Debt-Bondage

Like many early modern writers, Bradstreet attempted to accommodate the worldly to the spiritual.  The world of finance, agriculture, and genealogy are is both merged and set into conflict with the spirit in her father-poems.  The poems on marriage and motherhood sketch our further conflicts between worldly and heavenly values but reconcile these oppositions by imagining all realms and all distinctions as things transcended in the spirit.  "The Author to Her Book" disrupts this larger spiritual economy in which Bradstreet located all of her work.  The book becomes a child adrift in the world where it has a material value but owes no obligation to its mother, its only parent. Completely dissociated from the contractual bonds that originate in God the Father and that are enforced by the mother, his (re-)production can never ben redeemed and therefore will not maintain a spiritual connection to its origin.  She finally does not cast it aside as blasphemy, but sets it apart as a thing that exists in a universe parallel, if inferior, to the spiritual realm that encompasses all her other offspring.  This poem records the culmination of a secularizing trend within the poet's essentially spiritual thought, for is demonstrates how the domestic, the economic, and the theological--which Bradstreet understood as interrelated locations of the bond between parents and children--where beginning to come apart for her as separate but analogous realms.

This article is an attempt to understand some aspects of the socio-economic
conditions of two artisan groups, the Dumna basket-makers and Lohar blacksmith/
iron-smelters, in the 1920s and the 1930s in a Himachal village. It describes an
economic relationship not well-known to scholars, between religious establishments
and rural classes based on a bahi-documents from the matha-monastary of Dasanami ascetics. The article suggests that the chief ambition of these establishments in maintaining such relationships was not only to maximise their capital but also to extend their influence over local society.

This collection brings together five years worth of research into how the legacies of 19th-century enslavement interact with contemporary bondage and exploitation. Download the pdf at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-7ETObmmI0MVbdCt2AXtMuOKQQVhbtOo/view

Central and South Asian brick kilns have long attracted the attention of both humanitarian agencies and scholars as sites of slavery-like forms of labor exploitation. They represent both an important case study for investigating the systems of dependence and debt-relationships that characterize Southern Asian capitalism, and a big challenge to creating sustainable, international standards for human labor. One aspect largely overlooked in the literature concerns the ideas of freedom that emerge in situations of bondage. Based on ethnographic research conducted in brick kilns in the areas of Gujrat, Islamabad and Rawalpindi in 2015 and 2016, my analysis focuses on workers' narratives and their perceptions of freedom and its absence. Keywords debt bondage – Pakistan – brick kilns – freedom – dependence

Si bien en el presente trabajo nos centraremos en una serie de problemáticas que se desenvuelven durante el arcaísmo ateniense, sin embargo, el objetivo general de la indagación se relaciona con la búsqueda de comprender aquello que hemos decidido llamar “la singularidad ateniense”. La demokratía ática ha sido frecuentemente y a partir de un amplio abanico de motivos, señalada como una formación social singular, excepcional, particular, incluso, “paradójica”. En relación a ello, según nuestro parecer, un elemento que resulta fundamental para comprender el funcionamiento de la democracia y la “singularidad” de la sociedad ateniense clásica está dado por el hecho de que los pequeños y medianos agricultores se encontraban – gracias a los derechos de ciudadanía – en una situación de igualdad jurídica y política con respecto a los miembros de la aristocracia terrateniente lo que operaba limitando las posibilidades de desarrollo, al interior del cuerpo cívico, de las diversas formas de dependencia que suelen caracterizar a las sociedades precapitalistas . Para entender dicha característica de la democracia ateniense, entonces, en este trabajo estudiaremos algunas transformaciones que se desarrollan durante la época arcaica y ayudan a explicar la génesis histórica de la mencionada “singularidad”. En lo que sigue argumentaremos que las reformas de Solón implicaron una transformación de peso en la estructura sociopolítica ateniense puesto que habilitaron la integración de los pequeños y medianos agricultores de forma definitiva y estable en la ciudadanía permitiéndoles una participación política que funcionó, en última instancia, como una protección contra la explotación.

