A moral economy is an economy that is based on goodness, fairness, and justice, as opposed to one where the market is assumed to be independent of such concerns. The concept was an elaboration by English historian E.P. Thompson from a term already used by various eighteenth century authors, who felt that economic and moral concerns increasingly seemed to drift apart.
Thompson wrote of the moral economy of the poor in the context of widespread food riots in the English countryside in the late eighteenth century. According to Thompson these riots were generally
peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political culture rooted in feudal rights to "set the price" of essential goods in the market. These peasants held that a traditional "fair price" was more important to the community than a "free" market price and they punished large farmers who sold their surpluses at higher prices outside the village while there were still those in need within the village. In the 1970s the concept of a moral economy was developed further in anthropological studies of peasant economies. The notion of a non-capitalist cultural mentality using the market for its own ends has been linked by others to subsistence agriculture and the need for subsistence insurance in hard times.
James C. Scott
The concept was widely popularized in anthropology through the book The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia by James C. Scott (1976).
The book begins with a telling metaphor of peasants being like a man standing up to his nose in water; the smallest wave will drown him. Similarly, peasants generally live so close to the subsistence line that it takes little to destroy their livelihoods.
Firstly, he argued that peasants were "risk averse", or, put differently, followed a "safety first" principle. They would not adopt risky new seeds or technologies, no matter how promising, because tried and true traditional methods had demonstrated, not promised, effectiveness. This gives peasants an unfair reputation as "traditionalist" when in fact they are just risk averse. Secondly, Scott argues that peasant society provides "subsistence insurance" for its members to tide them over those occasions when natural or man-made disaster strikes.
Thompson wrote of the moral economy of the poor in the context of widespread food riots in the English countryside in the late eighteenth century. According to Thompson these riots were generally
peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political culture rooted in feudal rights to "set the price" of essential goods in the market. These peasants held that a traditional "fair price" was more important to the community than a "free" market price and they punished large farmers who sold their surpluses at higher prices outside the village while there were still those in need within the village. In the 1970s the concept of a moral economy was developed further in anthropological studies of peasant economies. The notion of a non-capitalist cultural mentality using the market for its own ends has been linked by others to subsistence agriculture and the need for subsistence insurance in hard times.
James C. Scott
The concept was widely popularized in anthropology through the book The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia by James C. Scott (1976).
The book begins with a telling metaphor of peasants being like a man standing up to his nose in water; the smallest wave will drown him. Similarly, peasants generally live so close to the subsistence line that it takes little to destroy their livelihoods.
Firstly, he argued that peasants were "risk averse", or, put differently, followed a "safety first" principle. They would not adopt risky new seeds or technologies, no matter how promising, because tried and true traditional methods had demonstrated, not promised, effectiveness. This gives peasants an unfair reputation as "traditionalist" when in fact they are just risk averse. Secondly, Scott argues that peasant society provides "subsistence insurance" for its members to tide them over those occasions when natural or man-made disaster strikes.
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