Moral economies: possibilities for a new framework of economic structure and change

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

University of Richmond

Moral economies: possibilities for a new framework of economic structure and change

J.K. Hass

This article addresses a long-held dispute across social science disciplines: that market and moral economies are distinctly different and even contradictory. This debate was never resolved, and was also problematic, as both sides did not address either competing claims, not empirical reality, with sufficient rigor and care. I suggest revisiting the original Scott-Popkin debate afresh, while exploring whether moral and market economy explanations are complementary, rather than contradictory. I posit that market and moral economies, as phenomena, are intertwined, and that a proper approach treats both framing (norms) and decisions (calculation) as embedded in fields. Actors have historically articulated moral economies of norms as well as interests, thus underpinning market and other economies. The author posits three possibilities for a future framework of moral economy: moral economies as transformative; moral economies as anchored in concrete entities, rather than as free-floating norms; and moral economies as multiple, embedded in field contexts. Using these approaches to moral economy, I give brief examples of economic transformations that involved not only interests and markets, but also moral claims.

Keywords: moral economy, economic development, interests, norms, fields, economic history.

Моральная экономика: возможности новых границ экономической структуры и изменений

Д. К. Хасс

Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет,

Российская Федерация, 199034, Санкт-Петербург, Университетская

В статье рассматривается давний спор между дисциплинами социальных наук о том, что рыночная экономика и моральная экономика явно отличаются и даже противоречивы. Эта дискуссия так и не была решена и остается проблематичной, поскольку обе стороны не рассматривали ни конкурирующие требования, ни эмпирическую реальность с достаточной тщательностью. Автор предлагает обратиться к первоначальной дискуссии Скотта--Попкина еще раз, исследуя, являются ли объяснения моральной экономики и рыночной экономики взаимодополняющими, а не противоречивыми. Согласно его мнению, рыночная и моральная экономики, как явления, взаимосвязаны, и в рамках надлежащего подхода и обрамление (нормы), и решения (расчет) рассматриваются как часть области исследования. Агенты исторически формулировали моральную экономию норм, а также интересов, тем самым поддерживая рыночную и другие экономики. Автор предлагает три возможных варианта (возможности) будущей структуры моральной экономики: моральная экономика как преобразующая; моральная экономика как закрепленная в конкретных сущностях, а не как свободно плавающие нормы; и моральная экономика как множественная, встроенная в полевые контексты. Используя эти подходы к моральной экономике, в статье приводятся краткие примеры экономических преобразований, в которых задействованы не только интересы и рынки, но и моральные требования.

Ключевые слова: моральная экономика, экономическое развитие, интересы, нормы, поля, экономическая история.

The unfinished debate: moral and market economies

Populism has returned with a vengeance: average “rational actors” have shown they are willing to support politicians and policies that are far from optimal to their interests and well-being: working class supporters for Donald Trump who do not benefit from tariffs, attacks on health care, and diversion of funds from infrastructure to a border wall of dubious use; working class and other Britons consistently supporting a Brexit process that likely will leave them, and others worse off; and so on. This contemporary atmosphere brings us back to a different time, when countries were politically charged and revolution was in the air: and in that decade of the 1960s, sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and political scientists posited that a “moral economy” had come into contradiction with relations and logics of capitalism. Economists and some political scientists responded with theories of rational action and positive political economy, defending claims that people are homo economicus and that economies are, at heart, not about morals but about calculation vis-а-vis individual gain and market forces. This debate was, perhaps, at its starkest in the early 1980s, epitomized in the “Scott-Popkin debate,” named after the main protagonists, James C. Scott and Samuel Popkin (more on this below).

Oddly enough, the debate was never truly settled -- it is as if both sides retreated to their corners. On one side, economic sociologists and some political scientists rethought and sharpened their tools, taking interests into closer account but also reworking “power,” “culture,” and institutions. Economists did not engage in much rethinking at the time, although change has come from other directions, notably behavioral economics and cognitive psychology, while growing social inequality, the Great Recession of 2008, and empirical work by the late Alan Krueger and others have made a growing number of economists aware (even if belatedly) that the foundations of microeconomics and macroeconomics are more complicated than envisioned. Economics and economic sociology have made important advances that have also brought them into closer conversation and potential symbiosis, in contrast to the 1980s and earlier, when the two disciplines were in a constant state of intellectual contention.

