Cambridge Journal of Economics 2009, 33, 11531167 doi:10.

1093/cje/bep040 Advance Access publication 8 July 2009

Economics, postcolonial theory and the problem of culture: institutional analysis and hybridity
Eiman O. Zein-Elabdin*
Postcolonial theory has not yet made an impact in economics. This may be explained by the different treatment of culture in each eld. In postcolonial theory, culture serves as a central analytical category. In economics, despite increased attention in recent history, general approaches to culture continue to underestimate its role in economic behaviour and decision making. Borrowing some insights from postcolonial theory, this paper calls for further attention to culture in economics. It is argued that such a turn improves current understanding of contemporary economic phenomena, and allows subaltern cultures (currently theorised as less developed) to equally participate in the global construction of social meaning and economic well being. It is further argued that incorporating the postcolonial idea of hybridity into the institutional economic approach holds the most promise for theorising contemporary postcolonial economies. This argument is illustrated by examining some hybrid economic patterns within Africa. Key words: Economics, Postcolonial theory, Culture, Institutional economics, Africa JEL classications: B52, F54, O55

1. Introduction
The discourse of postcolonialism has entered several disciplines in the social sciences and humanities but has yet to engage more than a small circle of economists. Disciplinary and methodological reasons have much to do with this lack of engagement, but the greatest distance between postcolonial theory and economics stems from the treatment of culture in each eld. In postcolonial theory (Bhabha, 1994; Said, 1979, 1993), culture serves as the primary analytical category, whereas in much of economics it tends to be under theorised or altogether absent.1 In recent history, with the resurgence of
Manuscript received 14 July 2008; nal version received 16 March 2009. Address for correspondence: Franklin & Marshall College, Department of Economics, PO Box 4004, Lancaster, PA 17604, USA; email: eiman.zein-elabdin@fandm.edu * Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania. I am grateful to Serap Kayatekin, Tony Maynard, Gillian Hewitson and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. 1 Postcolonial theory evolved from readings of nineteenth and early twentieth century European novels and other documents by literary critics who came to the conclusion that classics such as Kiplings Kim (Said, 1979) or Conrads Heart of Darkness (Bhabha, 1985) could not be fully understood and evaluated as pure artifacts. These texts carried political implications and references to Europes imperial position far beyond the reading made possible by conventional literary criteria. Culture in this regard is part of a colonial discourse and a political instrument of empire. Charusheela and Zein-Elabdin (2003) give an introduction to postcolonial critique.
The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.

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interest in institutions, economists have paid a great deal of attention to culture (Cullenberg and Pattanaik, 2004; Klamer, 1996; Serageldin and Taboroff, 1994; Staneld, 1995; Throsby, 2001). Much of this attention has focused on works of creativity such as the arts; the Journal of Cultural Economics demonstrates this perspective. Nonetheless, the treatment of culture in the explanation of economic phenomena still leaves something to be desired. Economic approaches to culture currently vary from outright disavowal of it (the Beckerian framework); subordinating it to material considerations (class in Marxian theories); conceiving it as a general constraint on rational individual behaviour (new institutional analysis); or embracing culture, but with an implicit hierarchy in which the historical experience of modern Europe assumes a higher ontological order than all others, thereby producing a subaltern status of other cultures in the discipline (some postwar institutionalism).1 In my assessment, these various approaches embody a form of modernism that has eluded major critics of this propensity in economics, which has been identied exclusively with method, specically positivism (McCloskey, 1985), or with determinism (Amariglio and Ruccio, 1994). Here, I am concerned with what may be called substantive or cultural modernism, namely, a disavowal of culture itself by privileging the historical context of European modernity and its patterns of unfolding in different world regions. Such modernism has manifested itself most forcefully in the eld of development economics. Despite multiple revisions and transformations, the postwar project of international development stipulates a universal conformity to the historical path of industrial modernity, and, in effect, engenders the theoretical erasure of all economic patterns conceptualised as pre-modern. Postcolonial theory, on the other hand, though much criticised for neglecting the economy, has generated tremendous insights on issues of cross-cultural hegemony, that is, the creation of a political climate that elicits the subaltern (subordinated) groups consent to a dominant ideology, and the role of knowledge construction in this process (ZeinElabdin and Charusheela, 2004). Colonial discourse analysis (Bhabha, 1983; Said, 1979) opens up a space for comprehending the twentieth century notion of development as a discourse of power rather than a culturally neutral, scientically knowable growth path of an economy (Escobar, 1995; Olson, 1994).2 Postcoloniality presents a promising entry point for understanding a contemporary world in which the culture of European modernity (most notably, nation-state, market system, urban agglomeration) has expanded far beyond its historical and geographical origins and has been imbricated with other cultures in deep and complex forms. This understanding could potentially allow the cultures of societies currently theorised in economics as less/underdeveloped to equally participate in the global construction of meaning and denitions of the terms of economic being and becoming. Perhaps the greatest promise of postcolonial insights is the possibility of imagining different economic relations and social ethics, and thereby aiding in the search
1 Modernity is a vast and contentious term. Conventionally, it has been deployed as a synonym for the European social experience of the past few centuries, signifying its economic path, cultural institutions, and enlightenment conguration of reality. Europe here is not conned to the geographical location but includes its distinct extensions in European concentrations worldwide. I do not take Europe (in this sense or the ` continent) to be an undifferentiated place, but I do want to single out its unifying cultural substance vis-a-vis others. 2 Discourse refers to a specic totality of mental space, theories, texts, language and conventions that set the conditions of knowledge and parameters of what is thought and uttered and which dialectically produce a certain material reality. Escobar (1995) applies this Foucauldian conception to the project of third world development.

