Source: Merchants of eatables Bona Algeria By Snapshots Of The Past (Wikimedia Commons)
How did people exchange items of value? In one form or the other, this question has cropped up in the scholarship of historians, anthropologists and philosophers - legal or social. Discussions on this topic contribute to grappling with comprehension of social and economic change in the pre-modern or modern world.
In broad brush terms, institutional economic historians tend to look at those institutions which promoted exchange and led to efficiencies in the development of trade. Increasingly, this form of scholarship has been influenced by the concepts of economic growth and transformation. To this end, other notions like 'trust', enforcement, principal-agent, information asymmetry, transaction costs, game theory and price volatility provide the key corpus of vocabulary framing scholarly debates in the discipline.
Legal and social philosophers frame their debates with an examination of the properties making up the contract, rights, agency and the promise. Legal philosophers in particular ascribe importance to the questions of obligation, norms like equity, or agreement and consideration rules, as well as forms of consent that were perhaps ingredients in a promise. They also analyse the extent to which, and conditions under which such ingredients might have been binding.
Anthropologists have an important part to play in this overall dialogue, proffering a combination of empirical data and theories on the social interplay impacting on exchange, and obligation to give, receive, and return. This kind of engagement with the rituals, ceremonies and collectivities has largely been lost in economic history and legal philosophy, and yet this social interplay holds the key to important qualifications and distinctions in the normative or cultural values influencing exchange. How do we discuss concepts like 'rights' or 'trust', or the evolution of legal and economic systems for instance, without reference to important features of societies dominating transactions. Can rules of legal and economic cooperation be understood without reference to social systems?
In broad brush terms, institutional economic historians tend to look at those institutions which promoted exchange and led to efficiencies in the development of trade. Increasingly, this form of scholarship has been influenced by the concepts of economic growth and transformation. To this end, other notions like 'trust', enforcement, principal-agent, information asymmetry, transaction costs, game theory and price volatility provide the key corpus of vocabulary framing scholarly debates in the discipline.
Legal and social philosophers frame their debates with an examination of the properties making up the contract, rights, agency and the promise. Legal philosophers in particular ascribe importance to the questions of obligation, norms like equity, or agreement and consideration rules, as well as forms of consent that were perhaps ingredients in a promise. They also analyse the extent to which, and conditions under which such ingredients might have been binding.
Anthropologists have an important part to play in this overall dialogue, proffering a combination of empirical data and theories on the social interplay impacting on exchange, and obligation to give, receive, and return. This kind of engagement with the rituals, ceremonies and collectivities has largely been lost in economic history and legal philosophy, and yet this social interplay holds the key to important qualifications and distinctions in the normative or cultural values influencing exchange. How do we discuss concepts like 'rights' or 'trust', or the evolution of legal and economic systems for instance, without reference to important features of societies dominating transactions. Can rules of legal and economic cooperation be understood without reference to social systems?
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