Yet, as economists pay closer attention to economic structures and networks, and as economic sociologists continue to make progress around economic culture (e. g. [Dobbin, 1994; Hass, 2011]), institutions and power [Roy, 1997] and fields [Fligstein, 2001; Fligstein, McAdam, 2012], what happened to the original positions in this important debate from decades ago? One side, positive political economy, has not fared so well in the long run: not fared well: either cognitive foundations are increasingly under question, and politics and power have crept back into institutional accounts [Acemoglu, Robinson, 2006; 2010; 2012]. Moral economy has limped along -- not dead, and occasionally invoked. Is there anything from moral economy to salvage and develop? Economic sociology has addressed culture and power, but not in the same systematized manner as for moral economy -- which was a competing systematization of practice and context. Attempts to synthesize a general model of economic practice to compete with microeconomics and macroeconomics usually involve acknowledging material and symbolic resources and appreciating that culture frames “utilities” (cf. [Fligstein, 1990; Roy, 1997]). This is especially clear in the ongoing convergence of sociological neoinstitutionalism (economic and organizational sociology) and social movement theory. But the power of moral economy was that it provided a coherent and contained universe of variables and causation that could be used to address economic practices, either in everyday life or in response to economic shifts.

In this paper, I suggest possibilities to revive moral economy. A developed framework is beyond the scope of this paper; it may be that no such coherent framework will ever be possible. But this does not mean we should not try. Therefore, I structure this account as possibilities and potential drawn from lessons and new insights.

Revisiting early moral economy: nebulous logics and misspecified debates

Before rethinking moral economy and suggesting what could be, I first return to the intellectual history to make sense of what was useful and what was problematic, and what criticisms succeeded and failed (and what this tells us of any future possibilities for a new framework). The issue of how norms and economies interact is not itself all that new. While Adam Smith [Smith, 1976 (1776)] noted the importance of self-interest for economic exchange, earlier he suggested that norms and especially empathy were also important underpinnings of systems of exchange [Smith, 2006 (1759)] -- an argument not so distant from Emile Durkheim's proposition on the non-contractual bases of contractual relations [Durkheim, 1997 (1893)]The importation of notions of justice into economies goes far back into history, although when we approach modernity, with the expansion of formalized institutions (especially the modern state), socialist movements became important carriers of notions that justice and norms were a crucial basis to economics, and to effective progressive economies in particular. (Karl Marx decoupled norms from the economy with his claim that the river of history leads to communism--a just society would result regardless of norms articulated.) However, as a systematized account of how economic practices operate, “moral economy” is probably best known in relation to the formulation by James C. Scott and Samuel Popkin's rational choice critique, which teased out two models of economic practice [Scott, 1976; Popkin, 1979]. True, there had been emerging analyses that integrated norms, structural positions and relations, and economies in an increasingly systematic fashion, arguing that normatively grounded systems of economic practices could come into conflict with economic relations grounded in selfinterest [Wolf, 1968; Thompson, 1971; Moore, 1966; 1978; Paige, 1975], although many of these analyses focused more on the triggers and politics of rebellion that on the normative foundations of alternative economic systems One could go further back, even to Greek philosophy, to find variations on these arguments. How-ever, most of those early discussions concerned ought (should norms matter for economic practices), rather than is (how significant are norms in social reality). The latter is at the heart of the Scott-Popkin and related debates. Further, the issue of norms systematized into a wider set of economic practices -- an economy of norms, to oversimplify -- is more apparent in later work. Hence, I begin my discussion with the 1970s. Karl Polanyi [Polanyi, 1944] did argue that “natural” economic practices (conforming to real human nature) were grounded in norms of reciprocity and redistribution. Market economies require that states subordinate these to rational calculation by creating a market society. A complementary analysis, focusing on discourses, is Albert Hirschman's history of the rising dominance of “interests” over “passions” as the basis for “normal” practice [Hirschman, 1977]..

Scholars debated moral economy and positive political economy I distinguish between “positive political economy”, grounded in rational choice microeconomics, from traditional “political economy”, in which power is central to analysis but microfoundations are left open. to explain responses to economic change (e. g. peasant protest of encroaching capitalism), which were either a collective defense of traditional norms enabling subsistence and survival and that were effused with notions of justice; or instrumentally rational calculation of costs and benefits of adapting to or resisting capitalism [Bates, 1981; 1983; Alt, Shepsle, 1990]. The original formulation stated that logics of a moral economy: were informal rather than formalized relations; operated in agrarian or early industrial communities whose members held to “traditional” beliefs; were oriented to collective norms (e. g. reciprocity and redistribution) rather than to calculation for individual gain; and were grounded in popular sovereignty. Moral economy involved reciprocity and redistribution in a collectively rational survival strategy -- subsistence values and their ritualized practices came under threat when the local economy was incorporated into broader capitalist markets. For urban dwellers reacting to high bread prices in eighteenth century England or on the eve of the French Revolution, saving themselves meant saving tradition; their moral economy was rational and normative. Traditional norms “from below” that provided ammunition for resistance to encroaching commodification of land and labor under capitalism and new relations of power to elites. This seemed to explain why the expansion of capitalism led to agrarian revolts in developing countries and urban unrest in the early stages of capitalist development.