EN - This article reopens the debate on the main cause of the first secession of the plebs – namely the first crisis of the “indebted” (495-493 BC) – and returns to the meaning of the word nexi, proposing to see in those to whom this term was initially applied, not “debt slaves” (the conventional interpretation), but rather clan dependents. In other words, a category of people whose social status can only be understood within the framework of the clans and whose only “debts” were, like those of the hektemores in Athens, the regular dues they had to pay to the patres of their clans in order to be allowed to continue to cultivate the land they were occupying. The interpretation of the first secession is, then, fundamentally modified: the issue thus seems to have been, as suggested by the too often underestimated edict of Servilius, to integrate the clan dependents into the original plebeian core to form a powerful social body holding the privilege of enlisting in the civic army (to the detriment of the gentilicial warbands) which became a major stage in the transition from a clan model to a civic model.

FR - Cet article rouvre le dossier de la principale cause de la première sécession de la plèbe-à savoir la première crise des « endettés » (495-493 av. J.-C.)et revient sur la signification du mot nexi, en proposant de voir en ceux auxquels fut initialement appliqué ce qualificatif, non des « esclaves pour dettes » pour reprendre l'appellation usuelle, mais plutôt des dépendants gentilices. Autrement dit une catégorie de personnes dont on ne peut comprendre le statut social que dans le cadre des clans et dont les seules « dettes » furent, à l'instar de celles des hektémores à Athènes, les redevances régulières qu'ils devaient verser aux patres de leurs clans afin de pouvoir continuer à cultiver les terres qu'ils occupaient. L'interprétation de la première sécession s'en trouve dès lors fondamentalement modifiée : l'enjeu paraît ainsi avoir été, comme le suggère l'édit de Servilius trop souvent sous-estimé, d'intégrer les dépendants gentilices au noyau plébéien originel pour former un corps social puissant détenteur du privilège de s'enrôler dans l'armée civique (au détriment des milices gentilices). Une étape majeure dans la transition d'un modèle clanique vers un modèle civique.

In this paper, I explain the existence of debt-bondage within the global capitalist economic system by looking at the effects of neoliberal restructuring on labour market precarity in South Asia and Latin America. I argue that there is a close, but complex, relationship between debt-bondage and neoliberal capitalism, in which debt-bonded workers are ‘adversely incorporated’ within capital accumulation processes by means of 'capillary' tactics of selection and retention mediated by middlemen. Adopting a Marxist approach allows us to situate the ethnic and cultural pre-conditions of debt-bondage in historical and material contexts of value relations rooted in property, social needs, and social reproduction outside capitalism and wage-labour. I therefore compare the different locations – focusing on South Asia and Latin America - where debt bondage frequently occurs, and some of the more prominent forms it takes. Finally, I consider the effects of policies proposed to combat debt-bondage, and their connection to global and national social movements against debt in recent decades. I conclude that in order for resistance to debt-bondage and unfree labour to be successful, it must be linked to a larger anti-capitalist and/or socialist project on a macro, rather than solely a micro level.

Este trabalho consiste em uma análise do aviamento contemporâneo no Médio Purus, região localizada no sul do estado do Amazonas. A hipótese desta dissertação é que o aviamento, sistema produtivo baseado na relação patrão-freguês também conhecido como escravidão por dívida, estaria adentrando um novo ciclo, o ciclo dos cartões. Programas de transferência de renda (aposentadoria, seguro deficiência, bolsa família etc) são executados por intermédio de cartões governamentais, que por sua vez são retidos pelos patrões como forma de pagar a dívida de “seus” fregueses. Essa prática é vista como mais um desdobramento na trajetória do aviamento no Médio Purus, que teve seu início com a instalação da economia gumífera (no século XIX) mas cujas formas de sociabilidade vigoram até o presente.

Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient groups in Bangladesh. However, the literature on the effects of micro-credit use among smallholders is surprisingly deficient. This article seeks to rectify this gap by highlighting the ramifications of micro-credit’s foray into the subsistence agriculture sector. It analyses the ostensibly disparate processes of mounting smallholder indebtedness and the phenomenal rise of micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh in light of the country’s broader context of agricultural commoditisation, input subsidy reduction and a systematic lessening of the subsidised agricultural credit system. The article uses the concept of “accumulation by dispossession/encroachment” to argue that persistent borrowing from micro-finance institutions (MFIs) exposes smallholders to the risks and volatilities of the market. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, it demonstrates how the capital accumulation model of Bangladeshi MFIs marginalises smallholders and ensnares them in a perpetual cycle of debts.

"Resumen: El rasgo distintivo de las sociedades precapitaslistas está dado por el hecho de que en ellas las relaciones de explotación se vehiculizan a partir de mecanismos coactivos (extraeconómicos) que aseguran la transferencia de los excedentes desde las clases productoras hacia las dominantes. Tales mecanismos suelen sostenerse por escisiones jurídicas, políticas, religiosas, etc. que delimitan y oponen claramente a los productores de los apropiadores del plusproducto. Teniendo esto en mente, en el presente trabajo se analizan las diferentes formas que adquirieron las relaciones de dependencia rural en Atenas a principios del siglo VI a.C. (hectemorazgo, endeudamiento, esclavización por deudas, etc.) y su evolución a partir las reformas encaradas por Solón. Desde nuestra perspectiva, este abordaje resulta fundamental para entender un aspecto singular de la democracia ateniense del siglo V a.C.: la igualación que se dio –en virtud de la extensión de los derechos de ciudadanía– en el plano jurídico y político entre los productores agrícolas directos y la aristocracia terrateniente y los límites que ello impuso a la posibilidad de desarrollo de relaciones de explotación entre los miembros del cuerpo cívico.
Palabras claves: Atenas arcaica, Solón, dependencia rural, coacción extraeconómica, ciudadanía
Abstract: The distinctive feature of pre-capitalist societies is that their exploitative relations are based on coactive extra-economic mechanisms that guarantee the translation of surplus production from the direct producers to the ruling class. Such mechanisms are regularly warranted by juridical, political, religious, etc. distinctions that set aside and oppose the direct producers from the non-productive and surplus appropriators classes. Having that in mind, this paper analyse the relations of rural dependency in its different forms at Athens during the beginnings of the VI century BC (hektemoroi, debt, debt bondage, etc.) and the evolution occurred since Solon's reforms. From our point of view, this approach is vital to understand one singular aspect of fifth-century Athenian democracy: the juridical and political equality –due to the extension of citizen's rights– between the direct agricultural producers and the landholders of the aristocracy and the limits that this situation imposed to development of exploitative relations between the members of the citizenry.
Keywords: archaic Athens, Solon, rural dependency, extra-economic coercion, citizenship"

Authors writing about the history of the "coolie trade" in Cuba have generally focused on the multinational effort to halt the trafficking of Chinese workers. Little has been written about either the role of consuls as middlemen or of Spanish participation in the traffic in treaty ports. Yet, several sources indicate that many officials at Spanish consulates in coastal China were intensely involved in the shipment of Chinese emigrants to Cuba and other coolie trade destinations, and were also at the centre of international scandals. These consular officers frequently used their authority to obtain a monopoly over the trade. In this article, I argue that the coolie trade was the main objective of Spain's consular deployment in China, and that the involvement of these consular officials was crucial in developing an abusive migratory system and sustaining the mistreatment of Chinese immigrant workers throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.

This paper is the memorial of the Office of the Prosecutor in the  ICC Moot Court Competition 2018. It examines: a) the existence of an inthernational custom, according to which the newly emerged forms of Human Trafficking, meaning those of debt-bondage and forced labor, consist a crime, different from that of slavery, b) whether legal enitities, such as international companies, can be held liable for committing a crime and c) potential factors that could impact the objectivity and integrity of a member of the judiciary.
It is important to underline, that the above mentioned issues, constituted firsts for the ICC. The rapid evolution of the crime of Human Trafficking and its transnational character, has alarmed the OTP of the Court. Therefore, it has directed its policy towards the extraction of an internationally binding legal code against this type of human exploitation.