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for answers to the presently daunting questions of ecological sustainability and social wellbeing.1 Taking postcolonial theory on board calls for a more profound rethinking of the place of culture and of currently devalued cultures in economics. In particular, Homi Bhabhas (1985, 1994) idea of hybridity (deep cultural mixing) offers a fruitful analytical tool for better examining economies situated in multiple and dense cross-cultural intersections, and improves our understanding of contemporary economic phenomena at large.2 Such hybridity is exhibited in the contemporary economies of Africa, yet Africa is also the quintessential representative of cultural subalternity in economics, currently dened as the least developed world region and habitually associated with crisis and failure.3 Traditionally, most signicant descriptions of African economies were produced by anthropologists (e.g., Bohannan and Dalton, 1962). Unfortunately, these ethnographies were rarely taken up in economics on the premise that most of the observed behaviour and institutions amounted to little more than obsolete traditions that would inevitably be supplanted by modern structures and attitudes. An important outcome of the current attention to culture in economics has been the generation of more substantive examinations of economic conditions in Africa (Collier and Gunning, 1999; Fafchamps, 2004; Schneider, 1999; Trulsson, 1997). This small literature varies in its level of detail and application of institutionalist principles, but it generally highlights the prevalence of gift giving, sharing, strong kinship obligation and other socio-economic patterns previously identied by anthropologists. The persistence of these patterns, in the midst of substantial economic change, presents a challenge to theoretical perspectives that conceptualise them as premodern or transitory. In this paper I argue that institutional economics, with its paradigmatic emphasis on culture and long standing openness to inter-disciplinarity, is best positioned to bridge the gap between postcolonial theory and economics. In particular, the theoretical framework of institutionalism, which underscores cultural embeddedness and an unteleological, nonethnocentric conception of social change (Mayhew, 1998), necessarily accommodates a concept of hybridity. It seems hardly coincidental that the earliest reference to postcolonial critique in economics is Paulette Olsons (1994, p. 77) effort to push the boundaries of radical institutionalism by examining . . . the postcolonial critique of western humanism. Olson applied the notion of orientalism in order to heighten institutionalists attention to racist, sexist and classist biases in mainstream economics. Here, I show that drawing on the postcolonial idea of hybridity can strengthen the institutionalist emphasis on culture, and allow more illuminating, truly substantive analysis. Space does not allow
The ecological critique of economic growth is well established in principle even though debates may exist over specic future trends and impacts. Given space limitations, I can only state here that I begin from the assumption that sustainability requires a drastic modication of current economic valuation and provisioning systems (see Wolfensohn et al., 2000). 2 The term hybrid conventionally referred to racial mixing, hence creolisation and mestizaje; see Young (1995) for a history. Cultural hybridity is not new or limited to former colonies. However, in postcolonial theory this condition is seen in a positive light rather than associated with monstrosity and deviance as has been the case in history. Usage of the term in postcolonial critique varies but most crucially signies bordercrossing, in-betweeness and subversive re-appropriation. The term has been adopted outside of postcolonial circles. See Kraidy (2005) for an extensive discussion of debates, and Nederveen Pieterse (2004) for an attempt to classify patterns of hybridity. 3 See Senders (1999) critical discussion of this tendency in the literature. See Collier (1993) for a survey of economic analyses of Africa. Examples of symposia on the region may be found in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer 1999), and the Cambridge Journal of Economics (May 2001). For more on the construction of Africa in the development discourse, see Zein-Elabdin (1998, 2004).
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a full account of hybridity, nor an extended exploration of its implications, but only a general outline to indicate its relevance and potential productivity for institutional economics. The next section gives an overview of what I see as cultural modernism in institutional analyses. Section 3 offers an introductory outline of postcolonial theory, focusing on hybridity. In the fourth section, I discuss economic hybridity with the help of Trulssons (1997) study of entrepreneurial strategies in Tanzania, and Fafchamps (2004) comparative analysis of markets across Africa. The two monographs reveal hybrid economic phenomena, but also illustrate the limitations of a modernist approach to culture. The conclusion identies some implications for institutional economics, and tasks for future research. As I have emphasised in previous work, a postcolonial critique of economics is, of necessity, situated at the intersection of economics and philosophy and therefore takes a panoramic view of the discipline that appears to blur its particular theories, elds and different schools of thought. This broad view should not be taken to imply that economics is homogeneous or simple. My points of contention are not offered as a general comment on the immense body of work and valuable lessons of economic thinkers, but only to highlight gaps in their approach to culture.