Samuel Popkin's response, called “political economy” but closer to “market economy,” posited that individual peasants were rational actors aiming to maximize utility -- peasant life was more entrepreneurial than survival-based -- and who supported rebellion or collective norms if this brought gains. Peasant action was not grounded in defending tradition versus market capitalism: rather, peasants used opportunities to advance their interests Popkin [Popkin, 1979] could set up this argument by claiming that, in the moral economy perspec-tive, traditional peasants were inherently anti-market, not strategically. To be wary of encroaching market capitalism because it threatens an established order is not being inherently anti-market, however.. Following Popkin's logic of markets as state of nature, Robert Bates (alone and with collaborators) argued moral economy was suboptimal, that there are no rational grounds for moral economy, and there should be no trace of it empirically (e. g. [Bates, Curry, 1992]). “Positive political economy” focused primarily on conditions of collective action; participants' actual claims were not important, as is typical in rational choice explanations (i. e. actors are lying or oblivious to real utility and interests). One rational choice explanation as to why Scott's peasants followed a moral economy was that social mechanisms in those communities maintained collective norms; such mechanisms were absent for Popkin's cases. McKean [McKean, 2000] countered that monitoring and sanction were more effective in the peasant communities Scott examined -- hence the collective “moral economy” seemed to work. Popkin's peasant communities did not have effective monitoring and sanction, and so his measured implied more opportunistic, instrumentally rational behavior. This is a tantalizingly elegant: simple axioms of rational choice explain variation (although it assumes instrumental, calculative rationality where it might not exist, cf. [Reddy, 1984]).

Critiques by Popkin, Bates, and others provoked important correctives to alternative theories, cultural approaches in particular. The most important contribution might have been to question the quasi-Durkheimian logic of initial moral economy arguments that collective rationality is an inherent trait of premodern groups, while individual, instrumental rationality is a trait of modern societies (cf. [Granovetter, 1993]). As well, like much rational-choice based scholarship, these critiques pointed to the importance of resources and opportunities affecting costs of action. Collective, redistributive norms do not necessarily bring the collective utility Scott and others imagined; action can be driven by attempts to gain (wealth, power, etc.); and such economies ultimately have a political dimension that collective norms a la the original moral economy formulation glossed over. Further, the original moral economy dangerously risked traps of oversocialization and making people into “cultural dupes” that many sociological analyses suffered [Gran- ovetter, 1985]. However, other aspects of the political economy critique and alternative also missed the mark or overstated insights. First, implicit (and sometimes explicit) in rational-choice based approaches is the brushing off of actors' own claims as windowdressing to real motives that can be ascertained only from actions. Subsequent scholarship took seriously the claims of social actors more seriously and related them to structures and opportunities, and noting how moral economy did in fact possess explanatory power that “political economy” could not.

One glaring error of both approaches was the assumption that moral and political economies are contradictory or competing forms of behavior: tradition versus innovation, norms versus interests. This need not be the case, as I will argue. The traditional meaning of “political economy” involves relations of power and economy, especially the state's role. Economies, as social relations, are not devoid of norms or power or interests. In fact, we can speak of moral economy as the “culture” side of the power-culture relation, and it was not long before conceptualizations of culture and its relation to power and structure improved. By taking agency and interests seriously, but linking them to norms as 1) foundations for normal economic relations that shape perceived interests, and simultaneously as 2) tools for making claims about normal economic relations and rules, we can incorporate interests and norms into an improved moral economy that makes politics not reactive, but potentially proactive, and allows us to envision economies not only as aggregates of economic actors with their interests, but also as fields of rules.

Moral Economy a Second Time Around: Possibilities and Potential

One weakness of earlier moral economy formulations was its nebulousness: a generalized sense of collective norms of reciprocity, subsistence, and redistribution applicable to a community or society, and seemingly homogenous to that group. Anything was potentially governed by a broad moral economy In a market economy, everything is governed by cost-benefit calculus. Actors' interests are taken as given. This allows for variation in interests and actions, and for conflict. Unfortunately, original moral economy did not.. However, this is restrictive and a reification: just as “economy” is reified as a distinct, autonomous, natural social space (cf. [Mitchell, 2002]), moral economy was reified as a natural traditional human inclination writ large onto communal norms of survival. Yet there is no need theoretically to limit the concept. If we relax original empirical restrictions (agrarian communities) and consider authority and claims-making dimensions, we see moral economies at work even in modern economies, and some scholars still find utility in the concept for analyses of modern economies, classes, and states. Capitalism and commodification no longer encroach, they reign; but this need not mean moral economy is irrelevant It might seem, in this argument, that “market economy” is static and invariant: there is only one type of market economy across space and time. This is not so. First, there is variation across space and time in how market logics are applied or regulated; the later section on empirical vignettes will hint at this. Second, and potentially more important, is that the usual “market economy” so central to Anglo-American eco-nomic theory is, in fact, one way to structure the expression and manifestation of instrumental rationality, and that moral logics shape that structuring. Instrumental rationality as individual behavior is not unnatu-ral, nor is it the predominant form of human rationality; but its expression as in institutions and routinized practices is a different story. This is Polanyi's thesis [Polanyi, 1944]..

