New book co-edited by Daniel Sosna.

The book ‘Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy’, co-edited by Catherine Alexander a Daniel Sosna, was published this week at Berghahn Books. It is the latest volume in the Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy series edited by Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann, who also wrote Afterword. Introduction is available here

Thrift is a central concern for most people, especially in turbulent economic times. It is both an economic and an ethical logic of frugal living, saving and avoiding waste for long-term kin care. These logics echo the ancient ideal of household self-sufficiency, contrasting with capitalism’s wasteful present-focused growth. But thrift now exceeds domestic matters straying across scales to justify public expenditure cuts. Through a wide range of ethnographic contexts this book explores how practices and moralities of thrift are intertwined with austerity, debt, welfare, and patronage across various social and temporal scales and are constantly re-negotiated at the nexus of socio-economic, religious, and kinship ideals and praxis.