of distant kin and nonkin (Sahlins 1965).
In nonkinship-based enterprises, the
degree of participation correlates closely
with anticipated direct benefits. If costs
continuously exceed benefits, individuals
will not contribute to collective action,
unless coerced by peer pressure,
punishment, or threat of sorcery, for
example. Further, innovation is likely to
be resisted by those who benefit least from
existingsituations, since they may perceive
it as likely to perpetuate current inequities
(Alexander 1975) and, hence, power.
Levelling mechanisms may be
implemented when activities such as the
accumulation of wealth by a particular
individual or family within a community
are perceived by traditional leaders as a
threat to either their power or status, or
both, and to the unity of the community. In
MalaGi, for example, individual
advancement is often perceived by
guardians as a threat to the unity of the
female corporate group (Mitchell 1956)
and is restrained by accusations of sorcery
(Lawry 1981), the frequency of which
commonly leads to the fissioning of villages.
For this reason successful farmers will
occasionally have dXiculty in obtaining
hired labor (Lawry 1981).
Social levelling mechanisms are
strongest where 'there is little to share
(Humphrey 1971). In the Zomba District
of Southern MalaGi belief in witchcraft is
so strong that small-scale farmers,
including fish farmers, dare not produce
beyond a certain level, for fear of being
bewitched by their peers (G.A. Banda,
pers. comm.).
Banda (1989) noted that jealous
members of communities in Mwanza
District deliberately damage the fishponds
of youngsters, of whom they have no fear.
The ponds of successful farmers are also
damaged or the stocked fish stolen (G.A.
Banda, pers. comm.).
One of the negative consequences of
the moral requirement to share resources
is that some farmers might elect not to
improve their economic level, for example,
by incorporating a fishpond into their
holding. The commonly stated rationale
for this is that there is little point in
workingharder - and possibly thereby also
incurring social sanctions - if one will be
pressured to give away a large portion of
the fruits of the extra labor to relatives or
other members ofthe community (Mitchell
1951; Lawry 1981).
With the increasing commercialization
of the rural economy in Zomba District,
Southern MalaGi, for example, there are
emerging signs of a corresponding decline
in the social role of pond-cultured fish as
both giftgiving and subsidized sales items
to relatives and friends. Of the subsistence
fish farmers interviewed, 37% revealed an
increasing inclination toward purely
commercial sales of their fish, since they
were nowadays no longer receiving equal
value in reciprocal exchanges for their
fish, and that "...some neighbors were
taking advantage of their fish farming
activity" (Mills 1989). Similarly, 36% of
the commercially oriented fish farmers
claimed that they had been motivated
toward commercial activities owing to the
decline beyond an acceptable level in the
economic value of return reciprocity. Two
commercial fish farmers in the area
characterized their commercial efforts as
a deliberate attempt to escape potential
reciprocal obligations. One such farmer
started to sell more of his product in a local
market rather than using the conventional
pondside site venue in order to escape the
increasing and, as he perceived,
unneccessary economic burden of
subsidizing below-market-price sales to
friends and relatives. Further, he was able
to obtain prices 10% higher than
nonsubsidized rates in the conventional
venue (Mills 1989). However, in so doing a
farmer might incur social sanctions, or be
subjected to levelling mechanisms, since
the amount offish available for subsidized