Download or read book Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World written by Michael Hudson and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 1996 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economics, no. 1 Essays on the development of private landownership and its socio-political factors in ancient Mesopotamia, Ugarit, Phoenicia, and Palestine.

Download or read book Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East written by Michael Hudson and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 1999 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume in an ongoing series sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), "Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East" examines the impact of debt, private land ownership, and urbanization on ancient societies. Evidence of privatization of land is supported by archaeological data, surviving documents, and financial records. This volume contains three sets of papers ranging from the Ice Age through early Egypt and Bronze Age Sumer, Babylonia, and Israel, given by archaeologists, economists, Assyriologists, and Egyptologists. The first set of papers deals with the social cosmology of early urban areas as ritual centers. The second set focuses on the physical archaeology of Near Eastern cities and reconstructs their land-use patterns. The final set examines what Assyriologists have been able to extract from the cuneiform record concerning urban land use, land tenure, and the emergence of real estate as something privately owned and transferable. One of the most valuable parts of this volume is the oral discussion of each paper by the participants. Highlighting the different methodologies used in each discipline and the difficulties in establishing a common vocabulary, these discussions raise universal questions concerning ancient economies and their relevancy to long-term economic trends. The first volume in this series was "Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World," edited by Michael Hudson and Baruch A. Levine (Peabody Museum Bulletin 5, ISBN 0-87365-955-4).

Download or read book Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East written by Morris Silver and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-28 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East (1985) is a political economy of antiquity which applies the universal conclusions of theoretical economics to the interpretation of economic life. The first part of the book shows that the analysis of transaction costs – that is, the resources used up in exchanging ownership rights including costs of communication and of designing and enforcing contracts – provides numerous insights into the structure of the ancient economy. The role of temples as centres of commerce, inculcation of professional standards by gods, elevation of technology to the status of divine gift, religious syncretism and fetishism and many more seemingly exotic practices are comprehended as elements in a strategy to cope with high transaction costs by increasing the stock of what might be called trust capital. It is shown that similar considerations lie behind the ubiquity of diversified, multinational family firms, the prominent entrepreneurial role of high-born women, the prominence within the contractual process of publicly performed conventional gestures and recitations, and the intrusion of gifts, friendship, and other manifestations of personal economics into exchange relationships. The book goes on to examine carefully, and then reject, the view of economic historian Karl Polanyi and others that the ancient Near East lacked true markets for consumer goods and productive factors. The direct evidence of market exchange (local and long distance), occupational specialisation, supply-demand determined prices, investment in material and human capital, production for the market, and other ‘modern’ traits is uneven with respect to place and time, but nevertheless abundant. The requisite market functions demanded by Polanyi, including a market for labour (slave and free) and elaborate credit and investment markets, can be seen plainly from very early times. Finally, the book deals with the impact on the ancient Near Eastern economy of changes in economic incentives and of changes in economic policy. It becomes evident that ancient economies were capable of making profound alterations in order to take advantage of new economic opportunities. It is also shown that the ancient Near East was not static, as is usually asserted: periods of pervasive economic regulation by the state are interspersed with lengthy periods of relatively unfettered market activity and growth.

Download or read book The Organization of Ancient Economies written by Kenneth Hirth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book written that examines ancient and premodern economies from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective.

Download or read book The Invention of Enterprise written by David S. Landes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-26 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping global history of entrepreneurial innovation Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs—and their innovations—have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society. The Invention of Enterprise lays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.

Download or read book Labor in the Ancient World written by Piotr Steinkeller and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-03 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LABOR IN THE ANCIENT WORLD Edited by Piotr Steinkeller and Michael Hudson. The fifth volume in this series sponsored by the International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economies (ISCANEE) and the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET) offers case studies on how labor was mobilized and remunerated in the early Near East and Mediterranean world. The initially voluntary character of labor on public building projects evolved into corvee as the primary way of obtaining labor. Among other characteristics are the minor significance of slave labor; the role of large building projects as a tool of social and political integration; the use of hired workers as a way of dealing with the systemic shortage of labor, and the practice of compensating the employees of large organizations with salaries in food and/or land allotments. By late Neolithic times the obligation to supply corvee labor services became the basis for assigning land tenure. The historical data demonstrate that the corvee labor tax became the basis for assigning property rights, not a later intrusion on these rights. (2015) Other books in this series: PRIVATIZATION IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND CLASSICAL WORLD Edited by Michael Hudson and Baruch A. Levine. Archaeologists, economists, and Assyriologists describe the increasingly private control of land, handicraft workshops, and credit from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. (1996) URBANIZATION AND LAND OWNERSHIP IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Edited by Michael Hudson and Baruch A. Levine. The impact of debt, private land ownership, and urbanization on ancient societies as evidenced by archaeological data, surviving financial records, and other documents. (1999) DEBT AND ECONOMIC RENEWAL IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Edited by Michael Hudson and Marc Van De Mieroop. The origins of interest-bearing debt and its dynamics from Sumer down through the Neo-Babylonian epoch, and the tradition of royal Clean Slates that later became the Biblical Jubilee Year. (2002) CREATING ECONOMIC ORDER RECORD-KEEPING, STANDARDIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACCOUNTING IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Edited by Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. The extent to which accounting practices shaped economic life from early Uruk (c. 3300 BC) through the Neo-Babylonian period, as well as in Egypt, Crete, and Mycenaean Greece. (2004) "

