IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/jeciss/v42y2008i1p115-132.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rationality as a Social Construction: What Does Individual Behavior Have to Say about Development in an Amazon Community?

Author

Listed:
  • Andrés Marroquín Gramajo

Abstract

This article argues that two different manifestations of rational behavior can coexist and collide in a relatively homogeneous society. In the Ticuna community of Arara in the Colombian Amazon; on the one hand, the majority of villagers tend to reach relatively lower levels of material wealth, following Polanyi’s idea of the pre-modern man (1968a; 1968b; 1968c), and also Sahlins’ (1972) idea of the original affluent man. On the other hand, community leaders and schoolteachers tend to accumulate material wealth, following Polanyi’s idea of modern-man (1968a; 1968b). These behavioral frameworks help explain the limited success of certain types of development programs in the Ticuna community.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrés Marroquín Gramajo, 2008. "Rationality as a Social Construction: What Does Individual Behavior Have to Say about Development in an Amazon Community?," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(1), pages 115-132, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:42:y:2008:i:1:p:115-132
    DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2008.11507117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00213624.2008.11507117
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00213624.2008.11507117?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richet, Jean-Loup & Currás-Móstoles, Rosa & Martín, José María Martín, 2024. "Complexity in online collective assessments: Implications for the wisdom of the crowd," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    2. Pinheiro, Silvia & Granados, Maria L. & Assunção, Manaira, 2020. "Local incentive structures and the constitution of community-based enterprises in the forest," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:42:y:2008:i:1:p:115-132. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MJEI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.