
































Humans and their Households: Ideals of Self-Sufficiency in Changing 

Economies 

Review by Adam S. Green

Oikos and Market: Explorations in Self-Sufficiency After Socialism 

by Stephen Gudeman & Chris Hann (eds) 

Berghahn Books, 2015

How are anthropologists to understand households when markets and states are so deeply entwined

within the human economy? Oikos and Market addresses this question with case studies drawn from

long-term ethnography from six postsocialist field sites. It is the second volume in the Max Planck

Studies in Anthropology and Economy series. The book’s organizing theme is the blurring boundaries

between households, ever-present and irreducible units of economic life (p. 13), and markets that can

span international borders. Keeping households at the center of their analyses allows the authors to

frame local transformations in terms of self-sufficiency, a varying ideal that appears in contrasting

forms throughout the case studies. Differing values, norms, and languages shape self-sufficiency, which

in  turn  supports  household  activities.  Expanding  the  concept  of  self-sufficiency  sharpens  our

understanding of human economy, as households nurture reciprocity and mutuality in their efforts to

seize  upon  or  insulate  themselves  from  markets.  These  studies  make  a  timely  contribution  to

postsocialist studies, wherein anthropologists grapple with the transformative effects of collectivization

and subsequent privatization of productive resources. They also offer enduring insights into the way

people sharpen or blur boundaries between household and market, especially with regard to particular

lives. These understandings resonate throughout anthropology.

Oikos and Economy contributes  to  a  growing discourse  on human economy,  the  holistic  nexus of

concerns that shape material transactions among humans (see overviews in Hart, Laville, Cattani 2010;



Hann and Hart 2011). In their introductory chapter, Gudeman and Hann develop a conception of the

human economy that incorporates households. House economies provide anthropologists with a basic

economic  unit.  They build  on  the  foundational  boundary  between house  and market  described by

Aristotle, laying the groundwork for examining a key paradox in economic anthropology: Aristotle’s

oikonomia serves as the foundation of many modern understandings of economy, but oikonomia stands

apart from the money-getting activities that underlay markets. In fact, Aristotle found the pursuit of

money for its own sake abhorrent.  Oikonomia refers instead to the proper management of a “self-

sufficient”  household  (p.  3).  Household  and  community  self-sufficiency  are  Aristotelean  ideals,

curiously  contrasting  with  market  aims.  These  ideas  underlay  anthropological  approaches  to

economies. 

The household supports our efforts to take care of ourselves by providing for the health, happiness, and

well-being of those with whom we share “practical material realities” (p. 2). Incorporating the work of

Chayanov, Polanyi, and many other contributors to the study of human economies, Gudeman and Hann

offer a synthetic discussion of the processes that characterize house economies. They write that the

house  is  “an  incomplete  irreducible  unit  of  economy”  that  monitors,  receives  and  contributes  to

foundational material flows, fosters mutuality and jointness, engages in activities that trend toward self-

sufficiency rather than profit, and provides sites for innovation, entrepreneurship and thrift (pp. 13–14).

Mutuality, joint endeavor that fosters a closeness we often associate with kinship and orients us toward

commonality  or  connection  with  others,  creates  a  meaningful  separation  between  the  kinds  of

transactions in which households engage and those of other kinds of economic entities, such as late

capitalist corporations. This framework integrates the studies in the book and provides comparative

definitions that serve future work in ethnography and archaeology.

Self-sufficiency separates the activities of households from those of other kinds of economic entities,

such as corporations or collective farms, that operate at larger scales. The concept underscores the

activities of all of the households in the study. It is most often an ideal rather than a reality. In Vidac’s

study on the Hungarian village of Szentpéterszeg (Chapter 1), Cash’s investigation of rural Moldove

(Chapter 2), and Light’s discussion of the Kyrgyz village of Beshbulak (Chapter 4), self-sufficiency

prompts  households’  efforts  to  sustain  themselves  despite  growing  participation  in  markets.  In

Szentpéterszeg, self-sufficiency is an idealized remnant from the presocialist past, something that was

never a reality but provided an integrative logic for the people of the village. Vidac demonstrates that

the collectivization of agriculture undermined processes of reciprocity that were served by the self-



sufficiency  ideal.  The  subsequent  privatization  of  land  prompted  Szentpéterszeg’s  households  to

participate in markets that brought migrants whose efforts were necessary to support the local economy,

despite a persisting ideal of self-sufficiency. 

Light  adopts  a  harsher  line  of  argument,  writing  that  the  material  transactions  that  make  up  the

economic lives of the villagers at Beshbulak are too thick with ritual meaning to reduce to market or

commodity processes. These transactions, which supported social ritual, were damaged in centralized

economic conditions. Social integration suffered at Beshbulak just as it did with the collectivization of

farmland at Szentpéterszeg. Rural Moldove has also suffered in the postsocialist era. Cash demonstrates

that  few  households  are  able  to  produce  what  they  consume.  Instead,  they  conceptualize  self-

sufficiency in terms of being cu lume, regardless of the resources a household actually possesses. Cu

lume manifests  in  households’ abilities  to  give  to  others,  rather  than  their  ability  to  provision

themselves. Even if a household has enough money to provision itself through the market, the inability

to produce for giving within the house denotes a lack of self-sufficiency. Cash demonstrates that self-

sufficiency  is  an  ideal  in  motion.  It  can  be  integrative  even  if  the  transactions  it  enables  are

superficially atomizing. These studies show that household efforts to foster self-sufficiency are locally

constituted. 

