The peoples who inhabit the central African tropical forests and their neighboring farmers have established mutualistic symbiotic relationships. However, these relationships are not equal according to many previous studies. While the economic disparity between them has diminished because the forest peoples have recently adopted sedentarization and cultivation, their social status still remains lower than that of farmers. However, the forest people of southern Gabon, the Babongo, have established relatively equal relationships with their neighboring Bantu farmers, the Massango. The Babongo and Massango are unique from other forest people-farmer relationships in that they are generally equal not only economically but also socially.
In this article, I illustrate that this equality is also apparent in the rituals focusing on the male initiation rite “mwiri” which is an important social event shared between the Babongo and Massango. To demonstrate this equality, I point out that: (1) the number of participants in the ritual is equal between the Babongo and Massango, (2) the Babongo and Massango play equally significant roles in these rituals and (3) both Babongo and Massango obey ritual norms which are shared between these two ethnic groups.

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On September 29th 2005, it was decided that Amboseli National Park would be downgraded to a national reserve by the president. At first, the decision was criticized from the viewpoint of the national referendum scheduled in 2 months. Then NGOs joined in the discussion opposing the management of reserve by the county council, and wildlife conservation became the central issue. At last the fuss was brought to the courts. From the beginning it was clear that the decision was political and illegal, while there was an intense argument whether the county council can conserve wildlife and manage the reserve properly. After the case started, hot debate settled down outside the court. Even though there were some issues that appeared from the fuss, but the bitter collision between NGOs and the county council prevented the discussion going further. The issues are like; who are ‘local people’ that should receive benefit from wildlife conservation, who can give ‘legitimacy’ of wildlife conservation and park/reserve management to someone or some organizations and what is the role of local people. To consider these points environmental sociology in Japan is also helpful other than the preceding discussion in Europe or U. S. A.

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This paper takes stock of what the two conferences in Tanzania on the economy of affection and the moral economy in Africa have taught us about these forms of economy. It places the African cases in a comparative perspective using references to both Asia and Europe to illustrate the ubiquity of the moral economy phenomenon. The paper tries to illustrate what is common in the economy of affection and the moral economy but also what makes them different from each other. It begins with a conceptual overview and analysis before proceeding to a discussion of empirical cases which demonstrate similarities and differences. The paper concludes with some reflections on where research in this field may be going next.

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This paper aims to review theories of peasant economy in Africa and Southeast Asia from the comparative perspective. Focusing on Goran Hyden's notion of ‘the economy of affection, ’ I will examine his argument on African peasantry in comparison with the ‘moral economy’ thesis developed by James Scott in the context of Southeast Asian peasantry. One can find theoretical similarities in the two theses, in the sense that both address themselves to communal and consumptionoriented values inherent in subsistence economy of peasants, in stark contrast to production-oriented utilitarianism which characterizes industrialized economy. At the same time, their arguments differ in details over how the moral-based economy actually works in peasant life, reflecting significantly different historical and cultural background of each region. These similarities and differences have important implications for endogenous development, which places a special emphasis on indigenous culture of each community, as an alternative to unsustainable models of economic development.

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The purpose of this paper is to suggest a dynamic perspective to understand a complicated economic behavior of farmers in the contemporary rural Africa. I focus on how the farmers' activities of moral economy have a place in a market depended rural society where the cash crop cultivation prevails. By analyzing the concrete cases, I critically examine the antinomy between moral economy and market economy, and indicate the necessity of a dynamic framework on it. It seems that the local farmers behave with making a distinction between “selling” and “sharing” according to the contexts which consist of the relationships between things, the person and the places. Their behaviors are not necessarily based on the given attribution like cash crops and subsistence crops, but people make crops either as shared wealth or occupied wealth through their interactions. In the current situation of African rural communities, moral economy is neither a strong principal nor a thing of the past. It exists as a different form of action from commodity exchange in the market and it is actualized or negotiated through the peoples' interactions.

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Taking the occasion of discussing the moral and affection economy, this paper presents another type of analysis on the underdeveloped economy, which consists in explaining different economic stages by their different history-nature environment conditions. Generally most of economic theory including those of moral and affection explain the underdevelopment by non economic value to which the concerning society is too attached. They are essentially psychological or ethical theories. The way getting out of the underdevelopment is also psychological one: the men of underdeveloped societies must change their heart or brain to be economically rational. The history-nature environment analysis tries on the contrary to find its reason in the outer conditions. The underdevelopment is not unique; various types of underdevelopment exist. This variety results from that of the history-nature environment where underdeveloped societies are situated. This paper presents an example of this analysis by analyzing history-nature environment differences which exist between Southeast Asia and Africa and even in the interior of Africa. Africa can be at least classed into four types of regions (Table 1). This analysis explains why Southeast Asia could achieve more important economical development than Africa.

