A Hausa man makes a decision: a contribution to the anthropological perspective on decision-making

Abstract

In anthropology, decision-making has mainly been studied from two perspectives: rationalist and ethnographic. These approaches lack a theoretical basis which would integrate their findings in a coherent manner. Taking inspiration from Tugendhat and Berthoz, this article argues that a way out of this impasse is to conceptualise decisionmaking as an action. At the same time, this conceptualisation allows us to establish a continuum of decision-making processes from simple through complex to fundamental, and to understand these processes as malleable across milieux, societies and cultures.This article also goes beyond this by discussing the decisionmaking process that led a Hausa villager from Niger to decide not to migrate. This discussion shows that the anthropological literature has largely overlooked a type of decision that could be called a ‘maturing decision’. It also sheds light on the role of emotions in decision-making and on the constitutive role of emic ideas about decision-making in these processes.