Moral Economy

598 DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 50:597 oped in analog environments, we have found this thesis perhaps even more pertinent in digital contexts. In The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties,2 Rosemary Coombe explored mass commercial culture and popular cultural ...

In the late 1990s and early 2000s a wave of Ponzi schemes swept through Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the Solomon Islands. U-Vistract, the most notorious scheme, along with other fast money schemes, attracted 300,000 investors, enticing them with promises of 100 percent interest to be paid monthly. Its founder, Noah Musingku, was a charismatic leader who promoted the scheme as a form of Christian mission and as the basis for establishing an independent kingdom.
Fast Money Schemes uses in-depth interviews with investors, newspaper accounts, and participant observation to understand the scheme’s appeal from the point of view of those who invested and lost, showing that organizers and investors alike understood the scheme as a way of accessing and participating in a global economy. John Cox delivers a “post-village” ethnography that gives insight into the lives of urban, middle-class Papua New Guineans, a group that is not familiar to US readers and that has seldom been a focus of anthropological interest. The book’s concern with understanding the interweaving of morality, finance, and aspirations shared by a global cosmopolitan middle class has wide resonance beyond studies of Papua New Guinea and anthropology.

In virtual worlds, consumption of digital, virtual commodities is apparently limitless. In game-oriented worlds like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XI the acquisition of desirable goods is limited only by skill, time and patience – but mostly patience. Given enough attempts to kill an enormously powerful monster, each player will receive the item she desires. What limits can be meaningfully placed on consumption in an economy of such apparent abundance that patience is the main obstacle to possession, a world in which everyone could eventually acquire everything given enough time?

This paper examines two limits of a spectrum of self-imposed limits to virtual consumption as explained by players of Final Fantasy XI with the moral limits of arbitrage at one end, and a focus on collective accumulation of wealth at the other. The moral constraints on arbitrage in FFXI are tied to a deeply rooted sense of economic fairplay and a strong – and surprisingly pervasive, given that this research was conducted before the financial crisis – ideology of “fair” rather than “free” markets. Some economic behaviour that is morally questionable, such as price gouging and supply manipulation, is understood not only as market manipulation that detracts from users’ game play experience, but also as a threat to players’ enjoyment of the virtual world of FFXI as a commodity, and their acquisition of digital virtual commodities. Players band together in linkshells (guilds) in FFXI to defeat powerful foes and acquire powerful and highly desirable equipment, or more baldly put, to increase their consumption capacity. Distribution of goods through these organisations can be a fraught affair, but generally, the spoils of conquest are distributed evenly. Though such rewards are individually held, the prestige and power of the organisation is increased as its members acquire increasingly sought-after goods, transforming individual accumulation and consumption into collective achievement.

The central contention of this article is that early nineteenth-century Irish landlords were constrained in their ability to control their estates by the prospect of peasant resistance. The apex of that resistance took the form of what are generically known as whiteboy movements, and this article examines the impact of one particular such movement, the Whitefeet, active in the East Midlands and SouthEast in the early 1830s. The article argues that two forms of landlord versus tenant conflicts can be identified: an absolute form, in which landlords (or subletting rentiers called middlemen) behaved as if they had absolute rights over their properties and were the victims of retaliatory violence; and a negotiated form, in which landlords (or their agents) proceeded in a more restrained, and piecemeal fashion, and compromised in the face of opposition. The fact that the magistracy, at least in some instances, condemned the practitioners of absolute conflict would suggest that more measured approaches were the socially accepted norm, precisely because of the potential for retaliatory violence. The article will conclude with a discussion framing the foregoing in terms of moral economy. It will be argued that the balance between landlord power and tenant resistance created a grudging acceptance of respective rights.

