Moral Economy

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The term moral economy (of English. Moral economy ) means of moral values supported economic experts, whose main principle, the mutual support is. Moral economy is not a normative concept. Rather, it is a counter-term to political economy , which has arisen since the Enlightenment with the claim to show objective laws of economic life. According to that claim, only those acting rationally who submit to these as objectively presented laws of the market, especially with regard to wages and food prices. Different forms of moral economy negate the general validity of the objective truths asserted by political economy. On the other hand, they typically assert the necessities of survival or also of morality - that is, in the strict sense of the term, "morally" good or acceptable life.

Examples of this model, the term of which was coined in 1971 by the English social historian Edward P. Thompson and later also adopted by German historians (e.g. Dieter Groh ) and social scientists (e.g. Elmar Altvater ), are the traditional subsistence economies of earlier cultures or of today's local communities . The cultural scientist Nico Stehr speaks of the "moralization of markets".

According to Thompson, the “moral economy” consists of notions of legitimacy and basic moral assumptions from which the lower classes in the 18th and 19th centuries drew their motives for bread price and food rebellions. The position of this approach is central to research into historical protests:

  • The oldest explanation attributed such unrest reactively to need and hunger (“rebellions of the belly”) - a “hydraulic view” is what the historian Charles Tilly calls this .
  • 1967 originating Verelendungs integration model of Werner Conze .
  • Thompson emphasizes as a drive for social protest the defense of “traditional rights and customs” which are based on the prices of essential goods - in the 18th and 19th centuries above all on the price of bread. He also sees these unrest as a protest against the liberal view of the market, which allows profit to be drawn from the misery of others. The economic historian Hans-Heinrich Bass describes Thompson's hypothesis as a communication-action model ("in the event of a violation of the 'basic moral assumptions' of these people about traditional rights and obligations in a socially integrated economy against the background of an emergency situation for direct action" " ).
  • Under the influence of Amartya K. Sen , Bass formulates a Neo-Thompsonian hypothesis.

The included in the concept of moral economy concept of subsistence farming has James C. Scott in 1976 in his presentation Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia is still developing. These works make it clear that the concept of the moral economy is proving to be highly compatible with theories of social movements and political-sociological approaches that deal with protests and revolts . The starting point is Thompson's idea that “empty stomachs”, i. H. Impoverishment, not having to mechanically articulate protest, rather protest arises when an implicit social contract , a moral economy, is broken up from "above" by the ruling groups.

Today the term is often used in connection with questions of business ethics , sustainability and ecological problems .

literature

  • John Bohstedt: The Moral Economy and the Discipline of Historical Context . In: Journal of Social History. Vol. 26, No. 2, 1992, ISSN  0022-4529 , pp. 265-284.
  • Katarina Friberg, Norbert Götz: special issue Moral Economy: New Perspectives . In: Journal of Global Ethics 11 (2015) 2: 143-256 (see tandfonline.com ).
  • Norbert Götz: 'Moral Economy': Its Conceptual History and Analytical Prospects . In: Journal of Global Ethics , 11, 2015, 2, pp. 147–162, doi: 10.1080 / 17449626.2015.1054556
  • Dominik Nagl: No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions Legal Transfer, State Building and Governance in England, Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1630–1769. LIT, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-11817-2 , pp. 605f. de.scribd.com
  • Nina Odenwälder: Food Protests and Moral Economy. The Old Empire from 1600 to 1789. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2008, ISBN 978-3-8364-9290-4 .
  • James C. Scott : The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. 2nd ed. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 1977, ISBN 0-300-02190-9 .
  • Wolfgang Streeck & Jens Beckert (Eds.): Moral Requirements and Limits of Economic Action (= MPIfG Working Paper. 07/6). Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne 2007, mpifg.de (PDF; 939 kB)
  • Edward P. Thompson : Plebeian Culture and Moral Economy. Essays on English social history in the 18th and 19th centuries. Selected and introduced by Dieter Groh . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Berlin / Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-548-35046-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Olaf Kaltmeier and Reinhart Kößler: Moralische Ökonomie. In: PERIPHERIE No. 121, 31st year 2011, p. 73-76. Retrieved March 24, 2020 .
  2. ^ EP Thompson: The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century. In: Past & Present . Volume 50, 1971, doi: 10.1093 / past / 50.1.76 , pp. 76-136
  3. ^ Nico Stehr: The moralization of the markets. A social theory. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-29431-4 .
  4. ^ Charles Tilly: Food Supply and Public Order in Modern Europe . 1975, p. 391
  5. ^ So named by Hans-Heinrich Bass: Social Protest . In: Hunger crises in Prussia during the first half of the 19th century . Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, St. Katharinen 1991, ISBN 3-922661-90-4 , p. 100.
  6. ^ Hans-Heinrich Bass: Social protest . In: Hunger crises in Prussia during the first half of the 19th century . Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, St. Katharinen 1991, ISBN 3-922661-90-4 , pp. 104-106.