The Market and the Oikos, Vol. II

The Peasant and the Nomad in History
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-51375-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 27, 350 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 739 g

Reihe: Ideas, History, and Modern China

Both Karl Marx and Max Weber inspired the writing of the two volumes of The Market and the Oikos. Weber coined a market versus oikos contradiction, in which oikos not only means house, household or family, but later also the state, while Marx saw a town versus country antagonism. Both scholars, however, explained insufficiently these most complicated concepts, let alone some mutual relationships. This second volume, The Market and the Oikos, Vol. II: The Peasant and the Nomad in History, continues the analysis of their antagonisms in their mutual relationships by providing the main practical characteristics in different historical, economic and sociological contexts, based on the writing of Max Weber as explained in Vol. I.

While the first volume tried to characterize the relationships from economic and historical points of view, this second volume takes a historical/sociological angle. In both volumes, Hans Derks’ argument proceeds from early world historical examples to the present context of contemporary China, stressing the highly neglected role of nomads in history.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Derks, Hans

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Introduction to the Project

A Biographical Note

Acknowledgments

Sources

Abbreviations

PART 1: The Definition of Realities

1 Introduction

1 Introduction to the Volume

2 The Myth-Hunters

3 Plants and Animals

4 Death of an “Ancient Economy”

6 Conflicts

7 Plan of the Book

PART 2: Peasant Societies in Antiquity

2 Landscape with Cows, Seascape with Ships

1 What is the Problem?

2 A Wild, Barren Goat Land?

3 Homer in the Cold

4 ‘The Extreme Mildness of the Seasons.’

5 A Seascape for Farmer – Mariners as Pirates

6 Aegina as a Model?

3 The Little Acre of the Gods

1 Nomads and Sedentary

2 Plains and Mountains

3 Four Plains, Five Worlds

4 A New View of an Old Landscape

5 Meat Consumption of/for Vegetarians

6 The Little Acre of the Gods

7 A Small Test

8 The Tillage Complex

4 Autarkeia in Greek Theory and Practice

1 Some General Issues

2 The Oikos Controversy

3 Aristotle’s Use of Autarchy

4 Reflections on the Findings

5 Conclusion

5 Aristotle and the ‘Milkmen’

1 Milk

2 The Oikos Family

3 Who Drinks Milk?

4 The Basic Institutions of Milk-Drinkers

5 Drinkers Who Need and Like Milk

6 A Beautiful Evil

1 Introduction

2 Women and their Heroes

3 Henpecked Husbands?

4 The Macho Roman Empire

5 Marginal Ideal Women

6 Danaides: A Myth in Space

7 A Mythic Chronology

8 A Reconstruction

9 Myth and the Truth of the Amazons

10 An Unnatural Theory of the Oikos

11 Achilles and His Amazon

12 Why Gods are Really People

13 Men and Women in Hellas

14 About the “Amazon Queen” Polyphemus

15 A Unity of Unequals

PART 3: The State and Its Minorities

7 The State, the “Biblical Peasants” and beyond

1 Introducing a Historical Problem

2 The Beginning of the End

3 Imperial Monotheism

4 The Original Theft

5 The Second, Third, etc. Thefts

6 West versus East

7 The Definition of an Internal Enemy in the West

8 Inventions of State Repressions

9 A Few Hours Ago

8 How to Sedentarize Mobile Interests

1 The Nomadic Jew as Guest

2 Sombart’s Jewish Nomad

3 The Police and the Medical Doctor

4 A New Hero and His Nomads

5 The Sedentarized “Ghetto-Jews as Guests”

6 The Original Ghetto

7 A Reflection on the “East Side of the Ghetto Problem”

PART 4: Nomadic Societies in Asian History

9 Elementary Characteristics of Mobile Societies

1 Introduction

2 Huns as “the Scourge of God”

3 Mongols and Sedentary

4 Elementary Characteristics

10 Nomadic Sex in Bible and in Semiotics

1 A Virtual Reality

2 Who-Is-Who and What-Is-What in Myth Land

3 The Subject of the Discussion

4 A Response to a “Nomadic Challenge”

5 “My Oikos is My Castle”

6 Patriarchal Prostitutes

7 Nomadic Lovemaking

8 A Small Historical Reflection

11 Linguistics of Death and Domination

1 Introduction

2 Race and Archaeology

3 Horses and their Languages

4 A Nomadic Monument

PART 5: The Market and the Oikos: An Epilogue

12 An Irrational Market versus a Rational Oikos? USA versus China?

1 Introduction

2 Young Protests

3 “The World We Have Lost”

4 Opium Banking in a Crown Colony

5 Exorbitant Opium Revenues

6 On the Chinese Side

13 Epilogue

1 Peasants and Farmers

2 The Present Market-Oikos “Reconstruction”

3 Asian State Formation

4 Supplement

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Hans Derks, Ph.D. (1986), Amsterdam University, taught at universities in the Netherlands and abroad. He has published many monographs and articles, often on China, including The History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, ca. 1600-1950, (Brill, 2012); Victims and Perpetrators: Dutch Shoah, 1933/45 and beyond, (Brill, 2019); and the first volume of this set, The Market and the Oikos: The Relationship Between Religion and Capitalism in Modern China, (Brill, 2018). The author’s webpage is www.hderks.dds.nl.