Download or read book A Companion to the Ancient Near East written by Daniel C. Snell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of the popular survey of Near Eastern civilization from the Bronze Age to the era of Alexander the Great A Companion to the Ancient Near East explores the history of the region from 4400 BCE to the Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE. Original and revised essays from a team of distinguished scholars from across disciplines address subjects including the politics, economics, architecture, and heritage of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Part of the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, this acclaimed single-volume reference combines lively writing with engaging and relatable topics to immerse readers in this fascinating period of Near East history. The new second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include new developments in relevant fields, particularly archaeology, and expand on themes of interest to contemporary students. Clear, accessible chapters offer fresh discussions on the history of the family and gender roles, the literature, languages, and religions of the region, pastoralism, medicine and philosophy, and borders, states, and warfare. New essays highlight recent discoveries in cuneiform texts, investigate how modern Egyptians came to understand their ancient history, and examine the place of archaeology among the historical disciplines. This volume: Provides substantial new and revised content covering topics such as social conflict, kingship, cosmology, work, trade, and law Covers the civilizations of the Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Israelites, and Persians, emphasizing social and cultural history Examines the legacy of the Ancient Near East in the medieval and modern worlds Offers a uniquely broad geographical, chronological, and topical range Includes a comprehensive bibliographical guide to Ancient Near East studies as well as new and updated references and reading suggestions Suitable for use as both a primary reference or as a supplement to a chronologically arranged textbook, A Companion to the Ancient Near East, 2nd Edition is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduate students, instructors in the field, and scholars from other disciplines.

Download or read book Economics and Empire in the Ancient Near East written by Matthew J. M. Coomber and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few decades biblical economics has developed into an important subfield of biblical studies. Through examining the economic realities that lay behind Hebrew biblical texts and archaeological findings, biblical economics has led to greater understandings of the cultures and experiences of ancient Hebrew communities, the legal and religious texts they produced, and of how those texts may or may not relate to the experiences of communities who continue to receive them, today. Economics and Empire in the Ancient Near East has brought together ten scholars of biblical economics and one economic anthropologist to create a repository of what is understood about the economic realities of Southwest Asia in the late second and first millennia BCE. In addition to furthering the research and teaching interests of biblical scholars, this volume has also been created for the benefit of economic historians, anthropologists, and sociologists.

Download or read book Introducing Money written by Mark Peacock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a theoretical and historical examination of the evolution of money. It is distinct from the majority of ‘economic’ approaches, for it does not see money as an outgrowth of market exchange via barter. Instead, the social, political, legal and religious origins of money are examined. The methodological and theoretical underpinning of the work is that the study of money be historically informed, and that there exists a ‘state theory of money’ that provides an alternative framework to the ‘orthodox’ view of money’s origins. The contexts for analysing the introduction of money at various historical junctures include ancient Greece, British colonial dependencies in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and local communities which introduce ‘alternative’ currencies. The book argues that, although money is not primarily an ‘economic’ phenomenon (associated with market exchange), it has profound implications (amongst others, economic implications) for societies and habits of human thought and action.

Download or read book Created Equal written by Joshua Berman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought. He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. What emerges is the blueprint for a society that would stand in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire - in which the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that an egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion in the Pentateuch and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate ancient developments. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of those espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.

Download or read book The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel written by Roland Boer and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel offers a new reconstruction of the economic context of the Bible and of ancient Israel. It argues that the key to ancient economies is with those who worked on the land rather than in intermittent and relatively weak kingdoms and empires. Drawing on sophisticated economic theory (especially the Régulation School) and textual and archaeological resources, Roland Boer makes it clear that economic “crisis†was the norm and that economics is always socially determined. He examines three economic layers: the building blocks (five institutional forms), periods of relative stability (three regimes), and the overarching mode of production. Ultimately, the most resilient of all the regimes was subsistence survival, for which the regular collapse of kingdoms and empires was a blessing rather than a curse. Students will come away with a clear understanding of the dynamics of the economy of ancient Israel. Boer's volume should become a new benchmark for future studies.

