In this article the writer analyses recent studies, American ones in particular, made by anthropologists, of various societies of hunters — plant-gatherers (Pygmies, Bushmen), of nomadic shepherds (Jie, Karimojong, Dodoth in Eastern Africa) and the farmers of New Guinea. He shows that these societies make a selective, intelligent use of the resources of their environment and do not make use of some resources although they are aware of their existence. He shows that peoples with different economies may have opposite attitudes to the same ecosystem. For the Pygmies the equatorial forest provides the plants and wild animals they use and it seems to them welcoming and protective ; for the Bantu farmers who grow manioc and bananas by burn-beating, the forest seems hostile and aggressive. The writer analyses the constraints that ecological and technological structures impose on the dynamics of such societies. He poses the general problem of the rationality of the economic processes and shows that one cannot have an a priori universal model of economic rationality. Finally he discusses the still more general problems of the forms, places and effects of production relationships in various societies.
