The Indigenous hybrid economy: A realistic sustainable option for remote communities?

Abstract

The ideas that I want to share with you tonight are not new, at least not for me: I want to discuss a form of economy that I term the hybrid economy that includes free market and customary and state components. I have been aware of this form of economy since 1979, when I left Melbourne to live and undertake research for a doctorate in anthropology at a remote outstation in Arnhem Land. There, the non-market or subsistence sector based on harvesting of wildlife was the dominant component of the economy. This late 20th century economy was not 'traditional', pristine, or precontact, even though colonization had come relatively late to Arnhem Land. This economy is contemporary and distinctly Indigenous. This economy is not single sector, it also has market and state sectors, and it does not exist in isolation (see page 2). While this hybrid economy has its own values, especially in the customary sector, it is also based on a series of conjunctions or articulations between all sectors. Diagrammatically, I have represented this economy as three overlapping circles, the market, the state and the customary, with four segments of articulation or overlap.