Measuring more than just exchange: Are multiplex networks the key to understanding informal economic relationships? John Harvey Nottingham Trent University Nottingham, U.K. john.harvey@ntu.ac.uk and b) a huge opportunity for researchers – particularly Abstract those that are capable of creating novel tools to capture and analyse new forms of data. This paper asks whether graph theory can help The following paper draws on previous research into with measurement of informal economies, par- how the informal economy is increasingly being medi- ticularly for interactions between people that are ated through digital communication (Harvey et al, not based on money, such as giving and sharing. 2014a, 2014b). The widespread availability of social This is followed by a discussion of factors that networks has meant that data on people, goods and influence the possibility of measurement, such transactions can be modelled explicitly, where previ- as property rights, types of goods, and collective ously it was impossible (See for instance the compre- forms of action. A specific epistemology is of- hensive EU commission review on organisations in the fered that can be used to inform longitudinal ‘sharing economy’ - Codagnone et al., 2016). This forms of economic measurement in preference suggests that data captured through social network to traditional exchange-based methods. The pa- analysis can provide novel opportunities, for econo- per concludes with a call for network scientists mists and anthropologists alike, to influence policy. to collaborate with economists and anthropolo- Despite often being concerned with different subject gists to help create new interdisciplinary forms matter, economists and anthropologists (and economic of measurement that recognise the messy and anthropologists for that matter!) frequently study how multiplex networks of our material social life. people exchange resources in order that they can sub- sequently describe the aggregate or macro state of the 1 Introduction economy. This emphasis on exchange, and more spe- cifically the exchange of alienated property, has be- Measuring the activity in an economy is difficult. This come the basis of modern economics. For example, is true for economists measuring the modern nation gross domestic product (henceforth GDP) is used for state but it is also true for anthropologists involved with comparing economies, and despite emphasising smaller communities. The traditional form of measure- productivity it nonetheless is a measure of goods that ment takes money as the empirical object and ignores are saleable. Thus such an account misses any form of interactions between people that are harder to record, productivity that is not described in terms of money. such as gift giving and sharing, where receipts are typ- This is a huge methodological issue that is chronically ically absent. These activities are often referred to as under-researched. The following pages outline what part of the ‘informal’ side of the economy i.e. those ac- such empirical measurement obscures, before outlining tivities that people value outside of financial transac- a preliminary sketch of an alternative approach. The tions, but which are not regulated, monitored or evalu- paper ends by calling for specialists of social network ated by the state. The informal economy has received analysis to help invigorate this debate by constructing a wealth of academic attention over the past few dec- alternative measures of economic activity that capture ades largely due to the influence of anthropologists the depth and breadth that exchange-centred ap- such as Geertz (1963) and Hart (1973). proaches miss. Estimates vary on the significance of the informal 2 Economic base and the possibility of economy, from those that trivialise it to others that sug- exchange gest if it were to be measured financially it would ex- ceed the value of the formal economy (Gibson-Gra- Economic anthropology is a field of study that con- ham, 1996). Regardless of estimates, large parts of in- cerns itself with the production, consumption and cir- formal economies remain unstudied because of the dif- culation of objects between people. Implicitly then, ficulty in recording non-monetary interactions between the study involves thinking about how people think of people. This is a) a significant issue for policy makers themselves and how they think about the world around that base decisions on the size or growth of economies, 73 them. This raises some tricky questions of ontology follows ‘to what extent can we define and compare cat- and epistemology for any comparative method. egories of economic interaction’? And, is it even pos- The seminal work completed by economic anthropolo- sible to do so without reducing the discipline to relativ- gists, such as Mauss (1950/2002) and Malinowski ism? In the second half of the 20th century these ques- (1922/1992), considered the various ways that items tions pulled anthropology apart. Some researchers, circulate through societies and their associated moral like Needham (1971), drew on Wittgensteinian notions purpose. Later work by authors such as Polanyi of ‘family resemblance’ to question the universality of (1944), Sahlins (1979) and Levi-Strauss (1949) in- concepts like kinship, incest or marriage. Others (e.g. cluded greater consideration about what economic re- Leach, 1961) questioned whether English patterns of lations could be described as fundamental, regardless thought can