PEASANT MARKETING NETWORK IN TAIWAN

Besides what econmic anthropologists generally considered their legitimate field, the so called 'primitive economy', there has been a gradually increasing interest in the 'market system'. The significance of studying the market system is that the major part of commodities and services in peasant society,one of the important sub-domains in modern social-cultural anthropology, are transacted or exchanged through market networks. More precisely, the point I try to make explicit in this paper is that peasant society is integrated into a large system through market networks. Peasant society, in the sense of evolutionary development, is not an autonomous or self-sufficient local unit either politically or economically, and consequently has to rely on outside resources and labor services which are available in market places.