One first step is to rethink moral economy, and I conceptualize moral economy as a set of fundamental expectations of legitimate relations, goals, and practices of exchange, production, and setting of value. Another possible adjustment would be to make moral economy less coherent and systematic: for example, reframing moral economy as a tool kit of norms and strategies, rather than as uniform collective norms. This would bring in agency, as actors would use moral economy norms for claims-making or to guide or justify decisions, economic and political. However, this is also perhaps too costly: moral economy loses predictive and some explanatory power that the original formulation supposedly had. An alternative is to take a field approach [Martin, 2011], in which interests and norms are structured, but in a relational manner. Rather than being a set of norms for all time -- e. g. for all peasant communities, as in the original moral economy formulation -- we have norms and interests anchored in contexts, in particular relations for a particular place and time. This makes moral economy more than just norms used strategically as tools, and grounds those norms in social relations (power, institutions, etc.) of a context; but it also allows us to bring in politics and interests, that can vary across contexts The logic of a field framework is that there are governing dynamics, but they are context-bound. One metaphor is fluid flow: equations reveal governing dynamics of fluid flow, but trajectories of fluid particles depends on the context -- other particles and topography -- rather than on some general context in all places and times..

If we take a field approach, we look for actors maneuvering vis-а-vis each other, in the economic field (e. g. self-regulation of competition) and the political field (e. g. attempts to shape state regulation of the economy, or adjust to it). In a sense, Neil Fligstein [Fligstein, 1990; 2001] made a similar argument in his field analysis of markets and corporations: corporate elites were driven to realize interests, especially optimizing income and profits and create stable markets and economic certainty. How they did so was by institutionalizing norms of legitimate corporate strategies and structures, for example in how firms in the same field could compete with each other over time. While elites in different fields (e. g. automobile production, consumer durables) were regulating each other, the state was also regulating economic fields, for example by enforcing price competition or liberalizing financial practices for the benefit of corporate elites. Further, one important facet of fields -- missing in the original moral economy formulation and that Popkin did draw attention to -- is that field norms can also be tools for internal competition and field politics [Bourdieu, 1984]. If fields are norms and rules, then actors not only assume or follow those rules -- they can also apply them strategically and even break them strategically for an advantage [Martin, 2011]. Additionally, fields are not simply norms that are free-floating in some social or discursive space: they are likely to be anchored in particular entities of valence [Martin, 2011; Hass, 2017], i. e. entities that have institutional or other significance, and around which actors orient not only norms, but also interests (and so fields and anchors ground interests as well). Finally, if we take a field approach, we can propose that a moral economy does not apply only to an entire economy -- it can apply to smaller contexts (e. g. sectors) or relations (e. g. labor relations or relations between organizations in a particular sector of exchange, such as importers).

Thus, drawing on a field logic and scholarship that has emerged since the Scott-Pop- kin debate, I propose three sets of possibilities and potentials: moral economies as transformative and not merely defensive; moral economies as anchored and grounded; and the existence of multiple moral economies, some of which overlap with, rather than oppose, market economies.

Possibility 1. Moral Economies as Transformative, as well as Defensive

Our first possibility is that moral economies can be transformative, not only defensive. Norms are not only bases for resistance, e. g. resisting encroaching capitalism. Actors can use norms to change situations, including improving their well-being or realizing interests. A clear example of is from social movements. Modern states and elites use propaganda and symbolic manipulation to create a “formula of rule” to legitimate authority, to create a misrecognition of power (hiding power relations), and to compel non-elites to obey. Non-elites, in turn, can use the formula of rule to their gain, for example by demanding that regimes follow through on promises made in exchange for authority. (If elites do not do so, they risk inviting resistance, open or hidden, or at least cynicism and disbelief in their right to rule.) Modern state and political elites defend structural power and privilege by references to security, both physical (armies and police) and economic (welfare) -- but this allows other actors, from corporations to average citizens, to demand that the state take steps to follow through on those promises. Some corporations can demand state subsidies or tariffs not only to protect their interests, but especially to protect the national interest as a whole. Given its monopoly on violence and its symbolic predominance, the state is a natural locus of claims-making. Citizens and elites locate themselves not only in a matrix of material relations and interests, but in a symbolic-normative (meaning-laden) matrix as well.