be translated into universal axioms. They of culture. These are referred to here as ‘archetypal’ also cautioned against excessive empiricism with the relationships, but there is still disagreement about aim of categorising social groups into types and sub- which relations are actually archetypal. Polanyi iden- types. tified market exchange, reciprocity and redistribution as three different patterns for economic provisioning of Dominant schools of thought in the 20th century led to material goods within societies. He also recognised the a focus on exchange as the main criterion of measure- significance of the way people pool resources together ment. However, exchange relies on institutional sup- through institutions or kinship groups and referred to port of private property. It is extremely difficult to find this as ‘householding’. Each of these archetypes are any anthropological or historical evidence of sustained relationships which in principle can be understood in exchange between people without institutions that first graph theoretical terms as a directed graph, indeed Po- establish property rights (Graeber, 2011). Furthermore, lanyi spoke of degrees of ‘centricity’ and ‘symmetry’ the right of ownership is, as various anthropologists de- being implicit in each respective form (1944, p.51). In scribe (e.g. Hart, 2005) only made possible because of contrast, Levi-Strauss (1949/1969) and Sahlins (1979) a shared access to goods which support the possibility both identified reciprocity as the basis of economic re- of individual appropriation. This undercarriage of lations. Sahlins suggested that pooling should be con- goods is typically referred to as ‘base’ or infrastructure, sidered as a special subset of reciprocal relations and because it quite literally supports the possibility of described three forms of reciprocity: ‘general’, ‘bal- higher, more nuanced and individualised property anced’ and ‘negative’. He suggested that each form of rights (Gudeman, 2008). interaction is related to kinship i.e. how close or related To illustrate this point it is worth first considering the people feel to each other, or as Sahlins (2012, p.28) types of goods that can be said to exist and the property puts it in later work as ‘mutuality of being’. rights that are made possible by virtue of human rela- tions to goods. Rather than analyse the simple dualism The problem with the hypothesis that economic life is of public versus private goods, it is possible to always premised upon reciprocity, albeit much of it acknowledge that some goods can be consumed a finite ‘generalised’ reciprocity is that it is difficult to falsify number of times and some goods can be appropriated without a longitudinal dataset which encompasses all by a person and then excluded from others. These at- of the relations between people that could be termed tributes are recognised in the political-economy litera- ‘economic’. Given that the economy is never simply ture as subtractability and excludability (Hess & localised, this means it is impossible to obtain the nec- Ostrom, 2003). When the attributes are contrasted essary dataset and thus the hypothesis remains imper- against one another four distinct types of goods can be vious to analysis. Furthermore, any social scientific ap- distinguished. These are contrasted in the 2x2 matrix proach to human action which presupposes such an ep- below: istemic claim, reduces all social interaction to ex- change, either through individual ‘transactions’ or as an all-encompassing feature of culture at large. Subtractability Each of the archetypal categories that Polanyi and Sahlins described can in principle be observed as em- Low High pirical events by social scientists. Indeed, Sahlins de- scribes a range of ethnographic studies in great depth, Public Common from across the globe, in order to justify distinct forms Excludabil- Difficult Goods Pool of reciprocity. The problem with these basic arche- ity Resources types though, is that they do not reflect the real-world Club Private complexity that could be examined through longitudi- Easy Goods Goods nal empirical studies. Furthermore, by describing all human relations in terms of ‘reciprocity’ this elimi- nates the possibility to examine behaviour which is not Table 1: Types of Goods (Hess & Ostrom, 2003, p.120) motivated by consequential ethics, in other words it ig- nores acts done for their own sake. The question thus 74 The possibility of excluding a good is a critical factor rights of one stakeholder can affect the qualitatively involved in whether or not a person can successfully distinct rights of others. The transformation of over- appropriate and exchange it. Sometimes goods are pub- lapping property rights is therefore an issue which in- lic, like the air that humans breathe, and are shared by volves multiplexity. Forms of measurement that in- default because they cannot be appropriated by a single volve multiple simultaneous relations may best be un- individual. Others, like fishing stocks are shared be- derstood as multi-layered networks. In network sci- cause there is a cultural resistance to ownership by a ence, multiplexity is the word used to describe how single person, these are referred to as common-pool re- multiple overlapping relationships occur between a set sources. A further category is ‘club’ goods which have of nodes. Bliemel et al. (2014, p.370) note that ‘multi- a low subtractability because many people can interact plexity occurs