Sidney W. Mintz [1922 – 2015] . > S&P A view that includes the linkage between metropolis and colony by choosing one perspective and ignoring the other is necessarily incomplete (xvi). The sugar was not being produced for the Caribbean people themselves, who consumed only a fraction of the finished product (xviii). world sugar production shows the most remarkable upward production of any major food in the world market over the course of several centuries (xxi). The chemical and mechanical transformations by which substances are bent to human use and become unrecognisable to those who know them in nature have marked our relationship to nature for almost as long as we have been human… some would say it is those transformations that define our humanity (xxiii). Plantations were created in the New World during the early years of the sixteenth century and were staffed fo the most part by enslaved Africans (xxiii). The history of European societies had in certain ways paralleled that of the plantations (xxiv). If not slaves, then men who sold their labour because they had nothing else to sell; who would produce things of which they would not be the principal consumers; who would consume things they had not produced, and in the process earn profit for others elsewhere (xxiv). { the book is about } what sugar tells us about the wider world (xxiv)... { It is a } history of changing relationships among people, societies and substances (xxv). human liking for sweetness became established in European taste preferences at a time when European power, military might, and economic initiative were transforming the world (xv). { in relation to history } anthropology tries to ask and answer different questions (xvi). What could be less anthropological than a historical examination of a food that graces every modern table (xvii) from 1650 onwards, sugar began to change from a luxury and a rarity into a commonplace and a necessity in many nations (xxix). I hope to show the significance of a colonial product like sugar in the growth of world capitalism (xxix). … production and consumption so closely bound together (xxix). Karl Polanyi [1886 - 1964]. Aristotle [ 384bce -- 322 bce ] KP argues for a largely ‘non-market’ Mesopotamian scene. This is 19th century model of the disembodied economic system. Independent and separate from State, politics and government. Contrary to popular belief, classical Athens was not a mercantile community. It did not inherit the market place from the East. Rather, it was a pioneer in the novel method of market trading (64-65). Aristotle’s teachings in relation to the economy are deemed, even irrelevant (65). Greek business life of market trading is still in its infancy during Aristotle’s time (67). the nineteenth century version of an independent economic sphere of society is for an optimum of want satisfaction for all (68). Status (corresponding to reciprocity and redistribution) dominates where the economy is embedded in non-economic institutions. No overt concept of the economy need arise here. Contract is characteristic of the existence of a motivationally distinct economy in society (70). It is the legal aspect of exchange. It is where a market can exist. Aristotle’s approach to human affairs was sociological (79). For him, trade is natural when it maintain the self-sufficiency of the community. Human needs, be they individual or of the city, are not boundless. Nor is there a scarcity of subsistence in nature (80). The purview of the economy for Aristotle are institutional (81). Aristotle’s adherence to the substansive meaning of economic was the basis of his total argument. Human wants and needs are not boundless and useful things are not intrinsically scarce. The mediating concept was the self-sufficiency of the community (82). Markets were assumed as a matter of course. Aristotle’s main ideas about economy have been misinterpreted and mistranslated... i.e., Metadosis became ‘exchange’ rather than ‘giving a share’, thus distorting his whole message (93). Marshall Sahlins [1930 – 2021] / David Graeber [1961-2020] DG brings out a fundamental aspect of Eco Anthro: the Substantivist vs. Formalist debate. Substantivism is a form of cultural relativism. Here, there are no human universals. So each society and culture has their own distinct forms of exchange or economic trade. Making a living through using the environment may or may not involve forms of maximisation. Substantivists include K. Polanyi ; M. Sahlins; George Dalton, Paul Bohannan… Formalism: a neoclassical economics position that all people search for maximising profit or accumulation under conditions of scarcity. Econ thoery can be applied to societies without markets (Include: Raymond Firth; Harold K. Schneider) The spectre of starvation stalks the stalker through these pages… rather, hunter gatherers are not on the brink of starvation but the original affluent society (1). Inadequacy (scarcity) of economic means is the first principle of the world’s wealthiest nations (3). The amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is the same in palaeolithic (old stone age) and neolithic (late stone age) economies – and fairly constant in human history until the advent of the industrial revolution (6) If such peoples are now described as poverty-stricken, their resources “meagre and unreliable”, is this an indication of the aboriginal condition – or of the colonial duress? (9). The spectre of starvation stalks the stalker through these pages… rather, hunter gatherers are not on the brink of starvation but the original affluent society (1). Inadequacy (scarcity) of economic means is the first principle of the world’s wealthiest nations (3). The amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is the same in palaeolithic (old stone age) and neolithic (late stone age) economies – and fairly constant in human history until the advent of the industrial revolution (6) If such peoples are now described as poverty-stricken, their resources “meagre and unreliable”, is this an indication of the aboriginal condition – or of the colonial duress? (9).