Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons challenged which argument?

Hardin's tragedy of the commons

Townsend's relative deprivation

Esping-Andersen's welfare regimes

Hardin's tragedy of the commons

Peter Townsend defined poverty primarily in terms of:

Lack of resources to participate in the customary activities of one's society

A culture transmitted across generations

Lack of resources to participate in the customary activities of one's society

Which pairing is NOT correct?

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism — David Harvey

The Poison in the Gift — Gloria Goodwin Raheja

Stone Age Economics — Marshall Sahlins

A Field of One's Own — Bina Agarwal

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism — David Harvey

Economy and Society I: Exchange and Gift, Mode of Production Debates, Property, State and Market, Models of Development, Poverty and Exclusion

Unit 6, Economy and Society, is a list of fourteen items with no sub-blocks. This chapter takes the first six, which concern the foundations of economic sociology: exchange, gift, capital, labour and market; mode of production debates; property and property relations; state and market — welfarism and neoliberalism; models of economic development; and poverty and exclusion. The next chapter takes the remaining eight, which concern work, business and consumption. The unifying idea is that the economy is a social institution: exchange creates relationships, property is a social relation, and markets are made and regulated by states and communities.

1. Exchange, gift, capital, labour and market

Marcel Mauss's The Gift (1925) showed that in archaic societies exchange takes the form of 'total prestations' — gifts that are at once economic, legal, religious and moral — governed by three obligations: to give, to receive and to reciprocate. The Maori spoke of the hau, the spirit of the gift that seeks to return to its origin; the potlatch of the Pacific Northwest turned giving into competitive display, in which chiefs gained rank by giving away or destroying wealth; the Trobriand kula circulated valuables to build lasting ties. The gift is never free: it creates obligation, solidarity and hierarchy. Indian ethnography adds the gift of dan, which in Gloria Raheja's The Poison in the Gift (1988) transfers inauspiciousness from donor to recipient, and Jonathan Parry's analysis of the ideology of the 'pure gift' that expects no return.

Sahlins's form of reciprocity (Stone Age Economics, 1972)	Meaning	Social distance
Generalised	Giving without calculation or specified return, as among close kin	Closest
Balanced	Return of equivalent value within a limited time	Intermediate
Negative	Attempt to get something for nothing — haggling, cheating, theft	Most distant

Karl Polanyi identified three forms of integration of the economy: reciprocity (exchange between symmetrical groups), redistribution (goods flowing to a centre and back out, as in chiefdoms and states) and market exchange (price-making markets). For Marx, capital is value in motion — money turned into commodities to produce more money (M–C–M′) — and the secret of the capitalist market is that labour power itself becomes a commodity. Mark Granovetter ('Economic Action and Social Structure', 1985) argued that economic action is embedded in ongoing networks of personal relations, avoiding both the 'under-socialised' view of economists and the 'over-socialised' view of some sociologists — the starting point of the new economic sociology.

2. Mode of production debates; property and property relations

The Indian mode of production debate, conducted largely in the Economic and Political Weekly from the late 1960s through the 1970s, asked whether Indian agriculture had become capitalist. Ashok Rudra and Utsa Patnaik disputed the criteria — wage labour, reinvestment of surplus, accumulation — and how far each was present; Amit Bhaduri and Pradhan Prasad argued for semi-feudalism; Hamza Alavi proposed a distinct colonial mode of production; Jairus Banaji and Paresh Chattopadhyay pressed the analysis in other directions. In anthropology, French Marxists such as Claude Meillassoux, Maurice Godelier and Pierre-Philippe Rey examined the articulation of capitalist and non-capitalist modes — how capitalism draws cheap labour from domestic communities that bear the cost of reproducing it. An older debate surrounds Marx's Asiatic mode of production — village communities under a despotic state that controls irrigation — which Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism (1957) developed into the 'hydraulic society' thesis.