The survival of moral economy in the empirical world is not so unexpected after all. In her study of worker protest in modern Egypt, Posusney found that workers framed claims and protests in a moral economy logic: protests were set off by perceptions of injustice and “takeaways” of rights and privileges in the context of a patron-client relationship with the state. The violation of this trade-off of rights and goods for loyalty drove worker protest, not purely or even primarily by opportunities for gain (rational choice) or class consciousness and organization (Marxism). Rather, workers' own expectations and claims were couched in language of patron-client relations and expectations of rewards for loyalty; the timing of protest coincided with the sudden and seemingly unjust withdrawal of said rewards. As she noted,

“in this [moral] economy, workers view themselves as being in a patron-client relationship with the state. The latter is expected to guarantee workers a decent wage by regulating their paychecks and by controlling prices on basic necessities; the government should also ensure equal treatment of workers performing similar jobs. Workers, for their part, provide the state with political support and contribute to the postcolonial national development project through their labor... [T]he superiority of the moral economy approach becomes clearer when one investigates the specific causes of workers' protests. Virtually all of the incidents reported [in Egypt] grew out of the workers' sense of injustice, a feeling that they were being denied something to which they were entitled” [Posusney, 1993, p. 89, 100].

In particular, state attempts to reduce incentive pay and to double insurance contributions from workers' paychecks set off strikes and protest; these were made worse by injustices over the gap in living conditions between workers and managers. Marxist approaches cannot explain the irregularity and underdevelopment of class consciousness; rational choice explanations cannot

“address the problem of why workers engage in protest for incremental gains that were not worth the risks before someone else had obtained them. There is no logical reason why the utility of these gains would suddenly change, so we must assume that the answer lies in the expectation of achieving them; that is, once some workers get the increase, it seems a winnable demand for others who had previously considered it unobtainable. This, however, means discussing how workers' expectations from the state are derived, and that is the province of moral economy” [Posusney, 1993, p. 107-108].

Posusney's Egyptian workers are not simply defending their interests; they are holding the state's promises and claims of legitimate authority to account. In defending interests, Egyptian workers were also advancing their own interests -- in this case, the authority to make claims and to participate in discourse over what constituted normal, legitimate policy. Even defensive actions are offensive, as they are attempts to make voices heard and respected.

This is not so different from worker protests in 1905 and 1917 Russia: mixed with economic demands were claims related to defending and expanding rights for moral and normative reasons. Opportunistic as some might have been, Petrograd workers repeating Bolshevik slogans of “peace, bread, land” were making claims based on normative ideals of legitimate politics. While workers and soldiers were not entirely pro-Bolshevik, categories of their claims suggest the centrality of the normative dimension to collective action: these workers did not want pay raises alone, and collective protest succeeded against the free rider not merely because of surveillance and exclusive goods but because of a sense of community [Bonnell, 1983; Koenker, 1981; Koenker, Rosenberg, 1989]. In other words, while organizational and resource considerations are obviously crucial to action, symbolic and meaning dimensions of claims-making cannot be ignored in modern collective action [Snow, Benford, 1992].

Possibility 2. Moral Economies are Anchored and Grounded

One weakness of the original moral economy argument is that norms of economic practice were invariant across space and time (one moral economy for all), and nebulous. Peasant societies might have articulated similar norms and claims, given similar structural locations and interests; but moral economies need not be limited to peasants alone. A close examination of contentious economics -- disputes over the economic role or use of resources -- reveals that norms and claims are not general and generic, but actually anchored in concrete entities and relations. Put different, moral economies and their norms are grounded in concrete, specific entities and relations.

One attempt to make this argument was from Thomas Arnold's attempt to shift moral economy to contextualized norms working through concrete objects [Arnold, 2001]. Moral economy is the assignment of sanctity to particular social goods. In Arnold's case, scarce water in the American Southwest was not only of material value to Americans there. Water was also of symbolic interest to local residents. Attempts to channel water to California represented not only a threat to material interests (less water, thus more expensive, if it does not disappear), but also an assault on the very sense of local community, which might be sacrificed for the well-being and higher status of residents on the west coast, which has more money and national status. Water may not be scarce and sacred in Seattle, and so it means less in Seattle's politics and economy; in the Southwest it is rarer and thus is entangled in broader relations of status and power (i. e. who controls the water supply, locals or people far away?). This raises important points. First, what particular objects gain moral significance cannot be determined a priori but are contextual, empirical problematics. Second, moral economy is no longer a reactive template; it is part of discourse of contention, a symbolic dimension to conflict over resources. Third, the normative dimension returns to political and social action, structure, and contention. The battle over water is not just about interests; it is about the normative structure of the social body.