when multiple types of relationships with them, but they are easy to exclude from people, overlap within the same set of actors, thus causing the for example a cinema or a lecture theatre. relationships and actors to be interdependent’. The informal economy has received a large amount of 3 Measuring informal economies attention wherever private goods have been concerned, through a network-centred approach: but far less attention has been given to the way in which A preliminary sketch those same private transactions are made possible by more basic relationships between people and the ob- The position adopted here presupposes neither reci- jects they rely on. Categories of goods influence the procity nor exchange across all areas of social interac- potential property rights that can be assigned to them. tion. This is a small detail, but the methodological sig- Indeed, property rights should be identified as involv- nificance is that individual acts may be observed as part ing not merely private ownership, but a hierarchical of broader social structures without having to reduce range of qualitatively distinct possibilities depending explanation to either. What can be analysed instead are on the category of good to which they are assigned. the property rights that overlap (through multiplexity) This has been discussed at length by Ostrom & Hess but are nonetheless separate in observable form. If (2007), who note a list of seven different property property rights are understood as a transitive quality of rights, although this varies widely depending on cul- people and the collective institutions they form, this ture and legal systems. opens up possibilities to measure and examine the transformation of property rights throughout networks Property Definition over time. Network multiplexity adequately captures Right the nature of human economic relationships insofar as Access The right to enter a defined physi- they are premised upon distinct, but nonetheless con- cal area and enjoy non-subtractive tingent and interdependent, property relations between benefits people. This is similar to what Appadurai (1988) pro- Contribution The right to contribute to content posed by tracing the lifecycle of objects throughout an Extraction The right to obtain resource units economy in order to reveal the way in which social or products of a resource system structure is transformed: Removal The right to remove one’s artifacts from the resource ‘…we have to follow the things themselves, for their Management The right to regulate internal use meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their / Participa- patterns and transform the re- trajectories. It is only through the analysis of these tra- tion source by making improvements jectories that we can interpret the human transactions Exclusion The right to determine who will and calculations that enliven things. Thus, even though have access, contribution, and re- from a theoretical point of view human actors encode moval rights and how those rights things with significance, from a methodological point may be transferred of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their Alienation The right to sell or lease manage- human and social context.’ Appadurai (1988, p.5) ment and exclusion rights Table 2: Types of property rights (Ostrom & Hess, The informal economy has historically presented vari- 2007, p.16) ous methodological issues for quantitative analysis due to the lack of formal record or receipt during exchange, If we consider the previous lecture theatre example, for the absence of numerical balance in trade (i.e. cur- instance, a university may own the alienable right of rency), and the often deliberately subversive or illicit outright ownership, but the exclusion right of the thea- nature of informal exchange i.e. the activity is per- tre could simultaneously be appropriated by the SIM- formed surreptitiously in relation to monetised or reg- BIG conference management team, and conference at- ulated market economies. Thankfully, the technical de- tendees could also simultaneously enjoy rights to con- velopment of web technologies and the Internet have tribute to and access the theatre. The important aspect not only helped to facilitate new forms of informal of this arrangement is that property rights simultane- economy but also provide the means to easily record, ously overlap between stakeholders. One change in the 75 and thus quantify at scale, the previously obscured eco- property rights that people assign to them, so it is im- nomic relations between people. This is of interest for portant to recognise both in any analysis of economic a variety of economic practices, particularly those that relations. The property rights that people assign to ob- are mediated by the Internet, because longitudinal da- jects are transitive and can be passed between people tasets can be associated with non-monetary interac- in the case of exchange and giving, or rights can be tions even in the absence of receipts. They can there- granted to others without discrete transfers, such as in fore be analysed retrospectively for patterns of activity the case of sharing or access to common pool re- that emerge over time. This is a novel and emerging sources. Transferal of property rights occurs in both form of inquiry but studies have already been com- formal and informal economies and can be enacted by pleted for at least two popular websites including individuals or institutions i.e. groups of people acting Couchsurfing (a service that allows people to share ac- in unison. Examining direct and indirect reciprocity of commodation – see Lauterbach et al., 2009) and for property rights, rather than the goods themselves, pro- Streetbank (a service that encourages neighbours to vides an insight into whether interactions are premised give and share their belongings with each other – see on some form of balance or whether they are done for Harvey, 2016). their own sake. Longitudinal datasets can provide insight into where and when reciprocity occurs between donors and recip- One of the most promising approaches for examining ients (direct reciprocity) and between networks of peo- property rights as graphs is the triad census. This is ple motivated to ‘pass it on’ (i.e. indirect reciprocity). also the most immediate empirical measure for a di- This type of approach can begin to ask questions that graph containing direct and indirect forms of reciproc- anthropologists have arguably failed to answer, such as ity. For every possible triad of nodes in a directed net- what specifically is ‘base’, ‘gifts’ or non-monetary work there is a potential for 16 different types of con- economics when compared to markets, and should the figuration. A triad census does not merely describe the two be separated for the purpose of analysis? Only nodes that interact through direct relationships, it also through such an approach is it possible to critique the counts the nodes which are not active participants. It is claims that human life is always premised on reciprocal this characteristic of the census which means that it can forms. give an ‘overview’ of the structure of the network and the relationships that consistently emerge. According Anthropologists have on occasion attempted to incor- to Moody (1998, p.291) the triad census provides the porate graph theory into practical ethnographic re- most empirically direct way of measuring the way that search (e.g. Hage & Harary, 1996). A wide range of ‘individuals negotiate local relations and how those lo- social scientists have also sought to use graph theory - cal relations cumulate into structures. Researchers can and in particular forms of directed graphs - in order to test structural network hypotheses by comparing linear model trust, friendships, alliances and communication combinations of the triad census to that expected under networks to better understand human relations. How- a random or conditionally random.’ ever, transference of property rights between people has received far less consideration and this may be due to influential ‘practice’ theory approaches that have taken precedence. For instance, the anthropologist Rodney Needham (1975) drew attention to the problem of categorising human activity through monothetic forms of classification and instead called for greater at- tention to be given to polythetic forms of classification, that are fuzzier. The point of polythetic classification is to help eliminate category errors. For example, when an anthropologist observes a one-way transfer of mate- rial wealth they should restrict themselves from think- ing about the transfer as if it had a universal moral sta- tus e.g. as a gift or as a bribe as experienced in their own respective lives. This approach encourages re- searchers to understand other people on their own terms and relate the action to a broader set of social facts. The consequence of this is that research accounts are described in terms of incommensurable practices. This is a problem for any normative economic science because it removes the basis upon which to compare. In contrast to polythetic accounts of categorisation, the alternative described here is to recognise the ontologi- cal basis of interaction – that people and goods are both Figure 1: Types of Triads (Batagelj & Mrvar, 2001) essential. There is a distinction between goods and the 76 A variety of formulae have been put forward by authors icy. As more of the economy becomes digitally-medi- over the past forty years to test network hypotheses ated there is an increasing amount of data that can be (e.g.Holland and Leinhardt 1970, 1976; Fersht- used to analyse informal economies in ways previously man,1985; Snijders and Stokman, 1987), but this form impossible. This wealth of data being created by of data collection exercise should not just result in emerging online services as part of the ‘sharing econ- straight-forward deductive testing of hypotheses. In- omy’ is predominately online and held by organisa- stead it should help inform abductive reasoning about tions. This creates a challenge of access for research- how particular economies come into existence, persist ers, but it also represents an opportunity, because those or perish. The prevalence of particular triads is illus- same organisations are often non-profit and depend trative of particular forms of economic relationship. upon support from policymakers. If the social effects For instance triad 10 is an instance of indirect reciproc- of new models are to be properly understood and com- ity, which would demonstrate that people primarily use municated to policymakers there must be far greater a system to give and take. In contrast, intransitive rela- scrutiny given to multiplex relationships and how they tionships (such as triads 4 and 5) demonstrate imbal- change through time. ance in the relationships between people. These ques- tions of empirical balance are closely related to