Moral Economy: A Narrow and a Broad View

This article attempts to define the concept of moral economy through a series of distinctions: between moral economy and the wider field in which morality and economy meet; between moral economy in a narrow sense and in a broad sense; and between historical moral economy and more modern forms. I define moral economy in the narrow sense as perceptions about fairness, the limits of exploitation, and the reciprocities that should govern social relations, as well as about appropriate economic behavior that does not solely seek personal profit. This defensive attitude and the lack of orientation to the future may be absent from moral economy in the broad sense; the same is true of its relationship to social movements and popular protest, as well as of the system of reciprocities and the particular conceptions of fairness that may have characterized the historical moral economy that confronted the rising capitalist market.