Property is not a thing but a social relation — a bundle of rights and obligations among persons with respect to things. John Locke grounded private property in mixing one's labour with nature; Proudhon (What is Property?, 1840) answered 'property is theft'; Marx located class in ownership of the means of production. On shared resources, Garrett Hardin's 'The Tragedy of the Commons' (1968) predicted overuse when access is open, but Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons (1990) showed that communities often manage common property resources sustainably through locally devised rules — her design principles include clear boundaries, rules fitted to local conditions, collective choice, monitoring and graduated sanctions. Bina Agarwal's A Field of One's Own (1994) argued that women's independent rights in land are central to their welfare and bargaining power in South Asia, a question sharpened in India by the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act making daughters coparceners.

3. State and market: welfarism and neoliberalism; models of economic development

The welfare state expanded after the Second World War on Keynesian principles; Britain's Beveridge Report (1942) targeted the 'five giants' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, 1990) classified welfare regimes by the degree of decommodification — how far people can live independently of the market — into liberal (means-tested, market-reliant: the United States, the United Kingdom), conservative-corporatist (status-preserving social insurance: Germany) and social democratic (universal, generous: Scandinavia). Neoliberalism — theorised by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and implemented from the late 1970s — reasserted the market through privatisation, deregulation and fiscal restraint; the Washington Consensus (John Williamson, 1989) codified it for developing countries. David Harvey (A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2005) read it as a project to restore class power, working through 'accumulation by dispossession'. India's 1991 reforms — liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation — marked its turn.

Model of development	Core features
Market capitalist	Private ownership, price signals, limited state
Soviet socialist	State ownership, central planning, forced industrialisation
Nehru-Mahalanobis mixed economy	Planning with a dominant public sector in heavy industry (Second Five-Year Plan, 1956) alongside private enterprise
Gandhian	Village self-sufficiency, cottage industry, trusteeship, limited wants
East Asian developmental state	A strong, coherent bureaucracy guiding export-led industrialisation — Chalmers Johnson on Japan (1982); Peter Evans's 'embedded autonomy' (1995)
Sustainable and human development	The Brundtland Report (Our Common Future, 1987): development that meets present needs without compromising future generations; the Kerala model of high social indicators at modest income

4. Poverty and exclusion

Absolute poverty is the lack of resources for a minimum of subsistence; relative poverty is judged against the living standards of one's society. Peter Townsend (Poverty in the United Kingdom, 1979) defined poverty as the lack of resources to participate in the activities and customs of one's society, and built a deprivation index. Social exclusion — a term associated with René Lenoir's Les Exclus (1974) in France — shifts attention from income to processes that shut people out of institutions, rights and relationships. Amartya Sen reframed poverty as capability deprivation. In India, official poverty lines have been set by successive expert groups (Lakdawala, Tendulkar in 2009, Rangarajan in 2014), and the Multidimensional Poverty Index developed by Sabina Alkire and James Foster (with the UNDP from 2010) measures overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards. Sociologists such as Sukhadeo Thorat have documented caste-based exclusion — discrimination in labour, land, credit and housing markets — as a distinct cause of poverty, not merely a correlate.

⚠️ Relative deprivation has two meanings in this syllabus

In poverty studies (Townsend), relative deprivation means lacking what is customary in one's society — an objective measure. In the theory of social movements and reference groups (Merton, Runciman, Gurr), it means the subjective sense of being worse off than a comparison group. Read which context the question sets before choosing.

