===================== HES POSTING ==================== I tend to be on Perelman's side of this debate. Market is one thing, market society is another, quite different one. In the market society,the economic realm got its autonomy from the political realm, as Louis Dumont tells us in his book _From Mandeville to Marx_. No doubt there were markets before, in Babylonia or elsewhere, but I tend to look at the Market Society as a modern age phenomenum. Perhaps this happens because I was formely trained as a sociologist, before deciding to study economics. This means that I tend to see discontinuities and taxonomies where economists see continous lines. The pervasiveness of market forces in our society, which grew in the last decades as Perelman mentioned, has no equivalence in ancient times. However, I would not infer from this observation that one should not study market transactions in ancient societies, quite the opposite: this seems to be a fascinating topic for a research. Ana Maria Bianchi Universidade de Sao Paulo Departamento de Economia [log in to unmask] ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]