In this paper, we argue that closer engagement with the field of new institutional economics (NIE) has the potential to provide researchers with a new theoretical toolbox that can be used to study economic and social practices that are not readily traceable in material culture. NIE assumes that individual actions are based on bounded rationality and that the existence of rules (institutions) and their enforcement – the institutional framework – influences agents’ actions by providing different incentives and probabilities for different choices. Within this theoretical framework, we identify a number of concepts, such as collective identity and mobile jurisdictions, that seem to fit what we know of Viking age economic systems. In applying these models to the available archaeological and textual data, we outline the ways in which further research could provide a new understanding of economic interaction within a rapidly evolving context of diaspora and change.

There are four Anglican jurisdictions in continental Europe. Two are national churches, Spain and Portugal; two are non-geographical jurisdictions serving persons not geographical regions. These four have overlaps among themselves; they also overlap with full-communion partners. The Episcopal Church’s Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe is not officially a diocese, though it acts like one. Like the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe, its mission is not limited geographically. The competition unwittingly engendered creates conflict that detracts from the part of God’s mission accorded to each Church. This essay argues that creating an official Episcopal diocese in Europe is not the way forward, if common care for that mission is and should be the primary concern of all.

This article examines a complex dispute over the jurisdictions of traditional and statutory institutions that traversed shifts in forms of government in Ghana for nearly a decade following the ousting of Kwame Nkrumah in February 1966. The analysis emphasizes underlying processes of continuity and seeks to add nuance to familiar conceptualizations that view this period in terms of state weakness, crisis, and rupture. The article explores, in particular, a powerful category of chieftaincy defined in opposition to state logics that have escaped empirical investigation. It therefore invites a rethinking of the notion that the post-Nkrumah era heralded a state-initiated revival of traditional institutions.