“The Ancient Economy is an Academic Battleground”: social history of a scholarly controversy

Abstract

This article re-examines a debate that classical scholars took for especially meaningful in their field during the second half of the twentieth century: the discussion over the nature of the ancient (Greek and Roman) economy and the proper way to approach it. The debate is/was structured around opposite pairs: “primitivist” vs. “modernist” was the main opposition from which related forms of antagonism unfolded. Those who took part in the debate often referred to it as a conceptual trap and as an obstacle to progress in the field of ancient economic history. Considering recent literature on scientific and philosophical controversies, I propose to analyse how the debate institutes its own social logic and establishes the conditions of its reproduction. I will argue that: 1) the fixation of a founding dichotomy works as a catalysing factor of the “oikos controversy”; 2) every proclaimed attempt to overcome dichotomy is doomed to a ritual assimilation to one of the original parts in dispute. My primary sources are to be found in scholarly work on the ancient economy and letters exchanged between the debaters.