In a classic study, Clifford Geertz reflects on the differences between two very different Indonesian towns, one dominated by peddlers, the other by princes. Modjokuto, on the one hand, is a market-centered society with an extraordinarily energetic commercial life characterized by “vigorous competitive interaction.” The Muslim traders are somewhat marginal to the political life of the town but their industry forms the dynamic core of its economic life. By contrast, in Tabanan, “it has not been the bazaar but the palace which has stamped its character upon the town.” Here the political elites are dominant, and they would like to parlay their political power into economic power too. The danger is that “Tabanan's firms can become easily politicized in modern terms and this is … extremely dysfunctional to further growth or even to continued solvency.”

The same phenotypes are evident in the griot's account of two sons of a Malian king: “the younger preferred fortune and wealth and became the ancestor of those who go from country to country seeking their fortune” while “the elder chose royal power and reigned.”