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Honor Among Thieves examines associations of craftsmen in the framework of ancient economics and transaction costs. Scholars have long viewed such associations primarily as social or religious groups that provided mutual support, proper burial, and sociability, and spaces where nonelite individuals could seek status supposedly denied them in their contemporary society. However, the analysis presented here concentrates on how craftsmen, merchants, and associations interacted with each other and with elite and nonelite constituencies; managed economic, political, social, and legal activities; represented their concerns to the authorities; and acquired and used social capital—a new and important view of these economic engines.

Philip F. Venticinque offers a study of associations from a social, economic, and legal point of view, and in the process examines how they helped their members overcome high transaction costs—the “costs of doing business”—through the development of social capital. He explores associations from the “bottom up,” in order to see how their members create status and reputation outside of an elite framework. He thus explores how occupations regarded as thieves in elite ideology create their own systems of honor.

Honor Among Thieves will be of interest to scholars of the ancient economy, of social groups, and Roman Egypt in all periods. 

For over twenty-five years Ronald Inglehart and his colleagues have been collecting survey data on the beliefs and opinions of people all over the world on a variety of topics. This work led Inglehart to expound his noted theory about the development of post-materialist values in developed countries and explore its effect on politics. This book, based on the most comprehensive of these surveys, the World Values Survey conducted in over forty countries from 1990-93, publishes for the first time all of the findings of this survey. The questions cover issues such as politics, economics, religion, family life, and gender roles, and reflect differences in response by age, gender, economic standing, and education.

This book provides a wealth of data that will appeal to social scientists, journalists, people in international business, and policy makers interested in understanding social, political, or cultural attitudes in different countries.

Ronald Inglehart is Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, and coauthor of Value Change in Global Perspective, as well as many other books and articles. Miguel Basanez is Professor of Political Science, Institutio Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, and director of MORI de Mexico. Alejandro Moreno is Professor of Political Science, Institutio Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico.