Question

How does Sahlins’ analysis of Paleolithic society challenge the assumptions of neoclassical economic theory?

Answer 1

the Marshall Sahlins' in 1972 argued that an essay of hunters and gathers on affluent society and describes the prominent challenge of the neoclassical economics. According to Sahlin, in an affluent society, all people’s materials wants are satisfied. In his argument, the hunters and gathers on the road to affluent society by not on advanced technological progress but with limited material wants — the beginning with the scarcity by the relation between means and ends and it consistent with the neoclassical economics — Sahlins' challenge in terms of the contradiction between hunting and gathering and their way of life. Moreover, he criticized that neoclassical assumption is just present one. He argued that the material wants of hunters and gathers are limited.