D alton, G eorge (1926–91)

Abstract

George Dalton was an economist who rose to prominence in economic anthropology in the 1960s and 1970s. An acolyte of the economic historian Karl Polanyi, Dalton became the main exponent of the substantivist position during the formalist–substantivist debates in economic anthropology. The substantivists argued that primitive, archaic‐state, and peasant economies differed in kind from capitalist economies and required unique concepts for their analysis. Dalton's main contributions to substantivism were the clarity of his exposition of its main concepts and his demonstration of substantivism's utility for the study of modern peasant economies.