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New perspectives on surplus production and inequality: surplus as relation, 

strategy and agency  

Review by Martin Loeng 

 

Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life  

by Christopher T. Morehart & Kristin De Lucia ed. 

University Press of Colorado, 2015 

 

Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life provides numerous 

contextualised accounts of different social forms of production, storage and allocation of surplus across 

the world. It provides a provocative and varied contribution to archaeology, anthropology and the social 

sciences (especially economics, economic analyses, Marxism, and economic anthropology) more 

generally. For those interested in engaging with surplus and economic strategies, as well as inequality 

and hierarchy’s connections to economic processes, this should be an extremely valuable volume.  

 

The central commitment of this volume is to complicate social evolutionary understandings of surplus. 

The introduction both sets the tone for the rest of the volume and engages with many theoretical 

presuppositions about the role of surplus (Marxian, dialectic, classic economic), mirroring the concern 

for empirical contextualisation of substantivists like Karl Polanyi and George Dalton. Several chapters 

focus on surplus production and distribution as social strategies that must be contextualised historically, 

socially and culturally. For example, Wells provides a provocative analysis of how modes of religiosity 

may have affected surplus production in sixteenth-century Mesoamerica. These chapters thus open the 

notion of surplus to multiple, contextualised and processual understandings.  

 

T. L. Thurston (chapter 5) describes how surplus production among farmers in Småland, Sweden from 

years 1000 to 1600 was a part of multiple, changing strategies to preserve autonomy and ward off 



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attempts by the Vasa kingdom to establish political sovereignty. Flexibility in production strategies and 

usage of surplus contributed to the relative autonomy of the Småland area and thus provide an 

interesting account of how surplus can be employed in particular political, historical, social and 

economic contexts. Such strategies were not only a means of building inequality and hierarchy, but also 

a way to retain other social forms. In a similar way to other chapters in the book, this research opens up 

the question of what role surplus plays in the development of societies. It shifts the question from what 

role surplus plays as an analytical object, in Grand Theories of Society for instance, to one about how 

social forms of surplus are employed historically. In this way the volume explores a more action-

oriented approach which could inform critical research on a wide variety of subjects. Perhaps the more 

exciting possibility in this perspective against social evolutionism is how ‘inequality’ and ‘hierarchy’ 

stop sounding inevitable. 

 

There is a wealth of locations, historical periods, objects of interest, political systems and contexts 

discussed in the book, so much so, that it is impossible to summarise them all. The chapters employ 

diverse methodological strategies: some are ethnohistorical, others archaeological, some based in 

written records, others on oral accounts. Yet all share a common focus on action and everyday life, 

social and contextual dimensions of surplus, and a critical and empirical inspection of the 

transformative dimensions of surplus – thus confronting the substantivist critique on many arenas. The 

concluding chapter by Earle does a lot to contextualise the variety of studies in this volume, dividing 

them into the broader analytical categories “bottom-up” and “top-down” forms of surplus production. 

Surplus thus moves away from transformation as such, and explores how different forms of surplus 

(social, material) play a part in continuous processes of materialising social structures (p. 315). In other 

words, actions and everyday strategies centring on surplus are here understood as relational forms of 

agency that reproduce and change such social structures. To quote Miller (chapter 4), “…simply 

accumulating surplus goods or owed labor is insufficient to create hierarchical social relationships,” (p. 

99). Rather, surplus must be spent and it is in research on this relation between production and 

spending that this edited volume provides many provocative suggestions.  

 

On a more theoretical level, Surplus confronts the debate on relative or absolute surplus. The 

conclusion seems to argue for an in-between solution, being for a substantivist appreciation of social 

and historical context in defining what surplus is (housing, land, people, labour, crafted objects, food), 

while also retaining some form of analytical ‘surface’ above which surplus is placed theoretically (see 



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p. 18-24). While this compromise begs further theorising on how different scholars define surplus, this 

open definition allows this edited volume to illustrate differently functioning systems. For example, 

Bolender (Chapter 6) traces the appearance of rent obligations, tenancy relations between bigger and 

smaller farms in Viking age Iceland that relied on surplus from land, rather than the previous surplus of 

land. He explores in detail how the emerging top-down system of surplus extraction, enshrined in 

property rights, altered the everyday contexts of action and political action through the concentration of 

land ownership. On the other side, De Lucia and Morehart (chapter 3) explore the changing economic 

strategies for pooling surpluses and diversifying livelihoods at the household level against possible 

economic failure in the context of pre-Aztec central Mexico. Their focus is on the mixture of top-down 

demands from an imperial Aztec state, and bottom-up changes in decisions on forms of production on 

the household level. The open definition of what surplus is allows this book to present us with 

provocative comparisons, and hopefully further theoretical engagement. 

 

The greatest value that Surplus provides is that it expands your imagination when it comes to economic 

strategies ‘beyond subsistence.’ For many, this volume will open up a new space of analytical foci in 

research related to economy. As Norman (chapter 8) shows in his example on Palace Politics in the 

Bight of West Benin, the social connections (wealth in people) and control of external trade through 

which elite statuses were achieved, manifested in palatial houses, also demanded feasts and social 

occasions of ritualised generosity. This kind of festive allocation of surplus goods acquired by elites 

from external trade relations could actually both have been the source of elite authority, as well as its 

downfall. Surplus can cause changes in multiple directions (p. 215-216). Thompson and Moore 

(chapter 10) explore how predictable and anticipated surplus (such as seasonal harvests) grant hunter-

gatherers in Coastal Georgia different contexts for action and inform the making of longer-term social 

relationships. Thus, the agency and sociality of surplus is also contingent on its rhythms. 

 

This edited volume is a thoroughly researched, broadly appealing exploration into many aspects of 

surplus. It provides theoretical as well as methodological chapters. It will appeal to archaeologists as 

much as economists, anthropologists and other social scientists. For anyone with an interesting in 

economy, politics or society at all, this is a valuable contribution. For the activist it might even be 

considered an exercise in developing an appreciation of how complex societal histories can be. The 

intended audience is perhaps academic due to the methodological parts and complex language. But, 

after the introductory and concluding chapter, most readers should be well prepared to understand most 



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chapters and their impact. I therefore recommend this volume to everyone with an interest in the above 

subjects, and encourage the exploration of the different chapters, regions, methods and theoretical 

concepts. 

 

Martin Loeng is a Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology at the Norwegian University 

of Science and Technology, Norway. He is currently undertaking research, through an interactional and 

affective approach, on urban informal livelihood strategies in Tanzania and their connection to relation-

building and morality in the tourism industry. 

 

 

© 2017 Martin Loeng 