2. The problem of culture in economics

Culture has been dubbed one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language (Williams, 1976, p. 76), having been given a remarkably wide range of meanings. For the purpose of this paper culture may be dened as a broadly shared, incomplete, unpredictable, historically specic social frame of reference that contains different practices and ideas, including economy and economics.1 In this more encompassing sense, culture ultimately consists of what is taken for granted by a group. From a postcolonial standpoint, the ontological precedence of European modernity, along with the institutions and specic apprehension of rationality it produced, represents the unexamined cultural core in economics. In this section, I show that this core is shared, albeit in different forms and degrees, within institutional scholarship. This broad survey is not exhaustive of the literature, of course, but hopefully illustrates the point by reference to some key contributions. Cultural modernism in economics appears in two related forms: (i) an underlying assumption of the superiority of modernity and its conation with development; and (ii) a disavowal of culture itself, namely a belief in supracultural laws of economic behaviour and movement. The assumption that modern European achievements represent a natural or historical normas in Smiths (1976, p. 405) natural course of thingsleads to the disavowal of culture. As the cultural framework is taken for granted, the realm of economy, or what is perceived to be economic tendency, is disembodied from culture; in other words, the materiality of life, habits of provisioning or accumulation are seen as supracultural. This presumption expresses itself, for example, as an innate individual rationality in much of neoclassical theory and as an a priori historical necessity in classical Marxism. As a result, the role of culture is occluded at the same time that modernist principles formulate the
1 This section makes no attempt to delve into the vast general literature and debates about culture in anthropology or in cultural studies. See Escobar (1995) on the relationship between anthropology and economics. For other discussions within economics, see Mayhew (1987), Ferber and Nelson (1993), Throsby (2001), Cullenberg and Pattanaik (2004). Serageldin and Taboroff (1994) and Wolfensohn et al. (2000) present a World Bank perspective. See Callari (2004) on the role of anthropology in the nineteenth century turn to subjectivism in economics.

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pre-analytic premises of the discipline. I call this a process of double erasure: the erasure of cultures that do not conform to these understandings by theorising them as inferior (less developed or pre-capitalist), and erasure ofhiding from sightthe work of a culturally dominant discourse (Zein-Elabdin, 2004).1 The treatment of culture in the original institutional school presents a rather complex case because culture is one of the two main philosophical axes of this tradition (Mayhew, 1988). Culture is a balanced system of habits, essentially habits of thought (Veblen, 1990, p. 221); institutions, the manifestations of these habits, become axiomatic and indispensable by habituation and general acceptance (Veblen, 1923, p. 101); the entire world is a tangled and unbroken web of institutions (Hamilton, 1932, p. 84). However, the signicance of culture in institutionalist thought is coupled with the dynamic role of technology, which arises from Veblens belief in an instinctual tool-using human tendency. This instrumental tendency provides the second main philosophical axis of Veblenian institutional theory (Mayhew, 1987, 1988). Contemporary institutionalists afrm the importance of habits, but also consider technology a basic determinant of the character of specic human culture (Staneld, 1995, p. 25).2 The institutionalist commitment to culture as a core concept was tested by the twentieth century postwar project of international development, which promised to oversee the material progress of all of (man)kind. The shared understanding of development, among different schools of thought, was that of a close reenactment of the historical cultural path of modern Europe (Escobar, 1995; Olson, 1994; Zein-Elabdin, 1998). With the dominance of the postwar development discourse the emphasis on technology in institutionalist doctrine came to take on the form of a universal prescription, which as Anne Mayhew (1998) has noted, was exhibited in some of Clarence Ayres analyses. Ayres is by all accounts the dominant gure in postwar institutionalism (Hodgson, 2000), and a principal contributor to the institutionalist theory of economic development (Street, 1987). Unfortunately, his attempt to t institutional analysis within the philosophical parameters of third world development discourse has played a key role in what I think is an institutionalist estrangement from culture. James Street acknowledges that it was the postwar interest in problems of development that inuenced the second edition of Ayres Theory of Economic Progress (1962), to which the subtitle A Study of the Fundamentals of Economic Development and Cultural Change was added. The rationale for the second edition was articulated in a new Foreword as such:
the process of economic development has become the subject of a vast outpouring of books and articles (xxi). Although this book was written and published before the onset of the present paroxysm of economic development, it does contain, at least by implication, certain basic principles (xviii).3

