In amongst my collection of books, I have assembled a number of classics, including some reasonably rare editions. One of those is Economics of the New Zealand Maori [*] by Raymond Firth. This book was originally published from Firth's PhD thesis in 1929 (the thesis was approved in 1927 at the University of London). The edition I read was the second edition (and once belonged to the Stanford University library), published in 1959 with substantial updates (you can read the first edition for free online here). Despite the age of the book, this is still an important read, as I outline below.
Firth had a background in economics, including undergraduate and graduate study at Auckland, but then shifted focus to become one of the first 'economic anthropologists'. Aside from being an astute study of what the title suggests, this book was also a demonstration of the emerging techniques of economic anthropology.
To be honest, I was expecting this book to be mildly and casually racist, but Firth is very careful in his presentation of pre-European and colonial Māori culture and economy, including for the most part avoiding the 'noble savage' portrayals that have been eviscerated in more modern 'enlightened' times. As a pākehā scholar writing in the 1920s though, there is still phrasing that made me cringe. However, this was more in the case of the gendered language, rather than the language related to Māori. Putting aside the issues of historical expression though, what the reader gets from this book is an explanation of how Māori organised themselves both socially and economically (the two being closely intertwined).
I really appreciated Firth's writing style, which has a creativity that is lacking in more contemporary academic writing. Consider this beautiful passage from the start of the second chapter:
The gannet dives, the gulls cry; no other living thing is seen. Mile after mile stretches the unbroken coast, till in the far distance the eye loses sense of form and shape in the shimmering blue haze. Inland, as covering for the Earth Mother, lies the dark forest with its mosses and dropping ferns, the virgin bush, broken only by the tiny clearings of neolithic man. At times it gives way to rolling open fern-lands, to tussock or swamp or the sage-green manuka scrub. Such is the face of Nature in the home of the ancient Maori.
The book covers a wide range of topics, from social structure, to work, 'magic', distribution, property ownership, land, and gift exchange. The last substantive chapter looks at economic aspects of cultural change, in response to contact and conflict with the settler colonial government. There is a wealth of detail on each topic, and much of the economics remains current. Of course, someone writing the book today would cover slightly different topics, or cover the topics in a slightly different way and with reference to more recent developments in economic theory (including social preferences, common resources, public choice theory, and information asymmetries). However, the core of economics as we continue to teach, including specialisation, constrained choices, and the role of incentives, are clear. Some sections even anticipate later considerations, such as moral or social incentives:
In our scheme of economic motivation we must include as powerful incentives to action the sense of communal responsibility and the desire to contribute to the well-being of the group, backed up by the strong forces of custom, habit, and tradition.
The role of social sanctions, as later developed by the work of Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom, who studied how communities govern common resources, are also evident. The role of the distribution of the gains from economic activity takes a prominent role in the book, and in Firth's telling it is here where the Māori economy differs most strongly from the settler colonial economy:
However, it is clear that it was considered that all the members of the community were entitled to share in the product of any large-scale activity. It would be incorrect to picture the Maori distributive system as an idyllic kind of communism, but it is true that the manner of apportionment of goods - or food, at all events - bore direct relation to the needs of the people. Starvation or real want in one family was impossible while others in the village were abundantly supplied with food. Nor did this give the opening for idleness which one might expect. here, again, the force of public opinion stepped in, and for sheer peace the would-be slacker was obliged to defer to it and make some show of assuming his proper responsibilities. Proverbs and traditional tales also contributed to this end...
The last sentence, pointing to proverbs (whakataukī) and traditional tales, hints at another aspect of the book that I really appreciated - the links to Māori culture, and especially the retelling of stories and sayings, often accompanied by the original te reo Māori. As a beginner speaker of te reo, I always appreciate the opportunity to connect a little more with words, concepts, and sayings outside of my regular experience.
Also hinted at in the previous quote was Firth's offence at previous writers' insistence on the Māori economy as communist. In fact, he devotes a whole section of the book to debunking this idea, including:
Yet if the work of these various writers who so freely use the term communism be examined it is found that at no point do they attempt to explain what they understand by it. Apart from the absence of any definition, no consistent or detailed account of the precise operation of the communistic principle is given...
In all its varieties of meaning it retains the essential points: a common ownership of the means of production, labour contributed according to ability, and a sharing out of the fruits of industry on the basis of the needs of the members of the society... To apply the term to any vague form of group activity or group control is only to introduce needless confusion.
Shots fired! Firth carefully uncovers the private control (if not 'ownership' in the settler colonial tradition) of resources such as eel weirs, or trees for the trapping of birds, which is just one piece of evidence that demonstrates that the Māori economy was not communist. And while exchange did not occur through what an economist would think of as a market, there was nevertheless a complicated system of gift exchange within and between hapū (sub-tribes) and iwi (tribes). In terms of the latter, Firth stresses the role of generosity in distribution. From the conclusion to the book:
And so proverbs, songs, legendary tales and the stream of public opinion all combine to extol generosity in giving, open-handedness in disposing of the wealth accumulated. In the apportionment of food, in the exchange of goods the dominance of this attitude has been proven. On the whole, then, the compulsion to work, to save, and to expend is given not so much by a rational appreciation of the benefits to be received as by the desire for social recognition, through such behaviour. The entire scheme of motivation in industry is thus lifted from the biological to the social plane.
I also found Firth's writing on land tenure to be interesting. Firth wrote his thesis in the 1920s, only about 60 years after the Native Land Court (1865) was formed, and about 50 years before the Waitangi Tribunal (1975). The section on land is more in keeping with the latter:
Despite the comparatively small population in pre-European times, there was no appreciable area of land anywhere in the country which was without its owners. Districts devoid of permanent inhabitants were yet visited periodically if not for cultivation at least to obtain other food supplies... Again, the extent of ownership of land was not correlated merely with its economic productivity. The sentiment felt for it and the strength of ancestral associations, as already shown, were factors of great importance in determining ownership.
As I noted earlier, more contemporary writers would likely express this differently. For instance, 'ownership' might be too contentious a term for some Māori to use in relation to land, but the concept of a deep and abiding connection to the land, which transcends mere ownership, does come through in this book. There is also much to commend in the way that the book approaches the environmental aspects of the economy, long before sustainability became fashionable. There is also a clear and convincing discussion on the economic reasons underlying the practice of polygyny.
I really enjoyed this book. It will not be for everyone, but for those who are interested in the Māori economy this should be required reading. And those who can read it as a book written in its time, and look through some of the dated expressions to see the economic ideas that underlie the prose, will find a taonga (a treasure, or a valuable cultural artifact) that can take them a few steps along the way to understanding both the early and contemporary Māori economies.
*****
[*] New Zealand readers may wonder why I have omitted the macrons from Māori in the title of the book and from other words in the quotes. In the entire book, Firth only used a few macrons, and I quote his book verbatim (including the title) without correction.
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