Oikos and Market

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).

“…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

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Self-Sufficiency as Reality and as MythStephen Gudeman and Chris HannChapter 1. The Ideal of Self-Sufficiency and the Reality of Dependence: A Hungarian CaseBea VidacsChapter 2. How Much is Enough? Household Provisioning, Self-Sufficiency and Social Status in Rural MoldovaJennifer R. CashChapter 3. When the Household Meets the State: Ajvar Cooking and Householding in Postsocialist MacedoniaMiladina MonovaChapter 4. Self-Sufficiency is Not Enough: Ritual Intensification and Household Economies in a Kyrgyz VillageNathan LightChapter 5. “They Work in a Closed Circle”: Self-Sufficiency in House-Based Rural Tourism in the Rhodope Mountains, BulgariaDetelina TochevaChapter 6. Self-Sufficiency and “Being One’s Own Master” among Transylvanian Forest DwellersMonica VasileNotes on ContributorsIndex