Karl Polanyi's Forms of Integration as Ways of Mapping

Researcher Karl Polanyi's "forms of integration"--redistribution, reciprocity, and exchange--have been much used to describe and explain various economies. Such mapping presents information about the sources and destinations of the flows of material means in each society in ways that are easily correlated with the variables that most thoroughly and simply account for the flows of material means in different societies. Mapping may be looked upon as the selection of a "projection" for portraying the flows of material means. The diagrams below illustrate the discussions of each form of integration and are examples of mapping. As is the case for projections selected for geographical mapping, for each way of mapping a form of integration the criterion of the appropriateness of the choice of projection is analogous to a mathematical function. The independent variables would be information about the social system; the dependent variable would be the directions in which the material means flow. The merits of the choice of projection are simplicity and the accuracy with which the directions of flow are portrayed.