1 Roots of the idea of development in Western philosophy and the historicism of classical political economy have been noted elsewhere (Zein-Elabdin, 1998). As Callari (2004, p. 120) has argued, the fact that even as powerful a critic of capitalism as Marx could replicate the images of the decient other which sustained British colonialism indicates that the othering operations at work must have been deeply embedded in the structure of knowledge production in Europe. 2 A discussion of the role of technology in old institutional thought and debates over the tension between technological/instrumental and institutional/ceremonial forces is beyond the scope of this paper. For more on technology in relation to culture, see Mayhew (1987, 1998) and Lower (1988). 3 Ayres outlined four principles: the process of economic development is indivisible and irresistible (Ayres, 1962, p. xviii); the technological revolution spreads in inverse proportion to institutional resistance (p. xix); the creation of human capital (p. xxi); technological revolution brings its own values to fruition (p. xxiv).

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The Foreword ended with the conclusion that industrial society is the most successful way of life mankind has ever known (Ayres, 1962, p. xxv). Ayres, to be sure, did not see the industrial way of life as the realisation of individual economic reason or the hand of history, but an evolutionary outcome of a superior technology that embodied its own cumulative logicthe values which are engendered in the technological process are universal values (Ayres, 1962, p. xxiv). Ayres own understanding of culture as a phenomenon sui generis (1962, p. 95) and his criticism of Veblen for adopting stage ethnology (Ayres, 1960, p. 49) appear to be at odds with the Foreword conclusion. This dissonance may be explained by the discursive imperative of third world development, which seemed to almost naturally validate his instrumental theory of value. In Ayres work culture is properly understood, yet the instrumental value theory produced a higher rankingas it werefor technologically sophisticated societies. As I show later, this value theory persists in current institutionalist analyses of African economies. The new institutional approach represents both a step forward, in that culture is now explicitly invoked in neoclassical theory, and a regression, namely, a retreat from the more profound Veblenian conception of social relations. In this approach, as articulated by Douglass North (1995), culture is a constraint on welfare-maximising behaviour, the incentive structure for individual choice (Furubotn and Richter, 1991). Although North recognises that culture is passed down intergenerationally as the customs, taboos, myths (North, 1995, p. 20), he wishes to retain the choice theoretic approach that underlies microeconomics (p. 17). This, of course, leaves the individual rational self in place, and therefore forecloses the possibility of any other cultural concept or sensibility.1 Neoclassical institutionalism typically seeks to identify a measurable variable in order to estimate the impact of institutions on rational behaviour. In consequence, new institutionalists set out to nd whether culture affects economic outcomes but paradoxically maintain the standard economic assumption that each individual has one identity and maximises the utility of this identity (Guiso et al., 2006, p. 29). Thus the ideas of utility, maximising utility and individual identity are all theoretically situated outside of culture. This strand of institutionalism has been vigorously applied in the eld of development. Applications range from grain and coffee markets in South Asia and Brazil, to government bureaucracy and impacts of structural adjustment programmes in Africa (Harriss et al., 1995; Stein, 1995). However, adherence to core neoclassical postulates has so far precluded in-depth examination of cultural dimensions. Norths view (1995, p. 25) is that the heart of development policy must be the creation of polities that will create and enforce efcient property rights. As Howard Stein (1995, p. 113) argues, emphasis on legalism and efciency prevents new institutionalists from grasping the cultural complexity of ownership arrangements. The result is analyses narrowly focused on transactions costs and property rights, while drawing very broad conclusions. Accordingly, for example, Africas chronic failure of economic growth (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 4) may be explained by high transactions costs and inadequate enforcement of contracts. In short, cultural modernism surfaces in both the new and old institutional economics literatureexpressed explicitly in the development discourse where European modernity is granted a superior status, and implicitly in the disavowal of culture by treating it as
1 North claims to abandon instrumental rationality (1995, p. 17), but this is debatable when juxtaposed with the remainder of the theory. See Hodgson (2007) for a substantial discussion of the evolving body of new institutionalism.

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secondary to some supracultural factor, whether market rationality or technology. Postcolonial theory opens a space for a more profound reection on the culture-economy nexus both because of its emphasis on culture and because the condition of postcoloniality renders obsolete the analytical dualisms of tradition/modernity and development/underdevelopment.

