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Economic Idylls and Pastoral Realities: The “Trickster Economy” in the Kingdom of Naples
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
Traditional European values of noncapitalist wealth preferred “rent to profit, security to risk, tradition to innovation, and, in terms of personal goals, gentility to entrepreneurial skill and renown.” Both in the dynamic, expansive sector of the international economy and in marginal, “retrograde” economies, nonpecuniary values based upon kin, custom, religion, law, and politics openly contradicted the utilitarian assumptions of our contemporary economic theory, spurned reinvestment, and worked against development. How can we balance such premodern conceptions with economic forces that may have been imperfectly understood or not even perceived and, at the same time, give both early modern rationale and economic rationality a place in our descriptions of the old order in Europe? In other words, how can we account for the role of culture in economic decision making?
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- Social Conflict in Popular Culture
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1982
References
Earlier versions of this paper were delivered to faculty seminars at Florida International University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an All-University of California Economic History Conference at Davis. My thanks to the many colleagues who have helped me to refine this argument.
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(Daphnis) Il mondo invecchia
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(Thyrsis) Forse allora,
non usavan sí spesso i cittadini
ne le selve e ne i campi, né sí spesso
le nostre forosette aveano in uso
d'andare a la cittade. Or son mischiate
schiatte e costumi.
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Ed io per quel che veggio ancor comprendolo,
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In comprar senno, e pur ancor non vendolo.
O quanti intorno a queste selve noveri
Pastori, in vista buon, che tutti furano
Rastri, zappe, sampogne, aratri, e vomeri.
D'oltraggio, e di vergogna aggi non curano
Questi compagni dal rapace Gracculo, ecc.
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