Abstract

Consumption and Prosperity: Comparative Data from East Africa SAGE Publications, Inc.1961DOI: 10.1177/002071526100200106 U.R. Ehrenfels University of Madras, India THE acceptance of cultural relativism is a necessary pre-condition for any attempt at a meaningful interpretation of different culture patterns (Benedict, 1932), the understanding of which is based on seeing them in the context of gestalt phenomena or cultural wholeness (Ehrenfels, 1960-b: 113 ff.). The application of this same principle, cultural relativism, to economic concepts becomes necessary, as soon as they are utilized to interpret the contents of cultures, as for instance when consumption is made to be a yard-stick for measuring poverty or prosperity. The relative usefulness of consumption as a yard-stick for evaluating poverty or prosperity of any particular society is in this paper being illustrated with data from East Africa which have been collected during one year's anthropological field work among matrilineal shifting cultivators on the Makonde Plateau in the Southern Province of Tanganyika (Ehrenfels, 1960-a: XIV, 46 ff.). These studies were persued among the Makonde and Makua, three years after the introduction of a water pumping system through the Government aided Makonde Water Corporation which has accelerated already palpable trends of acculturation (Whiteley, 1951). These started