Thomas DeGregori’s “Back to the Future”: A Comment
It would be unfortunate if Thomas DeGregori's review of Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economies and the Environment, edited by John Gowdy [1998], dissuaded institutionalists from reading the book. The collection of essays included in this book, which begins with Marshall Sahlins's essay depicting the hunter-gather societies as the first affluent societies, addresses many issues important to institutionalists: the cultural basis of scarcity, the mythology of rational economic man, the origins of inequality, sustainability, the nature of work, the role of technology, and so on. For DeGregori, however, the value of the book lies not in what it says about these issues, but in the questions it implies. Is the hunter-gatherer society the highest form of social organization? Is institutionalism evolving in an anti-technology direction? If so, does this relegate Ayres's view of the progressive nature of technology and the idea that "resources become" to the dusty lumber room of institutionalist thought [DeGregori 1998]? DeGregori's position on these questions stems from his view that "the impact of technology on human life is a primary and continuing cause of human betterment" [1986, 1]. His critique, however, suffers from some of the same criticisms of selectivity and omission that he accuses Gowdy and the other authors of having. Still, his critique raises some important concerns including the presumed affluence of huntergatherer societies; whether the !Kung Bushmen, who are the source of much of the ethnological literature on hunter-gatherers, are representative of hunter-gatherer societies; a consideration of the revisionist view of hunter-gatherer studies; and the progressive role of technology.