Literacy condition of the children working in brick kiln in the state of Tripura as well as other state is practically very poor. During a long time this problem remains unsolved due to lack of strong policy and planning. For this worst condition of literacy, health and safety of those children, the responsible persons are the parents of the children, owner of brick field, state Govt. & Central Govt. The condition is more pathetic in case of the migrant debt bondage labour families and their children. The parents are bound to engage their children as a labour due to their less wages and also due to the lack of awareness about education. They don’t know that, only education can change the life of their kids. Their primary requirement is money due to which the parents pushes their children towards worse condition of their life. The Owner of the brick factories are not interested to improve the literacy condition of child labour due to their profit concern. Local Government is not giving emphasis on this matter as maximum of those labours are imported from other states. The middle man are the interstate labour brokers which also increases the intensity of exploitations. The basic problem lies in the fact that these labours are seasonal migrant labour. So, it is most urgent to analyze the practical situation of literacy, health and safety of child labours in brick kiln and to provide recommendations for eliminating the worst forms of their life.

This article is interested in the roles played by the social mobility of labour middlemen of low-castes for seasonal labour from the district of Mahabunagar, Andhra Pradesh, in
the changing unfree labour relations in villages. This study focuses on the maistris and the social relations in the village that sanction bondage and the upward mobility of the gollas.
By going outside the work site, it undertakes to explore the changing social relations of recruitment involved in
the bondage of the workers to the maistris, starting from the villages where they operate.

Centred on the slavery trial “Crown vs. Rungnapha Kanbut” heard in Sydney, New South Wales, between 10 April and 15 May 2019, this article seeks to frame the figure of the “Mother Tac” or the “mother of contract”, also called “mama tac” or “mae tac”—a term used amongst Thai migrants to describe a woman who hosts, collects debts from, and organises work for Thai migrant sex workers in their destination country. It proposes that this largely unexplored figure has come to assume a disproportionate role in the “modern slavery” approach to human trafficking, with its emphasis on absolute victims and individual offenders. The harms suffered by Kanbut’s victims are put into context by referring to existing literature on women accused of trafficking; interviews with Thai migrant sex workers, including Kanbut’s primary victim, and with members from the Australian Federal Police Human Trafficking Unit; and ethnographic field notes. The article unveils how constructions of both victim and offe...

Literacy condition of the children working in brick kiln in the state of Tripura as well as other state is practically very poor. During a long time this problem remains unsolved due to lack of strong policy and planning. For this worst condition of literacy, health and safety of those children, the responsible persons are the parents of the children, owner of brick field, state Govt. & Central Govt. The condition is more pathetic in case of the migrant debt bondage labour families and their children. The parents are bound to engage their children as a labour due to their less wages and also due to the lack of awareness about education. They don’t know that, only education can change the life of their kids. Their primary requirement is money due to which the parents pushes their children towards worse condition of their life. The Owner of the brick factories are not interested to improve the literacy condition of child labour due to their profit concern. Local Government is not giving emphasis on this matter as maximum of those labours are imported from other states. The middle man are the interstate labour brokers which also increases the intensity of exploitations. The basic problem lies in the fact that these labours are seasonal migrant labour. So, it is most urgent to analyze the practical situation of literacy, health and safety of child labours in brick kiln and to provide recommendations for eliminating the worst forms of their life.

This Emerging Evidence Report describes the availability of evidence on modern slavery interventions in Myanmar presented in the programme’s interactive Evidence Map.This report on Myanmar uses the same methodology and complements the evidence map on interventions to tackle trafficking, child and forced labour in South Asia for Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The Evidence Map provides an outline of where evidence is concentrated and where it is missing by mapping out existing and ongoing impact evaluations and observational studies exploring different types of modern slavery interventions and outcomes for specific target populations (survivors, employers, landlords, service providers, criminal justice officials) and at different levels (individual, community, state). It also identifies key ‘gaps’ in evidence.

