ARTISANAL COOPERATION, FORMS OF LABOR, AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY - CHACHAPOYAS, 1930S TO THE 1990S

Since the 1960s students of agrarian society have interpreted the exis tence of putatively ''capitalist'' economic practices and relations (e .g., commoditization, wage labor, semi-proletarianization, etc.) in th e rural Third World as evidence of the capitalist nature of the econom ies concerned. The present paper challenges this interpretation. Based on an analysis of artisanal production in the northern Peruvian Andes , the paper shows that purportedly ''capitalist'' economic practices m ay be fully commensurable with ''non-capitalist'' relations (e.g., for ms of cooperation in the production process, kin ties, etc.), and may even act as an obstacle to capital accumulation. ''Non-capitalist'' fo rms of organizing the production process and of remunerating labor, on the other hand, may be essential to the accumulation process.