How to assess a value to things when money is lacking? Historian Laurent Feller shows that during the Middle Ages, commercial exhanges were structured by the social value of the persons they involved and the relationships of clientele or dependency they created. Thus valuing practices were necessarily informed by the social contexts in which they occurred.
In pre-industrial Europe, in which the economy of specificity and the habit of exchanging gifts prevailed, putting the buying process under the scrutiny of the community, through auctions or the market place, was an essential step in reducing the inherent uncertainty of fixing prices through face to face encounters.