3. Postcolonial theory and economics

The departure of postcolonial theory was in examining European literature as part of a larger colonial discourse, an instrument of cultural hegemony. Thus orientalism, more than a mere academic exercise of studying the Orient, could be understood as an epistemological political institution with far reaching historical consequences (Said, 1979). Drawing on this broad insight helps to transcend some of the epistemological hegemonic tendencies of twentieth century postwar social science. At the risk of over simplication, the most dening elements of postcolonial theory may be schematically summarised in the following propositions:  Modern Europe historically produced the Orienta theoretical representation of all dominated regionsas subaltern through the knowledge generated by Orientalists, which in turn authorised colonial domination.  Cultural hegemony is never complete or simplethe colonial is constituted by its others as they are by its dominant position.  The postcolonial, as the cross-cultural outcome of this historical process of domination, is a hybrid state of mutual constitution, irreversibly inected by the colonial encounter. In this theoretical scheme postcolonial critics did not pay specic or sufcient attention to economic matters because, despite their rejection of Marxian historicism, they operated on the basis of a super-structural concept of culture. This surfaces in Saids statement: it means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication, and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic (Said, 1993, p. xii). Nevertheless, postcolonial arguments are readily applicable to economic contexts. In the following, I focus on the related notions of colonial discourse and hybridity because they hold a fruitful potential for rethinking the space between hegemonic and subaltern culturesthe postcolonial parallel to developed and less developed countries. On the basis of reading literary texts imbued with imperialist conceptions of Europes place in the world, Bhabha (1983) offered a concise theory of colonial discourse as an apparatus of power, following Foucaults concept of dispositiff [apparatus] (Foucault, 1980). In Bhabhas interpretation, colonial discourse: turns on the recognition and disavowal of racial/cultural/historical differences, creates a space for a subject peoples through the production of knowledges, and construes the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction (Bhabha, 1994, p. 70, emphasis added).1 From a postcolonial standpoint, development also may be read as a colonial discourse. First, the development discourse turns on an articulation of difference between two groups of
1 Bhabha argues that the main strategy of articulating difference is stereotyping, where alterity is xed by deploying stereotypes such as the native, the savage or the cannibal. But despite these strong terms he views colonialism as an ambivalent mode of power/knowledge rather than an impenetrable system of domination. For instance, the stereotype is a site of conicting emotions and imagerye.g., savagery and exoticism. It is at once an other and yet entirely knowable (Bhabha, 1994, pp. 701).

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economies. Bhabhas emphasis on cultural distinctions is replaced by economic contrasts, where the level of incomeor some related metric such as life expectancy and literacy ratesserves as the primary gauge of difference. Second, a space for subject peoples is carved out in specialist texts where their problems are dissected based on stereotypical knowledges produced. Finally, intervention is justied on the basis of construing those subjects as degenerate types. Their degeneracy is understood not in the colonial rubric of savagery and cannibalism, but in the developmentalist representations of poverty and illiteracy (Escobar, 1995). Of course, I do not believe that development economists are driven by racism or a desire to colonise; I am suggesting that the dynamic of development as a discourse that came on the heels of the colonial era effectively reinforced the same cultural hegemony. The idea of hybridity offers a tool for challenging the discourse of development. For Bhabha, the cultural authority of colonial discourse was weakened in every instance where natives presented missionaries or colonial administrators with difcult questions. To give an example he recounts a story that early in the nineteenth century a group of Indians happened to come upon a translated copy of the Bible and fell in love with it. But, they asked: How can the word of God come from the esh-eating mouths of the English? How can it be the European book, when we believe that it is Gods gift to us? (Bhabha, 1994, p. 116). Not having their questions answered, the natives adopt the Holy Book in a manner that troubles their catechist: they refuse to take the Sacrament, which in their eyes amounted to eating esh. Bhabha used the term hybridity to indicate the natives tendency to question and appropriate colonial discourse in ways that modied and compromised the original meaning and thereby undermined its authority. In the instance of translating Christianity in India, the cultural authority of the Bible was hybridised, contaminated by another worldview.1 Hybridity is a constituent of postcoloniality, which is inscribed in situations of cultural displacement; a subversive moment of in-betweenness, liminality, refuge, and exile; being neither one nor other (Bhabha, 1994, p. 127). Its crucial element of cultural mixing and fusion has been adapted to a variety of disciplinary contexts (Garca Canclini, 1995; Kraidy, 2005; Nederveen Pieterse, 2004). From a discursive economic standpoint, the signicance of hybridity is that it disturbs the dualisms of modernity/tradition and development/ underdevelopment. Garca Canclini (1995, p. 3) introduced a concept of hybrid cultures to understand the crossings of the indigenous and colonial legacies with contemporary art and electronic cultures in Latin America, in particular how migrant workers negotiate new technologies while holding on to old beliefs in the context of their work environment. Escobar (1995) sees hybridity in the Kayapos deployment of video cameras and aeroplanes to call for cultural preservation in Brazil. Some political scientists have examined the state in Africa as a hybrid of the Western norms introduced under colonial rule and the values inherent to African social systems (Chabal and Daloz, 1999, p. 9). A concept of economic hybridity may better describe economies found at the intersection of multiple cultural currents. The literature already points to its relevance. As Nederveen Pieterse (2004) notes, hybrid formations have been observed by economists across schools of development thought, for example, the dualistic economy, and the semi-proletariat in Marxian literature. The informal sector is perhaps the most apparent
1 I am abstracting here from whether the Bible is a product of Western culture, and focus only on its use by the British in India. The Bible served as an instrument of hegemony to the extent of its use for colonial purposes.

