Self-sufficiency of the house is practiced in many parts of the world but ignored in economic theory, just as socialist collectivization is assumed to have brought household self-sufficiency to an end. The ideals of self-sufficiency, however, continue to shape economic activity in a wide range of postsocialist settings. This volume’s six comparative studies of postsocialist villages in Eastern Europe and Asia illuminate the enduring importance of the house economy, which is based not on the market but on the order of the house. These formations show that economies depend not only on the macro institutions of markets and states but also on the micro institutions of families, communities, and house economies, often in an uneasy relationship.

The Market and the Oikos analyses from a global perspective the relationships between markets and households, families and states (Vol. I) to towns versus country sides, the focus of this second volume, proceeding from early history to contemporary China.

The many elements of the fundamental antagonism of Market versus Oikos (= family, household or State) are analyzed and defined in Western and Chinese historical and present contexts. In this exercise, Max Weber is chosen as our “sparring partner” because of his Chinese and Western writings.

According to accepted wisdom, rational practices and ritual action are opposed. Rituals drain wealth from capital investment and draw on a mode of thought different from practical ideas. The studies in this volume contest this view. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the six ethnographies extend from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan. Each one illuminates the economic and ritual changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society. Cutting against the idea that economy only means markets and that market action exhausts the meaning of economy, the studies show that much of what is critical for a people’s economic life takes place outside markets and hinges on ritual, understood as the negation of the everyday world of economising.

God does not appear in the modern market. For most economists this is as it should be. It is in no way necessary, according to modern economic theory, to consider God when thinking about economy. Indeed, the absence of God in economic matters is viewed as necessary to the great advances in modern economy. The difficulty with modern market economies, however, is that human livelihood is also left out of the theory and practice of the market economy. ?"I propose to bring the church's teaching about God, the doctrine of the Trinity, to bear on the masked connections between God and economy. I will treat the Trinity as the way of understanding what the Bible calls the 'economy of God.'?

Author J. Russell Smith (1874-1966) travelled widely and shares his insights and research into agro-forestry, describing how trees such as carob, honey locust, persimmon, mulberry, oaks and pecans can be used to enrich the land and the people and animals dependent on it.

In From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China, Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard and Koen Rutten examine China’s indigenous economic discourse and its relation to both economic policy-making and the overall trajectory of development from the First Five Year Plan in 1953 to 2016. In so doing, this volume demonstrates that although the form of the current economic system and its theoretical underpinnings bear scant resemblance to those of the planned economy, economic policy-making still relies on the principle of accelerated accumulation, which lay at the heart of the economic development project in the early years of the People’s Republic.