux.

See too

Related articles

• Kula : system of economic exchange generalized in a score of islands in the North-East of New Guinea, studied by Bronislaw Malinowski.
• Gift and counterpresent