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reection of economic hybridity acknowledged in the literature. The important contribution of a postcolonial economic analysis is to theorise the informal (read hybrid) as contemporary and coeval rather than pre-modern or transitory. Hybrid cultures (or economies) inherently problematise the binarisms of tradition/modernity. In Garca Canclinis terms, the modern explodes and is mixed with what is not modern; it is afrmed and debated at the same time (Garca Canclini, 1995, p. 266). This process challenges the presumption of a predictable historical path since the same hybridising move also inects and recongures the historically dominant model. Development plans and projects introduced in any given context will be re-appropriated, synthesised and reemerge in forms yet inaccessible to current theory. A hybrid reects blending and fusion of institutions, habits and values as a result of cultural borrowing and movement across time. A concept of economic hybridity, therefore, ts well with the original institutional theoretical framework. Although Veblens (1990) references to hybrids (e.g., populations, composition and civilisation) were made primarily with respect to biological mixing, some of his discussions may be related to cultural processes. Institutional analyses grounded in cultural relativism often described hybrid economic outcomes without necessarily using the term. For instance, in examining British colonialism in central Africa, W. C. Neale argued that colonial institutions such as native reserves were unique products of the conict of cultures (Neale, 1984, p. 1178). His depiction of these as emerging in a process of mutual adaptation is largely consistent with postcolonial hybridization.1 Of course, Ayres too spoke of hybridity as a result of the cross-fertilization of cultures, although, in his view, it is the tools themselves, not the people, that have been hybridized (Ayres, 1962, p. 118). It is not possible here to explore the possible dimensions of Ayres and Veblens usage of the term but the references seem to warrant some revisiting with an eye for postcolonial arguments. The following section examines some forms of economic hybridity that emerge from Trulssons (1997) description of business strategies in Tanzania, and Fafchamps (2004) analysis of African markets. The section also discusses the signicance of a concept of economic hybridity and some implications for institutional economics.

4. Hybridity in African economies

The phenomenon of hybridity calls for a theoretical shift from the category less/ underdeveloped to postcolonial. This is not simply a matter of semantics, but of an epistemological transformation. First, a theoretical framework of postcoloniality illuminates the present narratives of subaltern cultures and recognises them as coeval. Second, this recognition potentially allows these narratives to participate in the global construction of meaning and terms of being and search for answers to current challenges by taking seriously some of their social ethics currently erased by the development discourse. Examining a few examples of hybrid patterns in Africa today reveals situations of economic mixing in deep, multiple ways that defy binary categories and exceed dualistic frameworks such as market and state. But, before delving into these examples, some qualications are necessary: (i) in this section I do not attempt to develop a concept of economic hybridity, but only to make the case for it; (ii) hybrid patterns are not set up
1 Another example is Barbers (1961) description of colonial economies in central Africa, which were framed within the dual economy mould. However, his prescient qualications make clear the problematic aspects of this concept. For the distinction between postcolonial hybridity and ideas of cultural relativism and multiculturalism, see Charusheela and Zein-Elabdin (2003).

