African apprentice workshops: a case of ethnocentric reductionism

Some of the best known studies in development economics on African economic institutions have treated apprentice workshops as small‐scale enterprises. This has only been achieved by ignoring the principles that structure groups of production. Taking such principles as my point of departure, I derive a number of properties that apply to enterprises. When the ethnographic evidence on apprentice workshops is reviewed, it is obvious that they cannot be mistaken for enterprises.