Debt and inequality: Comparing the “means of specification” in the early cities of Mesopotamia and the Indus civilization

Abstract

To transform debts into permanent inequalities, David Graeber (2011:14) argues that creditors must possess the “means to specify” what they are owed. Therefore, changes in the technologies used to specify can transform social relations, warranting a deeper investigation of what are effectively the “means of specification.” Seals and sealings from the early cities of South Asia and the Near East are a touchstone for comparing changes in the means of specification. I examine seals and sealings from Mesopotamia, where a managerial ruling class held power, and the Indus civilization, where urbanism thrived under relatively egalitarian conditions. Seals and sealings did not inevitably fuel inequality. In Mesopotamia, it was only after millennia of control by exclusionary and often violent political institutions that the ruling class used the means of specification to establish interest-bearing debt, a form of “extractive reciprocity” that transferred value to creditors in an ongoing social relation. In the Indus, where there was no such ruling class, seals remained readily accessible and widely distributed, sustaining “balanced reciprocity” (Sahlins, 1972:194) in intensifying urban settings. While changes in the means of specification can create permanent inequalities, they can also help delay the completion of transactions until equitable conditions prevail.