"Infrastructural ephemera" as a set of spontaneous affective relations critical to the success of large-scale projects of urban governance in the urban South are examined. The deep contradictions underscoring the labours of women employed as community health workers in Lyari Town, Karachi, at a time of intense gang violence, are explored. Drawing on two years of field research as a polio vaccinator in Lyari, the reach (and limits) of adaptability, skills, and labour (physical, mental, and emotional) involved in the maintenance and repair of a fragile public health infrastructure are explored. Maintaining "community health" also involves dealing mortal and aspirational death to those that provide infrastructural labour to the project of giving life. S hazia did not show up for work, and her sisters-in-law were loath to say why. A moroseness attended the group of young women assembled for the vaccination campaign that morning. Shazia, their de facto leader, was missing. Also gone was Akram, the local gang-boss, whose jokes and fl irtations were as essential to morale as his mediations were to vaccination work. News was that he had been summoned by the Army Rangers and had not been heard from since. Tacitly, all knew that the two absences were connected. Shazia and her kin were community health workers (CHWs). Together they were the backbone of the Global Polio Eradica-tion Initiative (GPEI; the campaign, henceforth) in Pakistan. Unlike her kin, Shazia had always been the picture of quiet ef-fi ciency, skillfully motivating and organising her teams. The government supervisor was completely dependent on her for managing the campaign. Shazia's absence appeared to her a personal betrayal, and she was distraught. The true locus of her dread was the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed monitor, who conducted spot-checks on their performance in the neighbourhood. Without Shazia, a misstep was inevitable , and she would hear about it from the town health offi cer. She was driven to tears anticipating the indignities to come, which clouded everyone's mood further. Buckling under these stresses, the polio drive that month was a disaster. Akram's jocular energy would have helped on such days. As a gangster of Lyari, Akram wore many hats. One of them was that of a CHW. Akram's contributions to the campaign far exceeded the purported utility of a CHW or imagined functions of a gangster. Success for the campaign in Lyari was entirely dependent on the "working relations," solidarities and affections that emerged between the CHWs and the gangs. This was ex-emplifi ed by affi nities Akram and Shazia developed for each other, and between the young sodalities they each led. This paper chronicles the import of those affi nities. The GPEI, like any large-scale project, thrives on rhythms and processes, articulating a mass of bubbling desires. Desires, for instance, that drive the WHO's imperatives from Geneva, jive with the Pakistani elite's fantasies about the city; all dovetailing with other, humbler desires for a good life. The GPEI rendered concrete these entangled desires by offering the po-liovirus as a displaced object around which to organise. The campaign thus spatialised and rationalised these libidinal investments. Thus, infrastructural to the realisation of massive transnational fantasies were tiny hopes and affi nities held by the young CHWs.

This paper takes as its starting point the conflicting claims about the present condition of Tibetan culture. While the Dalai Lama argues that a "cultural genocide" is going on in Tibet, the Chinese Party State emphasises its efforts to safeguard and promote Tibetan cultural heritage. Regardless of the different meanings the notion of " culture" adopts and the different agendas it serves, both sets of claims rely on a remarkably similar rhetoric, which couches cultural heritage not only in political or economic but also in moral terms. Both the " cultural genocide " thesis and the Party State's alleged efforts to safeguard Tibetan culture are thereby enmeshed in the larger " ethico-politics" surrounding the " Tibet question " and the rise of China in the world. How to understand the fusion of the economic, the political, and the moral? What happens when the political economy of cultural identity (development, tourism, property and benefits) meets with the ethico-politics of cultural survival? I argue that a new form of moral economy has emerged at the conjuncture of "cultural survival " and "safeguarding cultural heritage" – a moral economy of cultural identity, similar in structure but different in form and style from the classical cases of moral economies.

Argentina se autopercibe desde hace décadas como un país de clases medias. Es parte del mito fundacional que pervive hasta hoy. El kirchnerismo, como otros movimientos nacional-populares, ha tenido una relación ambivalente con estos sectores: aunque algunos vieron en él un «populismo de las clases medias», estas fueron a menudo consideradas como culturalmente «colonizadas». Y es de las clases medias de donde surge la fuerza del macrismo, recientemente derrotado en las urnas.

This paper explores the moral economy of food in the United Kingdom via discourses on food bank usage and obesity. It argues that both of these markers of malnutrition were interpreted under the Conservative-led governments of David Cameron (2010–2016) as failings of personal responsibility and identified primarily with the working class, advancing the assumption that poor people make poor choices. Based on a critique of this account, our wider contribution is two-fold. First, we identify the Hayekian lineage of the discourse of personal responsibility, highlighting its utility in facilitating a form of neoliberal market consent through its insistence on self-reliance. Second, we stake out an alternative to this conceptualization through a discussion of Adam Smith’s notion of self-command, which we call interpersonal responsibility.

