Wealth in people

Wealth in people (sometimes written wealth-in-people) is a concept developed by anthropologists and historians to describe social systems in which status, power, and influence are achieved and mediated through the number of one's dependents, followers, or other social ties and affiliations. The dependent's labor generates material wealth, which is in turn used to attach further dependents. Such systems can therefore exist independent of or alongside other capitalist or monetary modes of value and accumulation. The concept is most commonly applied to ethnographies and histories of Africa, particularly the tropical equatorial regions. rdf:langString