High-Tension Religion and the Jewish Peddler

Scholars have long explored the role that reputation plays in the facilitation of exchange. Some attention has also been paid to the way in which religions serve as a proxy for reputation or as a mechanism for enforcement of exchange agreements. These reputation and enforcement mechanisms enhance the ability of the members of certain religious groups to perform economic roles where such secular-based mechanisms fail or are absent. In this article, I explore the ways in which hostility toward members of high-tension religions makes them uniquely well suited to the economic role of middlemen. As illustration, I explore the particular case of the 19-super-th-century German Jewish peddler in the young United States. Copyright 2007 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc..