Toward a Broadened Theory of Preference Formation and the Diffusion of Innovations: Cases from Zinder Province, Niger Republic

Abstract

The standard model for the diffusion of innovations in consumer behavior does not adequately account for the incorporation of novel items of non-local origin into the material culture inventory of Hausa-speaking peasants in Niger. A synthetic, culturally relative model composed of elements drawn from the standard diffusion paradigm, from world-systems theory, and from economic and symbolic anthropology provides a more satisfactory account of these processes. Analysis shows that novel goods provide a medium through which alternative paradigms of consumer behavior and reality contend. Among the Hausa, a premarket model, a Western market-mediated model, and an Islamic ethnonationalist model compete for consumer affiliation.