Food  offers  particular  insights  into  house  economies  and  self-sufficiency.  Foods  can  integrate

households and distinguish the kinds of goods they can produce from those obtainable through market

transactions. Many of the authors write that the ability to produce and distribute food is an important

component of the self-sufficiency ideal. In fact, producing certain foods comes to be emblematic of

household  activities.  In  Tocheva’s  chapter  (5)  homemade  food that  is  clean  and free  of  additives

provides a draw for tourists to the Rodope Mountains in Bulgaria. Food is a key element of household’s

efforts to achieve self-sufficiency through “work in a closed circle” (p. 138). By making a full range of

finished goods and employing all of their members, households close the circle, engendering intra-

household entrepreneurship and increasing their own material resilience. Closing the circle helps us

understand how households bring about a different ideal of self-sufficiency. While strengthening the

household, closing the circle can damage status in the village and sharpen hierarchical roles. Also using

food  to  frame  a  discussion  of  self-sufficiency,  Monova’s  study  of  ajvar cooking  in  postsocialist

Macedonia (Chapter 4) highlights key interconnections between states, markets, and households. 

Ajvar is  a  preserved  pepper  dish  that  forms  the  basis  of  household  integration.  Joint  preparation



activities  link  communities  through  household  provisioning.  While  village  self-sufficiency  was

undermined by socialist land tenure regimes, ajvar survived these transformations because of its role in

social integration. Postsocialist states’ efforts to tamp down village level ajvar production only served

to strengthen its role as a distinctive status and cultural marker (p. 91). Householding thereby serves as

a form of state resistance as well as a mechanism for delineating social boundaries. Here we move quite

far from an Aristotelean ideal of self-sufficiency, finding instead an animated social process whereby a

household dish serves to distinguish, integrate, and resist irrespective of the fact that its ingredients are

provisioned by the market.

The  volume  ends  with  Vasile’s  study  of  Transylvanian  forest  dwellers  (Chapter  6),  who  balance

autonomy and sociality  in  an  example of  economic  prosperity.  Just  as  ajvar  persisted through the

socialist era, Vasile argues that Romanians retained a commitment to self-direction that shielded them

from the everyday uncertainty resulting from the state’s attempts to wean the country off foreign debt.

A surviving “love of work” (p. 178) was complemented by social sanctions against saving too much

money,  bringing self  direction  and the  circulation of  wealth together  in  a  way that  inculcated  the

Romanian drive to “keep going” and “be one’s own master.” Householding processes again surround

the production of a particular good, lumber, though unlike ajvar, lumber’s value lies in its marketability

as a commodity. To participate in lumber production, households maintain control of technology. Self-

direction survived the food acquisition period, and entrepreneurial  seizure of the means of logging

freed people from the preceding social configurations. An ethos of circulation and technological control

foster the economic growth in the region today.

Oikos and Economy reveals many trends in the way large scale political and economic transformations

impact efforts to sustain everyday life. The synthetic household concept, presented in the introduction

(pp.  13-14)  with  its  distinct  characteristics,  provides  a  lens  for  investigating  the  human economy.

Though all of the households in this study engaged in activities we also associate with other kinds of

economic entities, such as entrepreneurship and seizure of land and other productive resources, all

moderate their activities in an effort to sustain themselves. While they tend to favor self-sufficiency

over profit-seeking, self-sufficiency is not a uniform ideal. To the informants who made these studies

possible, self-sufficiency can be about giving all household members meaningful work, engaging in

feasts and social rituals, providing assistance to other households, distinguishing themselves from other

households,  or  drawing  in  tourists  to  sustain  the  local  community.  These  insights  transcend  the

particular theoretical and topical problems with which the authors engage, carrying with them lessons



about the general nature of material transactions among humans. Though an archaeologist and outsider

to postsocialist studies, I look forward to employing the authors’ findings in my own research to foster

a comparative and holistic understanding of economic life.

References Cited

Hann, Chris, and Keith Hart

2011. Economic Anthropology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hart, Keith, Jean-Louis Laville, and Antonio David Cattani

2010. The Human Economy. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Adam S. Green is an archaeological anthropologist who specializes in the comparative study of early

states through the lenses of technology and political economy. He is interested in the roles of visual,

information, and administrative technologies in economic transactions and conceptions of property.

His focus is South Asia, and he has worked extensively in India. He has also engaged in fieldwork in

Turkey and the United States. He earned his PhD in Anthropology from New York University in 2015,

and is currently teaching in the Department of Anthropology at Georgia State University.

© 2015 Adam S. Green 


