The Ideal Marriage between the Economist's Macroapproach and the Social Anthropologist's Microapproach to Development Studies

Abstract

I was fortunate enough to be trained first in economics by Ely Devons and Arthur Lewis, and subsequently in social anthropology by Max Gluckman and M. N. Srinivas, all outstanding men in their respective fields. The problem this training presented to me is well exemplified in Arthur Lewis's response to the first report I submitted in 1954 at the outset of my fieldwork in South India. I gave an ambitious list of the various kinds of economic data I planned to collect as well as an outline of factors I wanted to investigate. He strongly advised me to leave all the sociological nonsense to the anthropologists and to concentrate on the serious business of collecting economic data. In this instance it was fortunate that I did not follow my supervisor's advice. I am convinced that without the examination of sociopolitical variables in the villages I studied I would have been unable to understand the process of rural economic development, and my analysis would have lacked insight and become largely sterile. By 1962, when my report was published, Arthur Lewis had come to appreciate the importance of interdisciplinary economics, for he generously agreed to write the foreword to my book.'