Brian Theng "Revisiting economic rationality: an embedded transaction in Pliny the Younger"

In Letter 1.24, Pliny the Younger mediates a property sale between an unnamed friend of his correspondent and his buddy Suetonius. By analysing the role of social structure and cultural norms in shaping Pliny’s and his friends’ actions in this transaction, I hope to show that the concept of embeddedness lets us fully appreciate the nature and effectiveness of their socio-economic strategizing. Embeddedness, a fundamental tenet of New Economic Sociology, refers to the inseparability of economic action from our cognitive limitations, culture, and social and political structures. Not only does this concept help us re-envisage the ‘economic rationality’ of Romans like Pliny, it patches the gaps in the currently-prevailing theoretical approach to the Roman economy, the New Institutional Economics.