ABSTRACT
A community economy always has a place in space. Its boundaries may be permeable with respect to membership; and a community may be composed of smaller communities, based on households, extended kin groups, local lineages, religious organizations and aggregations around *Big Men. The community economy also may be contained within a larger structure such as a chiefdom, *feudal system or market. Community participation defines as well a local *identity so that being forced to live by a different mode of sustenance, such as fishing on the agricultural island of Dobu in *Melanesia, means leaving aside this identity. Similarly, persons who live in the same space as a community but not by its mode of livelihood, such as Hausa traders in parts of lineage-based Africa, the metics in ancient Greece, or non-Israelites in ancient Israel, are not part of the group. In contrast, the market has no locality. Because the accumulation of gains has no limits and trade respects no social boundaries, market relationships overrun and often break the borders of communities. Participation in the market defines a different sort of identity; since actors strive to accumulate property, their success is often displayed through spectacular consumption and the exercise of power by financial control.