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against some pure economy (capitalist or developed), which has never existed anywhere. Hybridity may describe phenomena in many economic environments as evidenced by such terms as market socialism and transition economies; (iii) different forms and levels of hybridity may exist. Here I am most concerned with a person or a groups ability to combine multiple, even contradictory, codes of values and rationales of economic decision and practice; (iv) I am not claiming that everything occurring in Africa can or should be understood in terms of hybridity.1 African economies are postcolonial insofar as they represent contemporary constructions, with modes of being and provisioning where social processes express a continuum of local, regional and worldwide encounters, amalgamating different behaviours, institutions and technologies. Catalysts of hybridisation such as colonialism, migration, development projects and other causes of dislocation identied by Bhabha have been especially pervasive in the continent over the last century. In consequence, most societies, although far from the level of technological capability and material wealth found in high-income countries, have been transformed, in different ways, by immense and multiple forces, combining external factors with their own internal dynamics. The articulation of these different dimensions may give rise to a hybrid economic structure, relationship, or element of behaviour. For example, in the colonial process of capitalist structuring of indigenous economies, market rationality has interacted with pre-colonial institutions of reciprocity and redistribution to generate what has been called neo-patrimonialism in some political science literature (Chabal and Daloz, 1999, p. 9). Current institutional analyses of African economies give accounts of socially-embedded narratives in which reciprocity and kinship obligation play a more important role than impersonal contractual relations.2 But these also co-exist and are combined with modern institutions such as private property, wage labour or industrial habits of mind. Trulssons (1997) study is unique in that it combines a new institutional theoretical vision with rich analysis of the cultural milieu in the old institutional fashion. The study investigated entrepreneurial strategies in three districts in northwest Tanzania, historically dominated by subsistence farming and cash crop production. The region combines an agrarian economywith extended family, short planning horizon, low saving ratesand light industry. Like the rest of Tanzania, this region went through a socialist experience (known as Ujamaa) during the period 19671985 based on creating self-sufcient village communities in the context of a centrally planned economy. Furthermore, there are noticeable differences between indigenous and Arab/Asian business practices and signicant borrowing from south Asia in both technology and management style. Accordingly, there are multiple sources of hybridity: subsistence and market exchange within a socialised national economy, ethnically differentiated business practices, as well as heavy Asian cultural and technological inuence. Trulsson examined the conditions under which 26 entrepreneurs operated in a variety of industrial ventures, ranging from food processing to printing and construction, and the effects of macroeconomic stability and enforcement of

1 Generalisation about Africa is not unproblematic of course. See Zein-Elabdin (1998, 2004) for some qualications. See Collier and Gunning (1999) on difculties with Africa as a category, even on the basis of narrow economic criteria. 2 Literature in other social sciences also shows the importance of the family, loyalty, sharing and reciprocity in material provisioning. The World Banks conference report on culture and development in Africa points remarkable strength in terms of social solidarity and mutual support in the face of adversity (Serageldin and Taboroff, 1994, p. 1). The idea of hybridity underscores that such tendencies are not to be understood as essential, unchanging traits common to all Africans.

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contracts on their decisions. Data were generated through personal interviews and study of local documents over a period of 6 months. The study found that employing members of the family is such a norm that a substantial portion of the entrepreneurs time and nancial resources goes to balancing business and family obligations in a manner that would appear irrational to a Western observer (Trulsson, 1997, p. 44). For example, rms imported costly labour-saving technologies while maintaining a redundant work force mostly of family members. Commitment to kin presented the primary cause of liquidity shortage for rms. According to Trulsson, the entrepreneurs employed a set of ad hoc rules depending on business and family contingencies or muddled through, rather than followed rules of maximisation. Indeed, the prot motive appears to be subjected to almost every social obligation. These ndings help situate economic theory in a cultural context where self-interest and efciency have been hybridised with social obligation in a way that persistently compromised market rationality. On the basis of new institutional principles, Fafchamps takes a broader look at 12 countries to invite a new understanding of the nature of markets in sub-Saharan Africa (Fafchamps, 2004, p. 4). Focusing on manufacturing rms and agricultural traders in Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Cote dIvoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, he outlines three major economic allocation mechanisms: gift exchange, markets and hierarchies. Gift exchange takes place within families and among friends and neighbours. Market transactions are driven by self-interest, presuming some gain from trade. Hierarchies, such as banks and government agencies, are complex centralised organisations that rely on command and control. On the basis of case studies and surveys, Fafchamps nds that all three allocation mechanisms are present, although gift giving is the most prevalent. Obligation to kin continues to dominate among households, especially in rural areas, and to provide a wide variety of goods and services. According to him solidarity among relatives and kin represents the dominant form of social insurance (Fafchamps, 2004, pp. 89). Most revealingly, Fafchamps used the term hybrid (p. 8) to describe the combination of gift exchange, market and hierarchal transactions. There is more to examine in Trulssons and Fafchamps accounts, but this glimpse is sufcient to suggest more than one level of economic hybridity. The main drawback of their illuminating studies is that, instead of trying to comprehend the complex imbrication of different cultural and economic phenomena on their own terms, they attempt to t them within a model of an individual choosing self in a knowable progressive historical journey. Thus, although Trulsson had identied what might form the basis for further investigating a different economic rationality, he generally accepts the structural adjustment prescription for developmentreplace old inefcient structures, like institutional frameworks, with new ones (Trulsson, 1997, p. 318). Fafchamps, although critical of the analytical distinction between formal and informal institutions (North, 1995), begins explicitly from the assumption of individual utility maximisation, and thus predenes the parameters of self and identity according to a different cultural model. As such, these new institutional analyses of African economies contain an untenable combination of recognising culture and erasing it at once. The old institutional approach should be superior for understanding Africas economies because of its better grasp of the complexity, entrenchedness and non-instrumentality of institutions. However, this grasp is undermined when an Ayresian developmentalist perspective is adopted. For example, in evaluating structural adjustment programs, Schneider (1999) rightly criticised the new approach for failure to understand that local

