Oikos

This collection of papers explores whether the Lévi-Straussian notion of the House is a valid concept in aiding the comprehension of the social structure of Bronze Age Aegean societies. The volume succeeds in stressing the advances made in the study of social structure of the Aegean on the basis of material remains.

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.

The Oikos Project and the two plays Oikos and Protozoa are an attempt to take responsibility for creating a different future in relation to the coming threat of climate change. Can we createa future based less on material gain and more on being in sympathy with our only planet? OIKOS Salil, a highly-successful businessman, has it all worked out: career, family, river-view des-res in Chiswick and a beautiful mistress. So why is he increasingly haunted by ghosts from the Old Country? When the Thames bursts its banks and his family scramble to keep their heads above water, the very foundations of his perfect life are threatened and Salil is forced to look to both his future and his past for redemption. PROTOZOA When the United Kingdom disappears in The Floods, Cordelia is determined to rebuild her grand house at any cost. When Sheann emerges half dead from the black waters, she will do anything to find her lost child. In this strange, formless new world, Inspector John Hall, born again out of the mud and slurry, will stop at nothing to ensure the survival of his citizens. If civilisation was to disappear tomorrow, how would we rebuild it? As Cordelia, Sheann and Hall’s lives collide in a volatile, repressive and increasingly familiar world, who are the women on the other side of the shrinking, fetid river who watch and wait?

How you spend your time and money controls what happens on this planet . . . Planet Earth and its people are in danger. We face ongoing economic and ecological crises. These will deepen unless all of God's people begin to act as one global community. Natural resources are diminishing and the economic world order is changing. We cannot go on living as though we can call up another planet. Change is needed now and this book addresses that. The biblical vision of the world as oikos, meaning household, is God's challenge to all people about the way we live now--and in the future. Oikos affirms the need for reconciliation and peace between faiths and nations and should determine our economic practices and how we care for the planet. In this timely and challenging book is a renewed call to follow the Maker's instructions. Whether it is 9/11, Chernobyl, or the 2008 financial crash, that call for change is repeating itself. This book not only explains why we need to change but also provides practical advocacy of how you can help to achieve it.

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.

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.