This article critically examines how banks and microfinance companies morally construed and evaluated their lending practices and income in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Banks occupy a powerful position in a monetary economy, because they do not merely create money 'out of thin air', but can charge for it, that is, interest. In doing so, they obtain unearned income and extract wealth. The article examines how banks and microfinance companies used myths, ideals, discourses, norms and emotions to justify and de-politicise their unequal power, unearned income and damaging effects. The study draws on the moral economy perspective and the post-Keynesian theory of money to understand financial institutions' moral justifications and rationalisations of their position and power. This article contributes to a wider literature on neoliberalism and morality in post-socialist economies.

"La morale et l’éthique sont aujourd’hui invoquées dans les domaines les plus variés, qu’il s’agisse de politique ou d’économie, de guerre ou de sexualité, de justice internationale ou de recherche biologique. Si ces préoccupations ne sont pas entièrement neuves, la manière de les constituer collectivement en problèmes et d’en débattre dans l’espace public implique désormais un certain rapport aux valeurs et aux émotions qui définit ce qu’on peut appeler la question morale. Pour l’explorer, on propose ici un détour anthropologique.
Des classiques essais de Montaigne sur les cannibales aux travaux récents sur la science, la religion, l’humanitaire, la corruption ou les attentats suicides, les textes réunis, dont beaucoup sont inédits en français, présentent les grands débats contemporains autour du relativisme et de l’universalisme, du devoir moral et de la liberté éthique, de la responsabilité du chercheur et de la régulation de la recherche. Ainsi, d’horizons exotiques en rivages familiers, cette anthologie critique, la première réalisée sur ce thème, permet de penser à nouveaux frais des enjeux que nos sociétés tendent trop souvent à traiter de façon passionnelle et intuitive, au risque de la simplification et de l’ethnocentrisme."

Debates about Fundamentalist Christianity as anthropology’s “repugnant other” have provided a lively set of reflections since Susan Harding’s influential article was published in 1991.  Anthropologists wishing to study fundamentalist Christians have struggled to legitimise this interest to their peers. Similarly, liberal theologians regard the emergence of prosperity theology as a form of sanctified greed. For those concerned with the ecological crisis, as an endorsement of the very values of commodification that disturb the proper relations between God, people and planet.  Both anthropologists and theologians have placed the prosperity gospel on the margins of their projects of inquiry.
This paper seeks to explore the apparent gap between liberal intellectuals and populist Pentecostal practice by considering the dynamics of fast money schemes in Papua New Guinea (PNG). These Ponzi schemes spread through Christian churches both Pentecostal and mainline, using the language of prosperity theology. Their success indicates a broad reach of these ideas that includes some more liberal Papua New Guinean intellectuals and makes them a “mainstream” phenomenon within PNG. My anthropological analysis of middle class Christian investors in fast money schemes indicates deeper and more philanthropic moral engagements than is commonly thought possible by critics of the prosperity gospel who see it as motivated by individualistic greed.

Localized debates about who unauthorized migrants are and what they do, or do not, deserve unfold in a culturally specific register that is deeply charged with emotion and moral valuation. Structuring such debates are vernacular discursive frames that emerge from, and reflect, a common “local moral economy.” Taking Israel as case study, this article examines six elements of the country's local moral economy – biopolitical logic, historical memory, political emotion, popularized religion, an ideology of “fruitful multiplication,” and hasbara (“public diplomacy”/propaganda) – and explores their impact on public debates about unauthorized and irregular forms of migration. Here, as elsewhere, conventionalized distinctions that frame much migration scholarship – e.g. “economic” vs. “political” migrants, “migrant workers” vs. “refugees,” even the terms “authorized” and “unauthorized” themselves – bear but limited salience. Migration researchers who hope to influence local policy debates must recognize the weight and influence of local moral economies, and the chasms that divide vernacular from conventionalized frames. Achieving this sort of nuanced understanding is, at root, an ethnographic challenge.

The article analyses the activity of so-called "margouillats", informal go-betweens found arounf the Abidjan court house, who work to "get papers released" for people having filed a request for civil documents - particularly birth certificates and other documents proving citizenship. The article describes their integration into the administrative practices of document production and the interpersonal networks of the court "food chain". Analysis of bureacratic corruption is of secondary importance, in our frame, if compared to the study of moral justifications brought to the commodification of nationality. Focusing on the morally liminal space of the production of a false identity document, the article suggests that these intermediaries do not erase the politicalboundaries of citizenship, but rather, through capillary action, extend the discriminating action of the state into the streets.

