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Abstract
This thesis draws on a ‘natural experiment’ to examine the role of culture in economic activity. When Australian, British and American troops were held as prisoners of war by Japan during the Second World War, their survival depended to a large extent on their own economic organisation. Despite extreme deprivation, the camps were places of vibrant economic activity,
which included not only trade, but also redistribution and reciprocity. Camp economies typically included welfare schemes alongside manufacturing and services. By viewing these camps as quasi ‘natural experimental’ sites, they provide an unusual opportunity for the study of economies which are small and contained enough to be thoroughly studied, but which are also real economies upon which survival depended. Furthermore, because the prisoners were usually separated by nationality, the camps also offer the opportunity for comparative analysis.
Whereas an individualistic approach, such as that dominant in mainstream economics, might expect to find either uniformity or randomness as individuals go about pursuing their own objectives in this unusual situation, the empirical record shows that there are instead clear patterns of behaviour. Repeatedly, across hundreds of camps and over three years of captivity, in similar conditions each national group organised and conducted their economic activity differently. There is consistent variability between national groups and consistency within them. Using Karl Polanyi’s analytical framework of embeddedness, the thesis demonstrates that even though the cultures of each national group are quite similar and closely related, the instituted processes of the economies of each national group are dominated by a different form of integration. This thesis, then, provides rare quasi-experimental evidence of the structuring force of culture in economy.