Oikos and Market: Explorations in Self-Sufficiency after Socialism

by Stephen Gudeman (Editor), Chris Hann (Editor)

Overview

Self—sufficiency of the house is practiced in many parts of the world but ignored in economic theory, just as socialist collectivization is assumed to have brought household self—sufficiency to an end. The ideals of self—sufficiency, however, continue to shape economic activity in a wide range of postsocialist settings. This volume’s six comparative studies of postsocialist villages in Eastern Europe and Asia illuminate the enduring importance of the house economy, which is based not on the market but on the order of the house. These formations show that economies depend not only on the macro institutions of markets and states but also on the micro institutions of families, communities, and house economies, often in an uneasy relationship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785338366
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	03/23/2018
Series:	Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy , #2
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Stephen Gudeman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and was formerly co—director of the Economy and Ritual project at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. His most recent publications are Economic Persuasions (2009) and Economy and Ritual: Studies in Postsocialist Transformations (co—edited with Chris Hann, 2015).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Self—Sufficiency as Reality and as Myth
Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann

Chapter 1. The Ideal of Self—Sufficiency and the Reality of Dependence: A Hungarian Case
Bea Vidacs

Chapter 2. How Much is Enough? Household Provisioning, Self—Sufficiency and Social Status in Rural Moldova
Jennifer R. Cash

Chapter 3. When the Household Meets the State: Ajvar Cooking and Householding in Postsocialist Macedonia
Miladina Monova

Chapter 4. Self—Sufficiency is Not Enough: Ritual Intensification and Household Economies in a Kyrgyz Village
Nathan Light

Chapter 5. “They Work in a Closed Circle”: Self—Sufficiency in House—Based Rural Tourism in the Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria
Detelina Tocheva

Chapter 6. Self—Sufficiency and “Being One’s Own Master” among Transylvanian Forest Dwellers
Monica Vasile

Notes on Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

“…the volume offers possibilities for fruitfully reconsidering  enduring topics and issues in economic theory that are of great interest not just to anthropologists but to other social scientists and economic philosophers.” · Anthropos

“These studies make a timely contribution to postsocialist studies, wherein anthropologists grapple with the transformative effects of collectivization and subsequent privatization of productive resources. They also offer enduring insights into the way people sharpen or blur boundaries between household and market, especially with regard to particular lives. These understandings resonate throughout anthropology.” · Anthropological Forum

“The readable and theoretically important ethnographies in Oikos & Market, as should be apparent, not only provide interesting insights on contemporary life in Eastern Europe but challenge a number of widely—held assumptions about economics, the household and the market, and the meaning of 'self—sufficiency.' …the case studies represent anthropology at its best, in refuting generalizations and exposing the valuable of the mundane.” · Anthropology Review Database

“The volume presents a compilation of well written ethnographic accounts of ideals and practices of self—sufficiency in a wide range of postsocialist settings. Historically contextualised, the individual contributions stress the strong values placed on self—sufficiency in virtually all of the localities, as well as the various ways and degrees to which actors try to come close to it.” · Tatjana Thelen, University of Vienna

From the Publisher