ques- tions of morality that have concerned economic anthro- 4 Why does this matter and what next? pologists since the beginning of the discipline. But it is only through cross-cultural comparison of datasets There are arguably three areas where a non-exchange that reciprocity hypotheses can be tested. The collec- centred form of measurement could help with norma- tion and analysis of these relationships is impossible tive social science for economics and/or anthropology: for the ethnographer, who may be able to interview and observe individual relationships at small scale. How- A) Many political decisions are made on the basis of ever, where organisations capture transactional data aggregate accounts of exchange between people. Alt- there is an opportunity for network scientists to analyse hough simplistic, growth in exchange figures are gen- the social structure of economic relationships at scale, erally viewed as positive e.g. GDP. However, this thus providing more insight than anthropologists alone. lacks depth and fails to account for the way in which people actually provision for themselves. Various au- Considered by itself, the triad census shown above thors have drawn attention to the limitations of eco- does not provide much insight. The census is used nomic growth (e.g. Schumacher, 1973; Jackson 2009) merely as a means of identifying the presence (or in- previously, but few have called for a fuller account of deed absence) of particular triadic relations within the economics that includes non-exchange type relations network and this subsequently can provide an empiri- between people. cal measure of transitivity. According to Kadushin (2012, p.25) statistical tests ‘are very supportive of the B) Resource dilemmas are a popular topic in econom- proposition that interpersonal choices tend to be tran- ics in which researchers examine how people act (or sitive. Intransitive triads are very rare … Nonetheless, fail to act) in cooperation when given shared access to balance is only one theory about choice in a network a resource. There has been a great deal of attention and does have its limitations by postulating rigorous given to this area (e.g. Ostrom, 2011) but models rarely rules for relations that in messy social life do not al- mention network multiplexity and the way it constrains ways hold.’ or enables emergent property rights. This absence rep- resents an opportunity to bolster existing theory Transitivity is an interesting concept for examining in- through experimental economics and ethnographic formal economies because it gives an insight into the studies. relative proportion of the network that can be said to be balanced. However, for economic relations where a C) Anthropologists often describe cultures in which le- transfer of property takes place, these are unlikely to be gal systems and property are fundamentally different of a similar nature to other human relations such as from capitalist arrangements. Some groups of people friendship or trust because excludability and subtracta- refuse to engage with private property or money due to bility are both constraining factors. Indeed in work metaphysical / ethical beliefs about the nature of the completed recently (Harvey 2016) this has been found world and the status of humanity (e.g. Hutterites of to be the case for an informal website that encourages North America – see Hostetler, 1967). For anthropol- gift giving and sharing. But very little attention has ogists studying these types of culture an account of been paid to the effect this type of action has on the property rights that recognises network multiplexity multiplexity of property rights, indeed it would require would help to describe how g people actually enact a complex and dynamic account of transformation. communal property rights in order to maintain social This is a huge opportunity for social network special- cohesion. ists and anthropologists to collaborate for a novel re- search agenda, which can help to inform economic pol- 77 Anthropologists seldom know the latest methodologi- K. Hart. 1973. Informal income opportunities and urban em- cal innovations in network science, but are well placed ployment in Ghana. Journal of Modern African Studies to understand the variations of property rights that peo- 11, 61-89 ple all over the world experience in their day-to-day K. Hart. 2005. The Hit-man’s Dilemma: On Business, Per- sonal and Impersonal. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. lives. The scope for collaboration when measuring economies is enormous, particularly if a realist theory J. Harvey. 2016. An Economic Anthropology of Computer- of property rights is combined with network measures Mediated Non-Monetary Exchange in England, PhD of reciprocity, centrality, transitivity and is understood Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham as a multiplex phenomenon. The subject matter of this paper covers an abstract, and at times obscure, problem J. Harvey., A. Smith and D. Golightly. 2014a. Giving and from economic anthropology, but the practical conse- sharing in the computer-mediated economy, Journal of quences of economic measurement has an impact on us Consumer Behaviour all. Economic growth is measured solely in terms of J. Harvey, D. Golightly and A. Smith 2014b. HCI As a exchange and this is used to justify political choices Means to Prosociality in the Economy. In Proceedings across the globe. 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