The paper proposes a reading of the urban periphery from a labor-centered perspective, according to which its relational geography is indexed to the mobility of marginalized migrant workers and labor processes. Specifically, it attempts to rethink the urban periphery from the vantage point of peri-urban brick kilns and brick kiln workers. The paper draws parallels between the displacement of brick kilns to the peri-urban and the precarious migration of brick kiln workers by highlighting the tenuous tie between brick kiln workers and the urban space embedded in both. The paper first outlines the historical process of the outward displacement of brick kilns from Delhi to peri-urban villages in Haryana as a result of various pieces of legislation, judicial rulings and planning discourses. It then turns to contemporary forms of circulation between the kilns and the core city. Drawing from fieldwork data generated out of kiln workers’ life histories, it explores the various factors conditioning mobility and the reasons why workers circulate between the brick kilns and different urban occupations at different moments in their lives. The paper argues that exclusionary urbanization processes, in tandem with migrants’ life cycle choices, produce migrant workers as peripheral subjects while they contribute to the production of the urban periphery.

The aim of the chapter is to clarify the contours of the definition of slavery. Special attention is placed in understanding the blurred lines between the international legal definitions of slavery and of other exploitative practices, including the practices labeled as similar to slavery, as well as servitude and forced labor, and its relationship with trafficking in persons. A distinction is subsequently made between the international legal definition contained in the 1926 Slavery Convention adopted by the League of Nations and sociological ones developed by various scholars such as K. Bales, O. Patterson, and A. Honoré. Elements included in these definitions are analyzed and discussed in light of the 1926 definition of slavery. In this respect, the recent reorientation of international attention toward (forms of) contemporary, modern, or modern-day slavery is discussed, thus concluding that it offers a way to avoid careful scrutiny on whether exploitative practices fit the 1926 legal definition of slavery.

This is a study of the various forms of contemporary slave-practices, not limited to sexual trafficking. Working from human rights studies, I show how present-day slavery and chattel practices correspond to what J.-F. Lyotard aptly defined as a "differend," which above all consists in the extreme difficulty confronting an injured party or class in bringing its condition to light within the received (juridical or economic) lexicon of the institutions supposed to hear the crime, and thereupon to provide some aid or resolution to the wrong(s) committed.

Centred on the slavery trial “Crown vs. Rungnapha Kanbut” heard in Sydney, New South Wales, between 10 April and 15 May 2019, this article seeks to frame the figure of the “Mother Tac” or the “mother of contract”, also called “mama tac” or “mae tac”—a term used amongst Thai migrants to describe a woman who hosts, collects debts from, and organises work for Thai migrant sex workers in their destination country. It proposes that this largely unexplored figure has come to assume a disproportionate role in the “modern slavery” approach to human trafficking, with its emphasis on absolute victims and individual offenders. The harms suffered by Kanbut’s victims are put into context by referring to existing literature on women accused of trafficking; interviews with Thai migrant sex workers, including Kanbut’s primary victim, and with members from the Australian Federal Police Human Trafficking Unit; and ethnographic field notes. The article unveils how constructions of both victim and offe...

Centred on the slavery trial “Crown vs. Rungnapha Kanbut” heard in Sydney, New South Wales, between 10 April and 15 May 2019, this article seeks to frame the figure of the “Mother Tac” or the “mother of contract”, also called “mama tac” or “mae tac”—a term used amongst Thai migrants to describe a woman who hosts, collects debts from, and organises work for Thai migrant sex workers in their destination country. It proposes that this largely unexplored figure has come to assume a disproportionate role in the “modern slavery” approach to human trafficking, with its emphasis on absolute victims and individual offenders. The harms suffered by Kanbut’s victims are put into context by referring to existing literature on women accused of trafficking; interviews with Thai migrant sex workers, including Kanbut’s primary victim, and with members from the Australian Federal Police Human Trafficking Unit; and ethnographic field notes. The article unveils how constructions of both victim and offe...

