Nurit Bird-David and David Kaplan form part of those who have emitted criticism of the original affluence thesis. In this essay, I discuss the opinions of the two scholars one at a time, showing the main arguments of their works. Then I shall proceed to describe points of commonality on which the two authors agree. Finally I will posit my own argument as to which scholar’s takes I think is more convincing.
Nurit Bird-David’s article - “Beyond ‘The Original Affluent Society’: A Culturalist Reformulation” (1992), the latter discusses the anterior work of Sahlins “Original Affluent Society.” She reviews Sahlins’ main contentions under a culturalist perspective. For Bird-David Sahlins’ work definitely succeeded in breaking the anthropological assumption that hunter-gatherers were poor, starving people; a view that David Kaplan as well share. However, for Bird-David Sahlins perpetrated a mistake; the one of confusing cultural ad ecological evaluations: “He overprocessed the ecologically oriented quantitative data from the […] studies and in the
Bibliography: 1. Bird-David, N., 1992, Beyond the “Original Affluent Society”, Current Anthropology, 25-47 2. Kaplan, D., 2000, The Darker Side of the “Original Affluent Society”, Anthropological Research, 301-324 3. Sahlins, M., 1972, Stone Age Economics, Chicago, Aldine Publishing