Thompson's English crowd
Thompson (1971) argued that eighteenth-century English food riots were not mere reflexes of hunger. Crowds often forced dealers to sell grain at a 'just price' rather than seizing it, acting on traditional norms that local communities should first be able to buy food at fair prices. When free-market principles eroded these norms, people resisted in the name of legitimacy. The argument parallels debates on the double movement of society against market expansion.
Scott's subsistence ethic
Scott (1976) argued that Southeast Asian peasants follow a 'subsistence ethic', minimizing the risk of starvation in bad years rather than maximizing profit. Landlord–peasant relations, though exploitative, were considered legitimate if they guaranteed subsistence, for example by reducing rents after poor harvests; when colonial states and markets removed these guarantees, peasants rebelled. The argument links to reciprocal obligations in clientelism and to relative deprivation, the gap between expectations and reality.
Debate and extensions
In The Rational Peasant, Popkin (1979) countered that peasants calculate individual interests rather than follow communal norms, and that traditional villages were less egalitarian than assumed. This 'moral economy versus rational choice' debate became a classic issue in peasant studies. Thompson (1991) warned against overextending the concept, yet, as Götz (2015) traces, it spread to welfare, debt and the digital economy, and Edelman (2005) applied it to contemporary transnational peasant movements.
FAQ
- What is moral economy in simple terms?
- The idea that people view the economy through moral standards such as 'this price is fair' or 'no one should starve', and resist when these break down.
- How does it differ from the rational peasant view?
- Moral economy stresses communal norms and subsistence guarantees, while the rational peasant view holds that peasants act by calculating personal costs and benefits.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Thompson, E. P. (1971). The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century. Past & Present, 50(1), 76–136. The founding article.
- Scott, J. C. (1976). The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia. Yale University Press. Subsistence ethic in Southeast Asia.
- Popkin, S. L. (1979). The rational peasant: The political economy of rural society in Vietnam. University of California Press. The rational-choice rebuttal.
- Thompson, E. P. (1991). Customs in common. Merlin Press. Thompson revisits the concept.
- Edelman, M. (2005). Bringing the moral economy back in… to the study of 21st-century transnational peasant movements. American Anthropologist, 107(3), 331–345. Contemporary peasant movements.
- Götz, N. (2015). 'Moral economy': Its conceptual history and analytical prospects. Journal of Global Ethics, 11(2), 147–162. Conceptual history.
- Kerkvliet, B. J. T. (2009). Everyday politics in peasant societies (and ours). The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(1), 227–243. Everyday peasant politics.