The Hobbit economy not bucolic utopia but tenant farming and ostentatious displays of clan wealth

In The Moral Economy of the Shire Nathan Goldwag teases out the things about Hobbit life that J.R.R. Tolkien smoothed over but surely intended: that under the surface tension of rural utopia are the hard lives of tenant farmers and a complex cultural web of shame, obligation and largesse. — Read the rest

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