The Significance of Debt to Household and Political Economies of Postclassic and Contact Period Maya Societies
Author(s): Marilyn Masson
Year: 2018
Summary
Debt was important to late Maya societies in religious and political terms. This paper explores the many facets of debt that tied together household and regional economies, including bottom-up mechanisms employed by families and communities, as well as top-down institutions that garnered support for religious and political bureaucracies. Graeber’s distinction between moral and impersonal economies outlines a comparative continuum with profound implications for issues of human rights in the past. Where did Postclassic and Contact Period societies fit on this continuum, and does this approach help to revise the mercantile model of greater prosperity that tends to characterize this era?
Cite this Record
The Significance of Debt to Household and Political Economies of Postclassic and Contact Period Maya Societies. Marilyn Masson. Presented at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. 2018 ( tDAR id: 443638)
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Keywords
Spatial Coverage
min long: -94.197; min lat: 16.004 ; max long: -86.682; max lat: 21.984 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 19990