Collectivity, economics, gender, and spirituality converge in art historian Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol's meticulous reading of Philippine modern artist Anita Magsaysay-Ho's painting, In the Marketplace. Skirting the ease of performative, atomized, or biographical takes on the subjects at hand, the writer primes instead a broader proposal for latency.

Pourquoi Freud, mort depuis 1939, fait-il encore régulièrement scandale dans les grands médias ? Plus encore que la psychanalyse, c’est sa personne qui est régulièrement attaquée. Dernier éclat en date : la parution en 2010 du Crépuscule d’une idole, de Michel Onfray, qui affirmait que Freud n’était qu’un simple affabulateur. Le siècle écoulé compte ainsi une série de scandales qui, au lieu d’atteindre Freud, l’ont édifié en mythe. Car dénigrer Freud, c’est le populariser. Mieux : c’est accomplir une prophétie qu’il n’a lui-même cessé de prédire.

Samuel Lézé enseigne à l’École normale supérieure de Lyon, au sein de laquelle il est également responsable de l’équipe DSM (Dire la santé mentale) à l’Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités (IHRIM). Il est l’auteur de L’Autorité des psychanalystes (Puf, 2010) et codirecteur de La Question morale (Puf, 2013).

Questa pubblicazione si è avvalsa di un finanziamento Miur (Prin 2003) alla ricerca su Scritture femminili di storia e di memoria coordinata nazionalmente da Ilaria Porciani e svolta nell'ambito dell'Unità di ricerca di Firenze su Donne e nazione. Presenze, modelli e immagini, responsabile scientifica Simonetta Soldani. Progetto grafico : PHOTOGRAMMA/Luana Borgognoni e Marco Spadoni © 2006 ODRADEK edizioni s.r.l. via san Quintino 35, 00185 ROMA La notte del 20 o 21 giugno sul Rio de la Plata si videro due lune calanti. Un caso curioso. Tutti sanno che si possono vedere due lune crescenti la notte del 13 di quel mese… ma non la notte del 20. Comunque nel giugno di quell'anno si videro molte lune. Hugo Pratt, Y todo a media luz, «Corto Maltese», maggio 1986, p. 21. 7 1 Christophe Charle, La crise des sociétés impériales. Allemagne, France, Grande-Bretagne (1900-1940). Essai d'histoire sociale comparée, Parigi, Seuil, 2001, pp. 303-304. 2 Mario Missiroli, Il fascismo e la crisi italiana, in Il fascismo e i partiti politici italiani. Testimonianze del 1921-1923, a cura di Renzo De Felice, Bologna, Cappelli, 1966, p. 294. 3 Alberto Caracciolo, L'ingresso delle masse sulla scena europea, in Id. et al., Il trauma dell'inter-Charles Tilly, La formazione degli stati nazionali nell'Europa occidentale, Bologna, il Mulino, 1984, p. 232; Natalie Zemon Davis, I riti della violenza, in Ead., Le culture del popolo. Sapere, rituali e resistenze nella Francia del Cinquecento, Torino, Einaudi, 1980, pp. 210-258. 8 PACE PANE TERRA 6 Simonetta Soldani, Il ritorno della rivoluzione, in Storia contemporanea, Roma, Donzelli, 1997, p. 35. Sulla storia del concetto di rivoluzione si veda la recente sintesi di Gabriele Turi, Il nostro mondo. Dalle grandi rivoluzioni all'11 settembre, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2006, pp. 37-47; cfr. anche Bruno Bongiovanni e Gian Mario Bravo, Rivoluzione, in Alla ricerca della politica. Voci per un dizionario, a cura di Angelo d'Orsi, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1995, pp. 217-246; Sissco, Rivoluzioni. Una discussione di fine Novecento, a cura di Daniela Luigia Caglioti ed Enrico Francia, Roma, Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, 2001. 7 Cfr. Roberto Bianchi, Les mouvements contre la vie chère en Europe au lendemain de la Grande Guerre, in Le XXe siècle des guerres, a cura di Pietro Causarano et al., Parigi, Les Éditions de l'Atelier, 2004, pp. 237-245. 8 Eric J. Hobsbawm, Il secolo breve, Milano, Rizzoli, 1995, p. 18. 9 Charles S. Maier, La rifondazione dell'Europa borghese. Francia, Germania e Italia nel decennio successivo alla prima guerra mondiale, Bologna, il Mulino, 1999.

