ANTH 3311

Economic Dimensions of Mexican Life

Lecture Outline

PRODUCTION

subsistence

market-oriented

transnational

origin

destination

DISTRIBUTION

Forms of Exchange

Intravillage exchange either between households or between households and stores;

Village-to-village direct exchange not passing through cyclical plazas;

Village-to-village exchange passing through one or more plazas;

Inter-plaza exchange of goods assembled in one plaza and distributed through another;

External exchange of goods passing out of or into the regional marketing system to or from other regions.

Exchange within Marketplaces (plazas)

Producer-venders (propios) who sell their own products either directly to consumers or to intermediaries, both wholesalers and retailers;

Traveling middlemen or traders (regatones or viajeros), who go from marketplace to marketplace, or from plaza to village, or from village to village;

Fixed-location middlemen or traders, mostly resident in the market town;

Storekeepers selling goods not only to peasant buyers but also to town dwellers;

Itinerant vendors (ambulantes) who sell from a stock of small items, generally acquired from a trader or storekeeper, which they can carry about with them and sell on the streets or from door to door.

(source: Beals, Ralph L. [1975], The Peasant Marketing System of Oaxaca, Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 40-42)

TANDAS -- Carlos Velez-Ibanez, Bonds of Mutual Trust

CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMER BEHAVIORS

George M. Foster: "image of limited good"