Abstract
AbstractThe relationship between morality and economy has been muddied in the course of disciplinary specialization. While dominant paradigms in economics abstract from the moral dimension, recent approaches to morality and ethics in anthropology neglect the material economy. E. P. Thompson’s “moral economy” has been an influential bridging concept in recent decades, but recent inflationary usage has highlighted shortcomings. Following an overview of the disciplinary debates, the moral dimension of economic life is illustrated in this paper with reference towork as a valuebetween the late 19th and early 21st centuries in Hungary. Contemporary workfare is explored with local examples. It is shown how discourses of work and fairness are being extended into new ethical registers to justify negative attitudes towards a new category of migrants.
Highlights
The relationship between morality and economy has been muddied in the course of disciplinary specialization
A good deal of cultural political economy or cultural economic sociology, or economic anthropology, endeavors to apply models derived from economics to recalcitrant socio-cultural data
In this paper I have considered the concept of moral economy and, more precisely, the moral dimension of work and workfare in contemporary provincial Hungary
Summary
In recent decades the most conspicuous tool in efforts to bridge the chasm between morality and economy has been the concept of “moral economy.” Norbert Go€tz [2015] has surveyed its multifarious usages since the era in which this coupling first became thinkable, as the pendant of political economy. Her call in 1995 for more attention to the values and emotions of scientific communities engaged only marginally with socio-political dimensions and not at all with economy in the familiar material sense Conceding that this use of moral economy might be nothing more than “lexical coincidence,” Fassin applauds it and contrasts Daston to both Thompson and Scott. Having criticized the specificities of Thompson’s usage, he undermines his own logical critique by proposing to restrict it in a different way: to civil society in the sense of third-sector initiatives and “humanitarianism.” Fassin himself has moved in this direction in his empirical work Whereas the latter continues to engage with politics by “articulating” different scales of analysis between the local and the global, Go€tz ends up seeking common ground with behavioural economists. Work as a dominant value remains unquestioned and this is manipulated by power holders as they seek to bolster their declining legitimacy by displacing attention away from local workfare schemes toward an aggressive anti-immigration campaign on a national and European scale
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