How do applications of emergent technologies contribute to the social legitimacy of finance? To address this question, we examine a set of technologies that have received increasing industry, media, and scholarly attention over the past decade: blockchains. Harnessing the concepts of ‘moral economy’ and ‘scandal’, we identify both possibilities and limits for blockchain applications to legitimate a range of monetary and investment activities. However, we also find that a persistent individualisation of responsibility for failures and shortcomings with ‘live’ blockchain experimentation has undermined the potentially legitimating aspects of this technology. Combining a reliance on technological fixes with a persistent individualist moral economy, we conclude, works against efforts to confront head-on the tensions underpinning the on-going legitimacy crises facing finance.

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency is a fine-grained critique of the Naga struggle for political redemption, the state’s response to it, and the social corollaries and carry-overs of protracted political conflict on everyday life. Offering an ethnographic underview, Jelle Wouters illustrates an ‘insurgency complex’ that reveals how embodied experiences of resistance and state aggression, violence and volatility, and struggle and suffering link together to shape social norms, animate local agitations, and complicate inter-personal and inter-tribal relations in expected and unexpected ways. It thus presses us to rethink our views on tribalism, conflict and ceasefire, development, corruption, and democratic politics

This paper examines the Confucian concept of tian, conventionally translated into English as “Heaven.” The secondary literature on tian has primarily focused on the question of what tian is: e.g., whether tian is an anthropomorphic deity or a naturalistic force, or whether tian is transcendent or immanent. Instead, this paper locates tian with respect to the ethical life of human beings, and argues that the two conflicting concepts of “moral economy” and “contingency” are main characteristics of tian. This paper further investigates these characteristics in Kongzi’s and Mengzi’s ethical thought: how they conceptualized moral economy and contingency, and how their different conceptualizations shaped their respective ethical programs: Kongzi’s ethics of faith and Mengzi’s ethics of confidence.

Through this chapter I attempt to argue that buzzer operations in Indonesia are not merely in the form of click farms whose operators are driven by monetary incentives, but a creative labor that is contextualized by the moral world of the actors enmeshed within Indonesian political culture. Buzzing is not always a mere work, but can also be a political play through which they gain a sense of agency. Further, I argue that we cannot isolate the phenomenon of political buzzer as a uniquely digital phenomenon. In this case, buzzer subcontract work is intertwined with the phenomenon of political voluntarism. As I will demonstrate, buzzer subcontract work lives on a certain moment where Indonesian media ecology plays a vital role in informing and involving public engagement with politics— where there is a feedback loop between news outlets and social media—in which middle class citizens are involved as netizens.

The sustainable market shows tremendous growth across plantation commodities in the past few years. It helps companies achieve corporate sustainability and thus leads to better social infrastructure for the plantation community. The study based on UTZ certified tea estates in Sri Lanka, draws on a significant reading as to how the marginalised plantation workers, especially women workers identified/recognised themselves as dignified worker after receiving a pair of shoes and uniforms in the process of UTZ Certification. In the process, the paper details and opens up intangible impacts to the workers which reflect on productivity. The management observes that there is a change of attitude and conflicts are reduced in the estate premises. However, due to many challenges and scant development, the strides are intermittent and ensuring a broader framework of empowerment and social mobility remains distant to the community in the tea sector in Sri Lanka.

This  module  provides  a  synoptic  view  of  the  so-called ‘middle peasant thesis’ proposed by Hamza Alavi  and  Eric Wolf. According  to  this  thesis, the middle peasants are the most radical class in a peasant rebellion owing to their  independent  stature  in  the  peasant  economy. This module traces  the peasant  question  from  Marx  onwards  and  follows  the  schema  provided  by Lenin and Mao in the contexts of Russia and China respectively. Finally, it discusses  the  debate  on  the thesis  as  it  took  place  in  India, in  which  the scholars brought not only the question of class but also caste, ethnicity, and political  ideology  of  the  peasant  classes  within  the  context of  nationalist struggle and Green Revolution.