Key takeaways

Mauss's gift carries obligations to give, receive and reciprocate; Sahlins's generalised, balanced and negative reciprocity track social distance; Polanyi's reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange are forms of economic integration.
The Indian mode of production debate set capitalist against semi-feudal and colonial readings of agriculture; French Marxists theorised the articulation of modes; Wittfogel extended the Asiatic mode into hydraulic society.
Property is a social relation; Ostrom answered Hardin's tragedy of the commons with community governance of common property; Agarwal linked women's land rights to their bargaining power.
Esping-Andersen's liberal, conservative-corporatist and social democratic regimes classify welfare states; neoliberalism, the Washington Consensus and Harvey's accumulation by dispossession mark the market's return.
Poverty is measured absolutely, relatively (Townsend) and multidimensionally (Alkire-Foster); social exclusion, capability deprivation and caste-based discrimination explain it beyond income.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Which of the following are the three obligations of the gift identified by Mauss? Select all that apply.
1. To accumulate
2. To give
3. To reciprocate
4. To receive
Show answer
Answer: B — To give; C — To reciprocate; D — To receive
Mauss's The Gift (1925) rests on the obligations to give, to receive and to reciprocate; refusing any of them is a refusal of the social relationship itself. Accumulation belongs to the logic of capital.
In Sahlins's typology, haggling in a market with strangers, where each side tries to gain at the other's expense, is an example of:
1. Generalised reciprocity
2. Balanced reciprocity
3. Redistribution
4. Negative reciprocity
Show answer
Answer: D — Negative reciprocity
Negative reciprocity is the attempt to get something for nothing, typical of the most socially distant relations. Balanced reciprocity is an equivalent return within a set time; generalised reciprocity is open-ended giving among intimates.
Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons challenged which argument?
1. Mauss's theory of the gift
2. Townsend's relative deprivation
3. Esping-Andersen's welfare regimes
4. Hardin's tragedy of the commons
Show answer
Answer: D — Hardin's tragedy of the commons
Hardin (1968) argued that shared resources will be overused unless privatised or state-controlled; Ostrom's comparative studies showed communities sustaining commons through self-designed institutions.
In Esping-Andersen's classification, a welfare regime providing universal and generous benefits with a high degree of decommodification, typified by Scandinavia, is:
1. Conservative-corporatist
2. Developmental
3. Social democratic
4. Liberal
Show answer
Answer: C — Social democratic
Social democratic regimes offer universal entitlements that reduce dependence on the market; liberal regimes rely on means-tested aid and markets, and conservative regimes tie benefits to occupational status.
Who proposed a distinct 'colonial mode of production' in the Indian mode of production debate?
1. Marcel Mauss
2. Elinor Ostrom
3. Karl Wittfogel
4. Hamza Alavi
Show answer
Answer: D — Hamza Alavi
Alavi argued that colonial agriculture was neither feudal nor fully capitalist but a colonial mode integrated into the imperial economy. Wittfogel developed the Asiatic mode into 'oriental despotism'.
Assertion (A): Granovetter argued that economic action is embedded in social relations. Reason (R): He rejected both the under-socialised view of economists and the over-socialised view that treats people as mere followers of internalised norms. Choose the correct option.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Embeddedness in concrete networks was Granovetter's middle path between the two views, so R states why he framed economic action as embedded in A.
David Harvey's phrase 'accumulation by dispossession' is associated with his analysis of:
1. The gift economy
2. The Kerala model
3. The culture of poverty
4. Neoliberalism
Show answer
Answer: D — Neoliberalism
In A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005) Harvey argued that privatisation, financialisation and state redistribution upward transfer assets from the public and the poor to capital — accumulation by dispossession.
Name the Native American ceremonial feast of the Pacific Northwest, analysed by Mauss, in which chiefs gained prestige by lavish giving or destruction of wealth.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: potlatch
The potlatch shows the agonistic side of the gift: giving is a challenge that obliges a greater return, and rank is won by outgiving rivals.
Peter Townsend defined poverty primarily in terms of:
1. Lack of access to the internet
2. A culture transmitted across generations
3. A minimum caloric intake
4. Lack of resources to participate in the customary activities of one's society
Show answer
Answer: D — Lack of resources to participate in the customary activities of one's society
Townsend's relative conception (Poverty in the United Kingdom, 1979) ties poverty to exclusion from the living patterns and activities normal in one's society, measured through a deprivation index.
Which pairing is NOT correct?
1. The Poison in the Gift — Gloria Goodwin Raheja
2. Stone Age Economics — Marshall Sahlins
3. A Field of One's Own — Bina Agarwal
4. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism — David Harvey
Show answer
Answer: D — The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism — David Harvey
The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990) is Gøsta Esping-Andersen's. Harvey wrote A Brief History of Neoliberalism.