Contrary to the conceited assumption that the social organization of our industrial societies is uniquely complex, it is arguable that the social organization of labour in—for example—nineteenth-century Asante was more complicated still. This is epitomized by the difficulty of separating familial from extra-familial sources of labour, or non-market from market ones. Slaves originated outside the family, indeed usually from outside the society, but over successive generations their descendants were treated increasingly as junior kin. Pawns were extra-familial workers to the master who received them; but in serving as pawns these individuals were usually fulfilling an obligation to their own matrikin, and the contract under which they laboured was fundamentally one between matrilineages (this will be detailed in Chapter 7). Again, the institutions of slavery and pawning had major non-market features; yet there was a market in slaves and even in pawns.

It seems clear that at any given moment throughout the period the majority of able-bodied people were working for themselves or in conjugal or kin-based units. To reflect this fundamental point the various forms of such labour will be discussed in the first section, which will also consider other forms of labour based on (at least proximately) non-market relationships: including subjects' work for chiefs. Yet it was the kinds of labour that could be recruited through a market that offered the main opportunities to principals (individuals, household heads, chiefs) to achieve economic and demographic expansion.