Social relations in rural south lndia have often been studied from either a perspec­tive of labour and economic exploitation or one of dominance and subordination in terms of caste or exercise of political power. In Bonds Last, the author argues that relations between landowners and agricultural labourers cannot be understood without taking account of both the economic and the social logic of the relationship.
From a variety of government, mission and oral sources, the author analyses the transformation of rural social relations in the central parts of the highlands in today's western Tamil Nadu between c. 1900 and 1970.
Throughout the expansion of commercial crops in agriculture, in particular of the cultivation of cotton, the farming community of Goundar and the agricultural labourers of the Madhari leather-working community have been closely related to each other. There has been a mutual, however, uneven dependence between the two; the farmers being dependent on the skills of leather workers to manage the irrigation, the Madhari equally dependent on the farmers for their own survival.
Until the 1930s, competition for labour scaled up in the region and agricultural labourers were increasingly tied by advance payments to work for a farmer. On account of this, economic expansion gained support and social control was upheld. However, even after preconditions had been made available to achieve a more profitable farming by replacing the permanent by casual labourers, a substantial, permanent labour force was still employed on the farms. In the late 1930s and 1940s, kinship-wise mobilisation among the Madhari labourers to convert to Christian ity was met by strong and sometimes violent resistance. Every movement they made to break with Goundar authority was seen as a threat. Thus, during the decade, social rationality was given priority over economic rationality by the farmers. A severe six-year-long drought put an end to this situation.
Gunnel Cederlöf is Professor of History at the Linnaeus University, Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Sweden. Her research spans modern Indian and British imperial history, and environmental and legal history. She was Professor of History, Uppsala University, and has taught at KTH Royal lnstitute of Technology, Sweden.
Among her publications are Founding an Empire an lndia's North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity (2014), Landsapes and the Law: Environmental Politics, Regional Histories, and Contests Over Nature (2008 and 2019), At Nature's Edge: The Global Present and Long-Term History (2018 with M. Rangarajan), Subjects, Citizens and Law: Colonial and independent lndia (2017 with S. Oas Gupta), and Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and ldentities in South Asia (2006, 2012 with K. Sivaramakrishnan).

Manohar Publishers. First published 1997

Le prêt à intérêt était pratiqué par tous les peuples de l’Antiquité préchrétienne, à l’exception du peuple d'Israël. L'auteur examine d'abord l'interdiction du prêt à intérêt dans l'Ancien Testament. Il expose ensuite la pratique du prêt à intérêt en Grèce, avant de détailler les critiques d'Aristote. Enfin, l’auteur retrace l’évolution du prêt (mutuum) et de la réglementation de l’intérêt à Rome, des origines à Constantin. Il met l’accent sur trois grandes controverses parmi les romanistes modernes (XVIe-XXIe s.) : sur le nexum, sur la centesima et, surtout, sur le mystérieux fenus unciarium, le taux d’intérêt fixé par les Douze Tables : l'éventail des interprétations va de 1 à 100 % par an ! L’auteur recense les opinions de plus de 400 juristes et historiens, discute les plus importantes et propose sa conclusion.

The loan at interest was used by all the peoples of pre-Christian Antiquity, excepting the people of Israel. The author first focuses on the prohibition of lending at interest in the Old Testament. He then explores the use of loans at interest in Greece before examining Aristotle’s criticism. Eventually, the author follows the evolution of loan (mutuum) and interest regulation in Rome, from the origins to Constantine. Three great controversies among modern Roman law scholars (16th-21th centuries) are considered: nexum, centesima and above all, the mysterious fenus unciarium, the interest rate defined par the Twelve Tables, for which the range of interpretations varies between 1 and 100% per year! The author gives an inventory of more than 400 opinions expressed by jurists and historians, discusses the most important ones and suggests a solution.

Behind India's gleaming economic growth and construction boom sits an exploitative industry of brick kilns. With an annual production of 250 billion bricks are 23 million brick kiln bonded laborers, working and living like slaves. Bonded into the exploitative debt cycle and piece-rate system, these slaves are oppressed by their creditors/owners of the brick kilns. This paper throws light on the brick kiln industry of India and its exploitative nature of trafficking to explains why the lower caste communities like the Dalits and tribes have been vulnerable to this bondage. The paper also examines the exploitative wage system through which the laborers are bonded and oppressed. The objective is to analyze how the banking system is used by the oppressors/ creditors/owners to oppress the vulnerable/bonded laborers/ debtors into bondage through trafficking and enticing them into working for the brick kilns.

