TY - BOOK ID - 639914 TI - Debt : the first 5,000 years PY - 2014 SN - 9781612194196 PB - Brooklyn, N.Y. Melville House DB - UniCat KW - International finance KW - VIOLENCE -- 332.4 KW - CLASS SOCIETY -- 332.4 KW - Debt KW - -Money KW - -Financial crises KW - -Crashes, Financial KW - Crises, Financial KW - Financial crashes KW - Financial panics KW - Panics (Finance) KW - Stock exchange crashes KW - Stock market panics KW - Crises KW - Business cycles KW - Currency KW - Monetary question KW - Money, Primitive KW - Specie KW - Standard of value KW - Exchange KW - Finance KW - Value KW - Banks and banking KW - Coinage KW - Currency question KW - Gold KW - Silver KW - Silver question KW - Wealth KW - Indebtedness KW - History KW - -History KW - -Currency KW - Crashes, Financial KW - History. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:639914 AB - Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. ER -