Moral Economies

This article discusses moral economy as a philosophical and political challenge to the principle that market principles are universal and value-neutral. It explores the material relationships within society before the rise of the market, in which markets were embedded in and subordinate to social norms and how the rise of autocratic states and self-regulating markets disrupted those relationships. It also explores the ways that ideas of moral economy might still operate within capitalist society, in developed and developing societies, as a response to the disruptions of capitalism, through the construction of welfare states or the mobilization of social movements.