2026-03-14T22:44:02Z https://minpaku.repo.nii.ac.jp/oai

oai:minpaku.repo.nii.ac.jp:00004325 2023-06-20T19:27:56Z 345:452

シンハラ農村の労働交換体系 Labor Exchange System in Sinhalese Agrarian Settlements 足立, 明 アダチ, アキラ Adachi, Akira This article analyzes reciprocal labor exchange in Sinhalese agrarian settlements in Matale District of Sri Lanka. Labor exchange is defined here as the exchange of labor in which assistance has to be more or less precisely reciprocated by that of the same kind and quantity in a short time period, e.g., one day of plowing assistance for one day of plowing assistance during a cultivation season. Labor exchange in peasant agriculture is usually organized by individual households to achieve an optimal mobilization of labor for certain agricultural operations. This mobilization results both in minimizing the costs (drudgery and wages) of peasant production and in maximizing the exploitation of household labor. Except in a few cases, any symbolic expression of particular socio-cultural messages between the host and the helper is of secondary importance. Labor exchange is thus a kind of economic exchange in a neoclassical sense. However, since the rate of exchange is institutionally fixed at one for the precise reciprocity, it is of course not governed by market mechanisms. In other words, although exchange labor is a scarce resource, particularly during the times of peak demand for labor in peasant agricultural production, the difference between demand and supply of exchange labor is not mediated with varying rates of exchange. As a consequence, the following two questions must be examined to understand labor exchange behavior. The first is how the difference between demand and supply of exchange labor is mediated at the individual household level. The second is how the flow of exchange labor is determined in a locality. However, few studies in anthro- pology and mainstream economics have examined these questions, because their models and concepts have not been developed to analyze reciprocal economic behavior, such as the labor exchange discussed here. It is in this context that labor exchange in Sinhalese agrarian settlements is examined in this article. I attempt to analyze labor exchange behavior as a maximization (or economization) process in peasant agricultural production within the wider political-economic setting of Sri Lanka. The empirical focus is on the decision making process regarding labor exchange and complementary labor mobilization, in order to understand the causes and consequences of the choices that the peasant households make to meet the demand for labor mobilization. For this purpose, the natural decision making approach is employed here, together with ethnographic observation. The bulk of empirical analyses on various phases of labor exchange shows that at the individual household level the difference between demand and supply of exchange labor is largely mediated through exploration for exchange labor, in which each household forms a relatively fixed network of labor exchange and (often competitively) organizes it within the network. It further shows that the relative degree of tolerance of imbalance in labor exchange affects both the mediation between demand and supply of exchange labor at the individual household level and the flow of exchange labor in the locality. Based on the above analyses and findings, this article finally argues that labor exchange, rooted in history and custom as a pre-capitalist mode of labor organization, cannot be regarded simply as a cultural lag or hangover from a precapitalist economy; labor exchange is rather an adaptive response made by peasant households to their current ecological, economic and social conditions. This further suggests that the model presented here, although an empirical model of labor exchange in Sinhalese peasant agriculture, will guide research endeavor on various kinds of reciprocal economic exchange yet to be examined. departmental bulletin paper 国立民族学博物館 National Museum of Ethnology 1989-01-27 VoR application/pdf 国立民族学博物館研究報告 3 13 517 581 Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology AN00091943 0385-180X https://minpaku.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/4325/files/KH013_3_002.pdf https://doi.org/10.15021/00004317 http://hdl.handle.net/10502/2974 https://minpaku.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/4325 jpn