Introduction

Part Π of this volume takes up the possible solutions to the traders’ dilemma. The first solution a trader can choose differs decisively from the second. With one possible choice - to step outside the moral norms of society by taking up the position of an ethnic foreigner or religious outsider - a trader actively decides to follow a strategy to escape restricted personal appropriation within the moral economy. The other alternative discussed, however, can be called neither escape nor active choice. It is an adaptation of the trader to the narrow margins within the moral economy (economists might call it the zero-alternative). A trader, within bounds of the moral economy, cannot fall back upon legal institutions to guarantee his claims upon debtors. To reduce the risk of business, his first and usually only choice it to split the business volume into smaller and therefore less risky transactions; that is, to engage in petty commodity trade.