This is not an unexpected conceptual leap. Other work has expanded on aspects of the original moral economy formulation. William James Booth noted how moral economy is one set of norms and practices that embed exchange and set limits and logics of “normal” (not just “moral”) exchange and gain [Booth, 1993]. James C. Scott argued that labor relations could crystalize around entities of contentious use: for example, tractors and other technology in agricultural production [Scott, 1985]. Where landlords saw tractors as a means to improve labor productivity, peasants saw tractors as a leap in techniques of control and exploitation, and so they turned efforts to sabotage. Perhaps Viviana Zelizer's work best encapsulates this new approach to moral economy, although she does not employ the concept herself. In her broad work on economic relations and meanings, Zelizer [Zelizer, 1979; 1985; 1997; 2005] reformulated economic culture as norms and meanings related to concrete entities, and embedded in the politics and economics of constructing those meanings. Framing and selling (i. e. marketing) life insurance involved articulating a moral economy of life. Initially, life insurance was not popular and profitable because sellers framed it in terms of interests and as a bet on life versus death: one “lost” the bet of survival, but one's family gained, if the purchaser died earlier than the life insurance company expected. Life insurance gained popularity when it was reframed in terms of survivors' well-being: if the breadwinner died, life insurance would pay out so that his family would not be destitute. The financial product did not change, but what it was and why people should embrace it did: life insurance became a moral entity, such that breadwinners would be acting immorally if they did not subscribe to it. And the anchor of valence for life insurance was the insured person's body: first as the object of a wager, later as the source of well-being for the family. The economic meaning of children shifted, not only because of demographics (the shift from agriculture to industry and urbanization) and changes in labor law (restrictions on child labor). What children “meant” changed: from labor on the farm, to dependents who meant economic expenses rather than gain, but who should be framed as objects of love rather than labor. Whether life insurance, children, money (fungible or categorized), or intimacy (emotional or imbued with a price), economic practices are structured by meaning systems expressed as norms and anchored around concrete entities.

Possibility 3. Multiple Norms and Multiple Moral Economies

In the original Scott-Popkin debate, both sides framed the issue as a stark contrast of models of human action, in which either norms or instrumental rationality predominate One example of limits to the conceptualization of “moral economy” is Stephen Wegren's account of post-Soviet agriculture [Wegren, 2005]. Wegren sets up his model against Scott's earlier version, suggest-ing that moral economy is inevitably oriented towards resistance or outright rebellion. He then sets up an alternative involving institutions and elite framing to show adaptation. But this perpetuates a straw man.. This was a false dichotomy that has driven research and debate for too long. Rather, I suggest that Popkin's rational choice-inspired “political economy” comes with its own sets of norms and justifications, just as Scott's does One example of this is justifications by Ronald Reagan and neoliberals since the 1970s for undoing welfare and state regulation. Individual rational choice was not only human nature but also a moral position, cloaked in sanctity of individual autonomy and rights. Market capitalism and democracy were two sides of the same coin. If one was good, so was the other; embracing one meant embracing both. I briefly explore this case below.. Leaving aside the issue of the source of interests, interaction and exchange must have a cultural and normative basis to avoid spiraling out of control in an infinite regress of surveillance and enforcement. Norms, justifications, and claims of legitimacy and normality, even if used only instrumentally (e. g. by market cynics), provide a template of shared language and behavioral codes that create the certainty necessary for interaction in the first place. In political economy and economics, institutions are usually assumed to do this, although this begs the question of what institutions are in everyday reality. Thus, by reframing moral economy as concrete meanings embedded in relations of objects and practices, the original moral and political economies become variant forms of logics of action, and our research agenda shifts: from proving one over the other, to analyzing how norms and interests coincide, how one shapes the other. Actors negotiate individual and collective incentives and norms (e. g. survival of self versus group, or survival of self versus cooperation for its own sake).

Consider the following hypothetical example. A political economy approach to environmentalism might invoke corporations negotiating with the state over policies, and the state providing incentives (e. g. tax breaks) for using green technologies or fines for pollution. A moral economy analysis might include discourse over inherent value of the environment, and how corporate elites frame competing demands and values of shortterm profit versus longer-term environmental considerations, framed in monetary and non-monetary terms. One corporation may adopt green technologies for tax breaks, to appear legitimate, and to gain market share in green technologies; another might think of short-term profit, lobby the state for penalty exemptions, or try to avoid monitoring. The same political economy does not lead automatically to one set of responses; these are shaped by fields of meaning. Neither is moral economy hegemonic: meanings require some enforcement, and meanings are not entirely decoupled from status and power.

