This idea was taken up lastly by Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch, who argued in "Money and the Morality of Exchange" (1989), that the "transactional order" through which long-term social reproduction of the family takes place has to be preserved as separate from short-term market relations.
Similar examples of exchange spheres have been noted by Frederik Barth among the Fur of Sudan; by Raymond Firth among the Tikopia in the south Pacific; by Bronisław Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands off New Guinea amongst others.
[10] A number of writers have emphasized that spheres of exchange are set up in order to protect subsistence goods from being monopolized by a few group members who have control of wealth objects.
[5] Bohannan and Dalton argue that these societal restrictions exist in traditional egalitarian societies in order to inhibit the accumulation of wealth by a few individuals, to the detriment of the community.
[12] Sillitoe adds that the highly valued "wealth" items (such as the brass rods in the Tiv example) are not locally produced, hence politically ambitious leaders cannot step up their production of these goods thereby maintaining an egalitarian social order.
In the same vein, Jane Guyer argues that the refusal to convert items between spheres of exchange in the local area makes sense in terms of the regional economy of trade between ethnic groups.
For example, the Tiv refused to convert brass rods for subsistence goods in the local area because they were saving up their supply for conversion upwards to rights in people with groups to the North.
According to Thompson these riots were generally peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political culture rooted in feudal rights to “set the price” of essential goods in the market.
However, Boeke's model served colonial interests by underscoring western economic rationality and placing Indonesians in a subordinated evolutionary position: the yet to be civilized.