Communication, global justice and the moral economy

The concept of a ‘moral economy,’ used famously by historian Edward Thompson in his 1971 essay, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,’ is sometimes invoked in discussions of struggles for social justice. Drawing from Thompson and others who have written about the idea of a ‘moral economy,’ this article shows how that concept serves as an instructive guide for thinking today about the idea of a global civil society and the global justice movement. Relying on historical work about selected struggles for social justice, this article demonstrates how the means of communication have been vital to transnational social movements for far longer than generally is acknowledged. Moreover, the means of communication have been central to sustaining the idea of a moral economy.