One intriguing possibility is systematizing forms of moral economy along two dimensions of logics of rationality. I propose two: individualist versus collective rationality; and formal versus substantive rationality. I do this partly because modernity highlights these two logics; also, these correspond to the opposite poles of potential game-theoretic behavior, especially for the Prisoners' Dilemma that confronts wartime mobilization, stability, and survival. The first axis, individual-collectivist, refers to the more powerful locus of identity and loyalty. (While we all gain identity through collective rituals, that identity instilled may still embody sovereignty of the individual actor.) Scott and Popkin originally clashed along this axis. The second axis of formal versus substantive rationality is whether actors make decisions (e. g. distributing resources) according to calculation or to ultimate ends; this is similar to Max Weber's distinction between instrumental and value-laden

rationality [Weber, 1978, p. 24-26, 85-86]. (One might think of the distinction as practical/pragmatic versus ethical.) We have four sets of norms and logics of action: formally/ instrumentally individualist (individual interests are calculated before action is taken), formally/instrumentally collectivist (actions are calculated for group benefit), substantively individualist (individualist action is the norm for its own sake), and substantively collectivist (collectivist action is the norm for its own sake). Note how these combinations essentially transform the initial contradictory nature of moral and political economies, now not opposing frameworks but different combinations of logics of action and identity.

As a hermeneutic device, this can help us organize and analyze practices, claims, and justifications -- and equally important, changes in these in the context of war, and tensions arising between different actors (different individuals in the same group or family, state officials versus citizens, etc.). Consider the dimensions of moral economy rationality in the following way (Figure) These examples are meant to be illustrative only, and as ideal types. One issue that I do not address ismovementfrom onecelltothe other.Thiswouldraiseissuesofpoliticsandpoliticaleconomy beyondthe scope of this paper..

Figure. Axes of logics of moral economies

If these dimensions and heuristics reveal variation in normative logics of economic organization and practice, these do not appear out of thin air to affect economies. Moral economyis nolongeroneinvariantsetofabstractorfuzzynormsthat program peopleto act; it is articulations of “normality” played out in the context of institutions and other actors with interests and norms. Not only can moral economy encompass different logics of normalityandlegitimacy; those logics can crystalize into concrete rhetorical repertoires ofeconomicsandpolitics:categoriesandlogics formaking claims,in theboardroomor courtroom, about a legitimate, normal economy. Such repertoires might advance material interests, ornormativeconsiderations, or both:ifsocialmovementliterature nolonger demarcatestheories as“interests versusculture”,butrather intertwines thetwo,why can we not do the same for economic practice?

Market and Moral Economies Intersect and Overlap

The usual story of moral economy is as a counterweight to markets, and this is not unreasonable in light of evidence. However, if we think of moral economy not as a nebulous set of collective norms and some conscience collective, but rather as a collectively available repertoire of rhetorical and other tools for making claims, then we have an interesting reinterpretation that keeps some of the old version of moral economy, but also expands out notion and overcomes this “either-or” logic of market versus moral economy. Namely, that the market economy of textbook economics and neoliberalism requires its own moral economy -- its own repertoire -- to make claims to advance, institutionalize, and defend market relations and practices (profit-seeking, commodification, accumulation) as normal and legitimate.

England and the United States: Markets from Shifts in Moral Economies

While profit-oriented economic action was not unheard-of before the advent of capitalism, it was not the only driving force of trade: honor and general fulfillment of needs were also important motors of economic activity. Equally important was that economic practices, like much else, was grounded in reciprocity and redistribution. While we can argue about how central such norms were, they did exist and assert some significance, and not only in pre-capitalist societies Some work in behavioral economics suggests the importance of the two, under notions of “justice” and “fairness.”. In short, some version of the classic moral economy was at work in local English economies (and other areas as well). This does not mean that peasant and other communities were autonomous and self-governing, if poor; under feudalism, for example, norms of moral economy were not antithetical to inequalities of power and opportunity, and inherent in the feudal contract was a notion of fairness and defense, rather than pure exploitation or even commodification.

The move to an economy grounded in accumulation and commodification -- the creation of a “market economy” -- required creating a market society. This project involved reducing or eliminating barriers to exchange, especially the power of guilds to control the movement and use of labor; of local welfare, that made labor inefficient; of local currencies; and of barriers to trade. The impetus for such a project was not particularly strong until the coming of industry, even in its embryonic form, because the greater degree of investment required wider markets and longer-term economic stability to recoup debts and generate profits. This required creating a national market in England (and eventually in other countries) [Piore, Sabel, 1984] note similar dynamics, albeit with variation (mass production versus craft pro-duction). Lachmann also notes a shift in perceptions of interests due to changes in state structures [Lach-mann, 1990; 2002].. But that project, by itself, would have been clear to all as a naked grab for power -- something that kings rarely did (and paid for dearly when they did, as did Richard II discovered). Thomas Malthus' writings on population growth, and his claim about the inevitability of mass suffering and death as a result, normalized general hardship as a fact of God-driven nature -- and thus not only inevitable, but as part of God's nature, also legitimate. This legitimated attacks on local welfare, local barriers to the movement of goods and capital, and barriers to the expansion of a single currency across the English realm. Eventually, the idea that poverty was perverse grew from this initial rationalization and moral defense of market society [Somers, Block, 2005]: a formula of normal economic organization in which markets and proper moral behavior went hand-in-hand, and to which Margaret Thatcher could return in the 1980s in her attack on the welfare state.