Download or read book From Mesopotamia to the Mishnah written by Jonathan S. Milgram and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Jonathan S. Milgram demonstrates that the transformation of inheritance law from the biblical to the tannaitic period is best explained against the backdrop of the legal and social contexts in which the tannaitic laws were formulated. Employing text and source critical methods, he argues that, in the absence of the hermeneutic underpinnings for tannaitic innovations, the laws were not the result of the rabbinic imagination and its penchant for inventive interpretation of Scripture. Turning to the rich repositories in biblical, ancient near eastern, Second Temple, Greek, Elephantine, Judean desert, and Roman sources, the author searches for conceptual parallels and antecedents as well as formulae and terminology adopted and adapted by the tannaim. Since the tannaitic traditions reflect the social and economic contexts of the tannaitic period - the nuclear family on privatized landholdings in urban centers - the author also considers the degree to which tannaitic inheritance laws may have emerged out of these contexts.

Download or read book Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World written by Kordula Schnegg and published by Franz Steiner Verlag. This book was released on 2004 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume forms the proceedings of the Fifth Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project held in Innsbruck in 2002. Twenty-nine specialist contributions focus on the economic aspects of the `diffusion and transformation of the cultural heritage of the ancient Near East'. Eight thematic sections discuss: Near Eastern economic theory; Mesopotamia in the third millenium BC; Mesopotamia and the Levant in the first half of the first millennium BC; Levant, Egypt and the Aegean world during the same time span; Greece and Achaemenids, Parthians, Sasanians and Rome; social aspects of this exchange, including its affects on religion, borders, education and cosmology. The scope of the papers is wide, with subjects including Babylonian twin towns and ethnic minorities, archaic Greek aristocrats, the Phoenicians and the birth of a Mediterranean society, slavery, Iron Age Cyprus, Seleucid coins, the `Silk Route', and Greek images of the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms. Sixteen papers in English, the rest in German.

Download or read book Land As an Economic Factor and Its Biblical Origins written by Kenneth Wenzer and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2003-11 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our homage to freedom is a mockery, for the blinding glare of riches and power have made of democracy an illusion. The consequence is life without social and economic justice and a false view-we are chained to monetary acquisitiveness, group identities, and other limited perspectives. Power and influence coupled with technology, bureaucracy, and greed have masked accumulated wisdom-the bedrock of individual integrity. Even social injustice masked as property rights takes on a look of integrity, liberty, and prosperity. At the root of our problems is the relation of man to the land and his mental and physical separation from it. The most endurable structure would be built upon the Fatherhood of God, which the ancient Hebrews perceived as requiring the sharing among the entire people of the divine gift of land. While land rent has been acknowledged to be socially created, a theft by private interests of natural resources that belong to mankind in common, is protected and exalted as the fruit of effort and a basis of personal rights. The First Definitive History of Land Economics stands in a tradition of social criticism that recognizes that land-rent income should be the tax base of the community and the means to eliminate poverty. The author hopes to do something towards overcoming a way of thinking that in the guise of defending property rights defends privilege in its robbery of Nature, labor, and life.

Download or read book Greater Good written by John A. Quelch and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2007-12-28 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marketing has a greater purpose, and marketers, a higher calling, than simply selling more widgets, according to John Quelch and Katherine Jocz. In Greater Good, the authors contend that marketing performs an essential societal function--and does so democratically. They maintain that people would benefit if the realms of politics and marketing were informed by one another's best principles and practices. Quelch and Jocz lay out the six fundamental characteristics that marketing and democracy share: (1) exchange of value, such as goods, services, and promises, (2) consumption of goods and services, (3) choice in all decisions, (4) free flow of information, (5) active engagement of a majority of individuals, and (6) inclusion of as many people as possible. Without these six traits, both marketing and democracy would fail, and with them, society. Drawing on current and historical examples from economies around the world, this landmark work illuminates marketing's critical role in the development, growth, and governance of societies. It reveals how good marketing practices improve the political process and--in turn--the practice of democracy itself.

Download or read book Credit and State Theories of Money written by L. Randall Wray and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1913 and 1914, A. Mitchell Innes published a pair of articles that stand as two of the best pieces written in the twentieth century on the nature of money. Only recently rediscovered, these articles are reprinted and analyzed here for the first time.

Download or read book Criticism of Theology written by Roland Boer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-12-17 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criticism of Theology provides a detailed and critical commentary on the continued fascination with religion by yet more significant Marxist philosophers, historians and critics: Max Horkheimer, E.P. Thompson, G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, Michael Löwy, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Antonio Negri. Simultaneously critique and construction, Criticism of Theology carefully analyses their work through close textual readings, with a view to locating hidden gems that may be developed further. The book continues the project for a renewed and enlivened interaction between Marxism and religion, being the third of five volumes in the Criticism of Heaven and Earth series.