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culture and habits produce different market outcomes in Africa from those expected by neoclassical theory. Instead, he adopts the old institutionalist tradition. The explanatory promise of this tradition is squandered, unfortunately, as he quickly concludes that ceremonialism in the Ayresian sense is impeding technological progress (Schneider, 1999, p. 328). Even though the specics of this ceremonialism are not laid out in his discussion, Schneider goes on to argue the transformation of indigenous African cultural institutions into agents for change continues to be the brightest hope for progress (p. 330). In effect, his old institutionalist recommendation for Africa as a whole can hardly be differentiated from Trulssons new institutionalist prescription for Tanzania. One cannot draw strong conclusions about economic hybridity in Africa or institutionalist treatment of it just yet; however, the preceding pieces of information raise at least two issues: rst, the need to understand the specic dynamics of economic phenomena in their own terms rather than call for replacing or transforming their cultural basis, or grouping them under informal sector or ceremonial behaviour without further explanation. The second issue is to investigate the sources of persistence of these eco-cultural patterns. To understand this persistence, one must apprehend the link between the realm of meaning and the tangible locations of action; culture cannot simply be conceived as an incentive structure constraining an already formed individual maximising tendency or as a ceremonial hindrance to an autonomous technology. Cultural ethics and values are always present in the very process of economic decision making and experience. For an institutionalist, with a substantive understanding of the economy, one need only recall Polanyis insistence that the inclusion of the non-economic is vital (Polanyi, 1957, p. 148). The challenge is to place our understanding of a substantive economy in contemporary context rather than associate it almost exclusively with a primitive or underdeveloped phase of human history. The signicance of exploring a concept of economic hybridity lies not simply in making a gesture, i.e., giving space to subaltern cultures, but in helping to examine some currently not well understood phenomena; in Africas context these include the economyculture intersection, which the literature broadly and easily refers to as corruption. Second, systematising a concept of hybridity requires unpacking ideas of rationality, efciency, ceremonialism and the economic self in cross-cultural context. Third, and perhaps most importantly, this rethinking may help in grappling with the question of sustainability. Current ecological reality dictates a search for alternative economic models that facilitate a shift away from the singular goal of material afuence. A shift may only be accomplished by seriously considering different rationalities and patterns of behaviour of a high order of unfamiliarity; being mindful of the cultural boundedness of ideas of wealth and poverty might help the discipline of economics entertain the possibility that a modest level of income in itself is no predicament. This is the shift by which a subaltern culture may genuinely participate in the global construction of the terms of being because then a lower level of material consumption, strong kinship ties and social commitment could be viewed as serviceable ethics rather than remnants of obsolete tradition. Implications of the present arguments for institutional economics cannot be fully explored here, but two key points may be made. First, the idea of hybridity requires moving beyond the modernist method embodied in analytical binariese.g., modern/traditional, developed/ underdeveloped, market/state and formal/informal. The normative valuation associated with the dichotomy instrumental/ceremonial in some institutionalist literature has already been pointed out (Mayhew, 1998). The analytical content of these two categories within a contemporary postcolonial context may need revisiting. Second, hybridity calls for a morein one senseorthodox institutional approach. Understanding specic modes

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and outcomes of cultural-economic hybridisation demands substantive analysis and an evolutionary perspective as the economic system will change in ways that cannot be foreseen (Mayhew, 1998, p. 459). These implications can only be identied through ne grained analysis of culture in the best unteleological tradition of institutionalism.

5. Conclusion
Cultural modernism in twentieth century economics has resulted in an inability to understand other societies in any terms beside their need for modernisation. Institutional economics, despite a rm theoretical grasp of culture, did not escape the epistemological pressure of the postwar discourse of international development. Drawing on postcolonial insights on cultural hegemony and exploring the idea of hybridity offers an opportunity for institutional analysis not only to remedy this misstep, but also to further deepen current understanding of contemporary economies situated at intersections of multiple cultures. The present analysis has merely suggested a preliminary framework for considering hybridity in the context of economics. Future research needs to provide: (i) more specic and careful delineation of a concept of economic hybridity; (ii) documentation and deeper examination of hybrid economic formations and investigation of their stability and extent of generality; and (iii) investigation of sources of vitality and resilience in economies which appear, by current economic metrics, to be a failure in order to contribute to current discussions of ecological health and sustainability.

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