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The San peoples who have lived in the Kalahari desert of the southern Africa, are known as a typical example of the egalitarian society. They have the distribution system of food like animal meat caught by hunting or edible plants in the camp or settlement. It is said that it is very difficult for them to accumulate the private property because the distribution system.
This paper aims to clarify the characteristic of their economic behaviors which have the both aspects of subsistence and commercial from the perspective of moral economy as the strategies for the risk. The regional diversity of sharing among the San and the practice of sharing and the method of food storage in the particular settlement are described Results have revealed the following points.
The owners of caught animals and harvest have been fixed by the rule roughly according to the kind of subsistence like hunting and gathering etc. among the San. They have the system of distribution from “those who have” to “those who do not” in not only caught meat and gathered food, but also cultivation crops. Especially in the farming the crops were distributed to some other group who migrated to the cultivated fields during the harvest time. They also distinguish the meat for subsistence and commercial ones, and the meat for subsistence are distributed equally among the camp members. Lastly, goat raisings has a important role of their society and some farmer's community commonly in the tropical Africa.

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The concept of Economy of Affection, or African Moral Economy is often considered as being “subsistence level” or “self-sufficient level” in terms of agricultural production, that symbolizes a sort of “stagnation” of African peasant economy. However, if we focus on the Bemba case of Northern Zambia, what characterizes their subsistence activity is a flexible composition of socio-economic unit in production and consumption, rather than its mode of production. In this paper, I will provide a picture of the Bemba type of “community of consumption (Sugimura, 1994)” by examining the means of subsistence and the innovation process of cash-crop cultivation expansion in the 1990s.
During the colonial period, the penetration of cash economy greatly changed the villagers' life because of the popularity of labor migration to the cooper mines, while at the same time they maintained the local life style based on their own logic, strongly relying on the citemene indigenous agricultural system. Their means of subsistence is based on an as-needed supply. Such life style is supported by the leveling mechanism based on the principle of sharing and high mobility of the villagers. The leveling mechanism worked to control excessive economic activity by certain individuals in normal times. It eventually restricted changes in the villages. However, in the 1990s, the leveling mechanism worked to promote rapid and great changes in their subsistence, when most of all households started cash crop cultivation despite the different composition of household members. Flexible composition of socio-economic unit enabled them to get accessed to the profitable cash-crop cultivation, while avoiding a concentration of wealth to particular households. In this case of the Bemba, the African moral economy is supported by the flexible composition of socio-economic unit. It worked effectively also in the changing process of subsistence in terms of rectifying the un-even distribution of resources such as labor and cash.

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This article examines the nature and dynamics of the moral economy of African peasants from the viewpoint of their consumption behavior, focusing on the longstanding practice of commensality (group eating) among the Kumu people in Zaire (currently known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Today, the consumption life of Kumu peasants is inseparably linked to the monetary economy. They need money in various situations of their lives: they need money to buy dailynecessities, to pay bridewealth, or to receive medical services, to mention a few. Yet, what is interesting about the case of Kumu society is that a powerful moral economy intervenes in such money-related situations. As a result, in Kumu society, even money, which seems to us the most difficult form of wealth to communalize, tends to be equally shared among members of the same village community.
In Kumu society today, two types of rich person are found: traditional and modern types. Whereas the traditional type of rich person is characterized by having a large number of goats, which are highly valued as “social wealth” among the Kumu, as well as many wives and children, the modern type of rich person, whose emergence is closely linked to the spread of the monetary economy, is characterized by having some steady ource of cash income. In spite of this difference, however, these two types of rich person share the same morality: both feel strongly obliged to share their wealth with poor people around them. In practice, rich Kumu peasants of the modern type show a strong tendency to support poor people by receiving them as their family members. In Kumu society, rich persons, whether of the traditional type or of the modern type, are all expected to play a leading role in the domain of social reproduction rather than in the domain of material production.
In this way, the value system under which Kumu peasants live places a higher value on the reproduction of human beings (e. g. on the extension of a lineage) than on the production of material wealth. And this value system is embodied in and reinforced by Kumu peasants' various “sharing” practices. Their practice of food sharing at everyday group meals, in particular, is of great importance, since the social unit of group eating forms the core of all social organizations in Kumu society.
Not only does the case of Kumu society discussed in this article give us a typical example of the moral economy of African peasants; it also requires us to bridge a longstanding theoretical split between two schools of economic anthropology that have been developed as a criticism of modern economics: one is the Polanyian school, whose perspective focuses on the distributive aspects of human economies, and the other is the Marxian school, which has been trying to reformulate the concept of “production” by stressing the value of “social reproduction”.

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The article focuses on two characteristics of the African moral economies related to its value and organization in order to seek its possibilities for endogenous development. The first characteristic of the moral economy is that it emphasizes human reproduction. The second characteristic is the importance of informal institutions for people's livelihoods. Comparing these characteristics with endogenous development theory, it has similarities with endogenous development that emphasize the importance of basic human needs for survival, and the role of the civil society. However, inspite of the fact that human reproduction is considered important, human survival is not necessarily ensured in Sub-Sahara Africa, and there are many challenges for endogenous development. Toward these challenges, the world's attention on the millennium summit goals is one of the results of the global moral economy from an ethical point of view. Enabling endogenous development in Africa is not only important for Africa itself, but also for realizing an alternative to industrialized countries that have situated production as the top priority.

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