Arguably, something similar has been at work in the United States. While the next section briefly discussed how moral economy shaped market economy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on another level, the fundamentals of a market economy are twins to a moral economy of individual liberty and responsibility -- especially on America's right wing. Even if we grant material interests at work, those interests are articulated and defended through moral language and claims. What unites the Republican Party, the Koch brothers (billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have financed Republican candidates and right-wing think tanks for many years), and the Tea Party are traditional norms that envision The Good as individual freedom not only to vote, but also to engage in economic activity (and get rich). Perhaps even more for non-elites, a fundamental market economy is not so much grounded in those beliefs that hold sway at the University of Chicago (especially the Efficient market Hypothesis), but rather that markets are inherently good -- these groups articulate and support a moral economy of market institutions. The claim made popular by Milton and Rose Friedman, that markets and democracy have to go together, fits into this normative worldview. Again, partly this comes from interests: Republicans wanted to detach workers from the Democratic Party, and one way was to equate welfare with socialism. However, this only worked because there already were underlying norms of the sanctity of individual autonomy and interests, and private property. Libertarians, the Koch brothers, and the Tea Party make interesting bedfellows precisely because a market of autonomous individuals negotiating the marketplace freely not only appeals to interests; and it is hard to see to whose interests such norms appeal, beyond the Koch brothers and their desire to reduce state regulation of the economy. More important is that markets are invoked to defend norms of autonomous individuals free of state interference in their lives: the market defends individualism, and individualism defends the market This also contributed to the Southern Strategy. To reduce the welfare state from which the majority of Americans benefited, the GOP had to frame welfare as anti-American, as welfare transferring wealth from hard-working whites to non-working non-whites. This was also to explain 1970s stagflation, even if it was wrong [Piore, Sabel, 1984]..

Defending Markets versus Oligopolies

market oligopolie moral economies

One tenet of the usual textbook economics is that monopolies and oligopolies are potential threats to the autonomy and efficiency of market economies. Yet combatting them raises powerful contradictions for a market-oriented discourse: namely, that combating them requires state (or other) interference in the workings of a market economy. One could justify such interference on the grounds of expediency, but expediency does not provide much in the way of legitimacy by its very contingent and fleeting nature. Indeed, as Mancur Olson [Olson, 1982] noted, institutional concentration (e. g. monopolies of powerful unions) hinders the market-efficient flow of capital. However, how to combat them was outside his theory: all economic actors were out for gain, which leads to some form of market power and control. In short, like Karl Marx, Olson also foresaw the threat of oligopoly on many fronts leading to rent-seeking over adding value through innovation.

While it might be various actors' interests to break oligopolies and monopolies, the justification for doing so requires moving beyond market theory, which either assumes markets correct on their own (a highly problematic assumption that only Republicans and University of Chicago faculty seem to believe with any consistency), or that some kind of interference is required. But what kind? While he did not invoke the concept of moral economy, Frank Dobbin [Dobbin, 1994] and William Roy [Roy, 1997] showed that cultural constructions of a normal economy did matter in structuring economic relations and practices, and that norms of the proper position and activity of the state have been crucial to such structuring. The current construction of economic norms and organization -- in particular, state distance from the economy except for policing monopolies and supporting price competition -- was not inevitable. Before the recession of 1837, state-business interaction was seen as a way to support investment in railroads that private capital was unable or unwilling to do by itself, given the size of required investment and possible risks along the way. This positive assessment of state-business relations was not universal, but it was strong enough that Pennsylvania and Ohio worked with private investors to build railroads. Only after the 1837 recession did opinion sway against such close relations, and then for moral rather than truly practical reasons: state involvement threatened the creation of a powerful block of elite interests that would corrupt democratic representation [Roy, 1997]. Decades later, the Progressive Movement could make a similar argument to push for anti-monopoly legislation. As Roy and Dobbin [Roy, 1997; Dobbin, 1994] show, the real reason for the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and similar legislation was not primarily due to beliefs that monopolies would kill economic health: one only needed to look to France, Japan, or other countries to find refutations, and in fact the economic rationale came after the enactment of legislation, as a kind of theoretical justification. Rather, the argument for state interference against monopolies was that the concentration of capital threatened that locus of American sovereignty, local communities. That trust-busting coincided with economic growth made it seem this was economically rational, when the reality of reforms was otherwise: it was a moral economy of sovereignty A similar logic is at work for German ordoliberalism: this economic rationality was grounded in a particular concept of normal state-economy relations and a normal and legitimate economy..