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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.

Chris Hann is a Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology at Halle. He formerly taught anthropology at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent. Hann is co-author of Economic Anthropology. History, Ethnography, Critique (2011) and co-editor of Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today (2009), both with Keith Hart.

Stephen Gudeman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and was formerly co-director of the Economy and Ritual project at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. His most recent publications are Economic Persuasions (2009) and Economy and Ritual: Studies in Postsocialist Transformations (co-edited with Chris Hann, 2015).