Debt the first 5,000 years
"Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of...
| Main Author: | Graeber, David. |
|---|---|
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Brooklyn :
Melville House,
[2014]
|
| Edition: | Updated and expanded edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
"Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like guilt, sin, and redemption) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it"--Publisher's description. |
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| Physical Description: |
542 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 463-500) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9781612194196 (paperback) 1612194192 (paperback) |
| Author Notes: |
He earned his BA in anthropology from State University of New York at Purchase in 1984. He earned his masters and doctorate from the University of Chicago. He did ethnographic research in central Madagascar which he used for his PhD thesis (1997). He was a prolific author. His books included Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement (2013), The Utopia of Rules (2015), Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018), and in fall 2021, Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, written with David Wengrow. David Graeber died on September 2, 2020 at the age of 59. (Bowker Author Biography) |