Alan Fiske, Structures of Social Life

This book is a rather long and dry review of academic research in anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and so on. But I think it provides a useful framework for understanding social relations.

Fiske writes: "It is my hypothesis that people actually generate most kinds of social relationships out of only four basic models: Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing. These implicit models are the psychological foundations of social relations and society."

Communal Sharing is "a relationship of equivalence in which people are merged... so that the boundaries of individual selves are indistinct."

Authority Ranking is a hierarchical relationship (a "transitive asymmetrical relationship," says Fiske. Heh.)

Equality Matching is "an egalitarian relationship among peers who are distinct but coequal individuals."

Market Pricing is a "relationship mediated by values determined by a market system." Quid pro quo and all that.

(Fiske says that American ideology tends to confuse Equality Matching with Market Pricing, but the latter takes into account market values instead of strict equality.)

These models of social relations determine norms for both contributing to and withdrawing from group resources, as well as exchange between group individuals. They can also be used to describe how people determine the meaning of (physical) things. For example, it may be family policy for every child to have the same possessions (each person with one bicycle) -- the bicycle is then a token representing equal status for its owner (in addition to having other uses and meanings). But a bicycle may also represent high status or a particular group affiliation. The relational models can also be used to categorize the ways in which people:

• try to influence others
• think about land
• understand morality
• interpret misfortune
• justify aggression

and so on.

I'm not sure how particularly useful this arrangement is, although I hope that it would help provide a language for talking about the intersection of economic and social domains. It is not clear that you can describe societies as being committed to some models more than others; it looks like all models are used in different times and contexts.