John H. Kunkel, “Opportunity, Economics, and Behavior: A Comment on Acheson and Foster,” American Anthropologist 78, no. 2 (Jun. 1976), 327-331.

Notes

• 327 – University of Western Ontario
• “While the discussion has focused on villages in one area of Michoacan, the theoretically important questions raised by the debate concern the operations and relative magnitudes of these factors in the development of peasant communities generally.”
• “This ‘comment’ explores three issues that underlie the discussion and are basic to any resolution of the debate.”
• “The first issue concerns the researcher’s model of man, i.e., the set of assumptions about the determinants and malleability of behavior. As Godwin (1974) points out, many substantive and methodological debates in the area of economic development have arise from the different models of man which various investigators employ. On the surface, Foster and Acheson disagree about the roles of economic factors in development, but there is a more significant difference which arises from their assumption about behavior. Economic opportunities and their technological prerequisites can arise and change quickly, and the proposition that people take advantage of them requires that one make two important assumptions, First, that the major determinants of behavior are its anticipated consequences (e.g., the benefits which come to those who respond to opportunities), and second, that there is considerable behavioral and attitudinal flexibility.”
• “An emphasis on economic factors implicitly assumes that behavior is quite malleable and that people will easily change their activities . . . when circumstances come to be perceived as being propitious. On the other hand, an emphasis on psychological factors, and especially on world view and personality, implies that such internal states are the major determinants of behavior. To the extent to which these are conceived as being static . . . and relatively independent of momentary external circumstances, one would conclude that people will change their ways only slowly, under considerable pressure, and that the mere existence of opportunity is not enough.”
• “The second issue concerns the weight of economic factors and their relations to the social and cultural characteristics of a community. Both Acheson and Foster treat economic factors as if they were not only very different but also quite separate from social and cultural aspects. Yet such a separation — while perhaps useful for analytical purposes — may be more of an academic artifact than a reflection of village life, and unduly obscures their mutual influences.”
• The decisive criticism of the debate between economic and cultural obstacles to innovation
• “As Acheson points out, for example, the men who took advantage of economic opportunities and ‘entered mechanized carpentry had in common the pursuit of prestige by accumulating wealth;’ yet wealth is only one of several means of acquiring prestige.”
  • The only example I’ve seen of a social scientist challenging the underlying assumptions about study subject’s motives — and especially against the assumption that the study subjects don’t share Northern capitalistic motives
• 328 – “Each of the many activities which make up daily life has several anticipated positive and negative consequences spread over a period of time, and whether or not any particular behavior will occur depends on the individual’s evaluation of the total anticipated outcome and the decision rule he employs. Some consequences are material (e.g., monetary gain or loss), others are symbolic (e.g., expressions of gratitude or disgust); some involve immediate behavioral reactions (e.g., a smile or frown), while others involve later indirect reactions from others (e.g., gaining or losing status); some are extrinsic (e.g., come from other people), others are intrinsic (e.g., activities one simply ‘likes to do’); some involve costs (i.e., the difference between expected positive and negative outcomes), and others simply reflect the fact that by behaving in one way a person must forego other activities.”
  • Predicated on assumptions of the universalizability of studies of human behavior, a universal concept of causality (“consequences”), not to mention that this “model of man” is always considered of men, that is, not women
• “A similar position has been taken by Erasmus (1961), who postulates that people behave primarily in terms of frequency interpretations, i.e., experientially founded predictions of likely consequences of their actions. He describes development programs in terms of attempts to change people’s frequency interpretations, and notes that old frequency interpretations must be altered if a program is to succeed, i.e., if villagers’ behaviors are to undergo fundamental and permanent change.”
• “An individual’s perception of anticipated outcomes, weights, and probabilities (the emic  view) often differs from an observer’s perception, which may be based on different information and values (the etic view), and both of these may differ from objective reality. The two perspectives of consequences may lead an observer to question the reasoning of villagers and to make incorrect predictions about their actions; and villagers’ misconceptions of reality, in turn, may lead them to make inappropriate or even wrong decisions.”
• “Three other factors which affect behavior and are of special significance in peasant villages are time perspectives, world view, and conceptions of uncertainty (Kunkel 1970). A person’s time horizon will affect the number of consequences he takes into account, while his conception of the world will affect the probabilities he incorporates in his assessment. Uncertainty is the result of assuming a capricious universe and/or of having insufficient information, leads to perceptions of lower probabilities for positive consequences (or higher risks), and through them affects a person’s decision rules.”
• “To the extent that villagers have differential contact with particular social structures and other people’s experiences, there should be differences in their propensity to engage in conservative and innovative behavior.”
• 328-29 – “We should expect, therefore, that the various members of a community will acquire different conceptions, perceptions, and thus varying degrees of ‘readiness’ to change some of their activities.”
• 329 – “When we have information about people’s evaluations of anticipated outcomes and the decision rules they employ, and when we know the economic social, and cultural determinants of these variables, we will be able to predict which individuals are likely to take advantage of opportunities. Indeed, we will know then how to restructure a person’s context in order to alter the weight and probability of various consequences, or perceived risks, so that behavior change in the desired direction is more likely to occur (e.g., . . . to engage in new agricultural practices). The important point is that people behave in terms of anticipated outcomes, that the various consequences have several determinants, and that the division of these into ‘economic’ and ‘noneconomic’ matters little to either individuals or their actions.”
• Solidifies the hybrid position in the debate BUT — THE SCIENCE OF COLONIALISM (whose desired change in behavior? To what end? In what direction?)
• “Two other components of ‘opportunity’ must be included in any study of innovation and behavior change in communities: the major goals people seek to achieve, and the various ways open to them for achieving these goals.”
• 330 – “The study of communities and their development cannot be restricted to abstract possibilities envisaged by an outside observer; rather, it must concentrate on what is real for the villagers who live within a particular social, cultural, and economic environment, which produces the overall risks associated with various behaviors.”
• “. . . [T]he most important questions we should ask about a village are ‘what can individuals actually do, and what are the perceived likely consequences of the various behavioral alternatives they confront.’ . . . Evidently both economic and cultural factors contribute to anticipated outcomes, but their proportions and weights depend on the characteristics of a village and its circumstances. They can be expected to vary even among neighboring communities and must be ascertained anew for each locality and population. Hence the question is not so much whose position is correct, but rather under which conditions Acheson’s and Foster’s explanations prevail.”