Abstract
(ProQuest Information and Learning: Foreign text omitted) ABSTRACT Whereas the social structure and economy of early (i.e., premonarchic) Israel has been extensively analyzed in recent years, relatively little attention has been given to the monarchic period. [...]those studies that have addressed this period rarely link social structure and economy within their analysis; they usually treat these features as independent variables or distinct institutions. [...]economic behavior was increasingly neglected in social analysis, and social processes were often deemed irrelevant to economic theory. The conception of property in the Asiatic mode of production thus distorts the role of property in monarchic Israel. Because of the conceptual and analytical problems outlined above, the dominant mode of production in monarchic Israel can be characterized by neither the state ownership of the land nor the extraction of tax-rent. [...]generalized exchange promotes the development of multiple social strata within an elaborate hierarchical structure, while hindering the widespread rise of class consciousness (Eisenstadt and Roniger: 209-10).