El Programa de Estudios sobre las Formas de Sociedad y la Configuraciones Estatales de la Antigüedad (Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires) anuncia la realización del V Coloquio Internacional PEFSCEA: “¿Capital antes del capitalismo? Riqueza, desigualdad y Estado en el mundo antiguo”, a realizarse los días 6 (de 9 a 19hs.) y 7 (de 9 a 13hs.) de agosto de 2015, en el Museo Roca (Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas) situado en Vicente López 2220, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.
La reunión abordará las cuestiones de la desigualdad, el endeudamiento y la riqueza en el Mundo Antiguo (incluyendo el problema del “capital” entendido como riqueza obtenida para su propia reproducción) desde perspectivas sociales, económicas y políticas. Los trabajos recientes de David Graeber (Debt. The First Five Thousand Years, 2011) y Thomas Piketty (Le capital au XXIe siècle, 2013) han planteando una serie de preguntas sobre la relación entre capital, estados y élites socioeconómicas desde el IV a.C. milenio hasta el presente. A partir de la discusión de los temas de estos libros (tales como el capital patrimonial, la desigualdad social y económica, el endeudamiento, la economía moral, la herencia y las políticas del estado), las ponencias discutirán posibles marcos teóricos para analizar la desigualdad y el papel de la riqueza (y/o del capital) en las formaciones sociales premodernas. Cada texto se centrará en un período particular de la Historia Antigua, pero todos abordarán alguno de los conceptos teóricos relacionados con la riqueza, la desigualdad, el estado y la sociedad para generar un debate fructífero con estudiosos de otros campos. También se anima a los participantes a plantear críticas a estos libros, como las que ya han recibido (como, por ejemplo, las de R. Blackburn, “Finance for Anarchists”, New Left Review 79 [Jan.-Feb. 2013]; B. Kunkel, “Paupers and Richlings”, London Review of Books v. 36, nº 13 [Jul. 2014]; J.K. Galbraith, “Kapital for the Twenty-First Century?”, Dissent [Spring 2014]).

The meeting will address the issues of inequality, indebtedness and wealth (including the problem of “capital” understood as wealth obtained for its own reproduction) in the Ancient World from social, economic, and political perspectives. Recent works by David Graeber (Debt. The First Five Thousand Years, 2011) and Thomas Piketty (Le capital au XXIe siècle, 2013 [Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, 2014]) have raised a series of questions on the relationship between capital, states, and socio-economic elites from the fourth millennium B.C.E. to the present. Starting from a discussion of these books’ topics (such as patrimonial capital, social and economic inequality, indebtedness, moral economy, inheritance, and state policy), the papers will discuss possible theoretical frameworks to analyze inequality and the role of wealth (and/or of capital) in pre-modern social formations. Each paper will focus on one particular period of Ancient History, but they will all address some of the theoretical concepts relating wealth, inequality, state, and society to engage in a fruitful discussion with scholarship of other fields. Presenters are also encouraged to address criticisms that these books have received (for instance, R. Blackburn’s “Finance for Anarchists”, New Left Review 79 [2013]; B. Kunkel’s “Paupers and Richlings”, London Review of Books 36:13 [2014]; J.K. Galbraith’s, “Kapital for the Twenty-First Century?”, Dissent [Spring 2014]).
Participants:
Clifford Ando (University of Chicago); Jairus Banaji (University of London); Marcelo Campagno (Universidad de Buenos Aires-CONICET); Damián Fernández (Northern Illinois University); Julián Gallego (universidad de Buenos Aires-CONICET); Carlos García Mac Gaw (Universidad de Buenos Aires-Universidad Nacional de La Plata); Ariel López (Rhodes College, Memphis); Emily Mackil (University of California, Berkeley); Richard Payne (University of Chicago); Peter Sarris (University of Cambridge); Domingo Plácido Suárez (Universidad Complutense, Madrid - Catedrático Emérito de Historia Antigua); John Weisweiler (Universität Tübingen)

Info: www.pefscea.co.nr