Scholars who have critically analyzed the commodification of nature have explored how the specific bio-physical features of the objects to be commodified can shape the outcome of the commodification process. Thus, the establishment and behavior of a market system is closer to a political struggle than it is a simple technical and spontaneous process. Despite their contributions, these approaches have not focused on the resistance that cultural exegesis, self-identification, and the affective connection between the human and non-human pose to market systems. In this paper, I show how the Atacameño people from the Atacama Desert (Chile) have subverted the radical pro-water market model imposed by the Chilean military dictatorship in 1981 by relying on their water-related cultural values. In some Atacameño communities, the water market has not operated to ensure that water rights are put to those uses with the highest economic value (e.g., mining or urban water consumption). Indeed, in these communities , internal rules both forbid the sale of water rights to the mining sector and regulate the distribution of water within the community in terms that operate as barriers to other transactions. These rules form part of a moral economy of water that is a concrete ethic based on shared values and affective connections between humans and non-humans, mandating how people should relate to one another in relation to water. Together, these relations have decommodified water and contradict the neoliberal explanation of how a free water market should work.

Coolies of Capitalism tells the story of women, men and children being recruited and transported to work on the plantations of tea being set up in nineteenth century colonial India. The making of these workers into so called coolies was a broader global process of disciplining labour in the nineteenth century revealing deep lineages and linkages with slave labour and " free " wage labour. The process of producing coolies revealed deep and organic relationship between colonial state and private capital. The author particularly highlights the human dimension of this story by showing how the coolies themeselves were actively intervening and transforming the nature of plantation capitalism in a colonial world.

Cattle raiding among peoples living at the Northern end of the Rift Valley in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, and Ethiopia has, by some estimates, become an increasing problem in recent years.  This paper examines Turkana cattle raiding through ethno-history and current anthropological studies in an attempt to make connections between the practice of cattle raiding and Turkana ethnicity.  Often, the root causes of cattle raiding are identified by peace-seeking NGOs  as directly related to 1) the scarcity of resources in the harsh arid environment and the ensuing poverty, and 2) the availability of automatic weapons (AK-47s).  I argue that these external factors alone are insufficient in describing the root causes of Turkana cattle raiding.  Internal ethno-religio factors, including the structure of a moral economy, the belief in divine ethnic election, and the role of traditional religious diviners/priests (emuron) must also be examined as root causes for anyone seeking solutions to the problems of cattle raiding in the Northern Rift Valley.

La sexualité fait partie intégrante de l’imaginaire associé aux vacances d’été, et le discours - textes et images - des magazines cristallise dans cette période les traits dominants du traitement médiatique de "ces sujets". Le "sexe", comme objet de discours, est un thème prédominant dans les magazines genrés ; il s’affiche en Une de couverture, donne le ton, organise l’espace, rythme les pages.

Articulant analyse de discours, analyse des médias et sémiologie, nous avons étudié les magazines de l’été 2012 lus par un public "jeune" en tant que médiations d’un certain type de savoir sur la sexualité. De quel sexe parle-t-on ? Qui en parle ? Comment ? Pour dire quoi ? L’objectif de notre travail est d’interroger la médiation "magazine" comme participant de la re-production/circulation de représentations normées, socialement et moralement acceptables.

Au-delà de la sexualisation des corps - notamment féminins - dans les nombreux encarts publicitaires, le sexe est présent sous forme de "conseils" dans les pages des magazines. Il est le cadre et l’objet d'un discours didactique. Ce discours didactique présuppose une division binaire du monde et la séparation, voire l’opposition fondamentale entre "les hommes" et "les femmes". Il présuppose aussi le manque - de connaissance, de compétence et/ou d’expérience sexuels. Les savoirs anatomicobiologiques
des "experts" invoquant la "nature" font choeur et écho avec l’expertise profane qui valorise la connaissance par l’expérience.

La cohérence du discours structuré autour de trois modèles didactiques principaux parfois concurrents, semble finalement reposer sur sa fonction. Concept mythique barthésien, la sexualité est traitée par la mobilisation d’un savoir polymorphe et son traitement se fonde sur des valeurs morales autant sinon plus que sur des normes car il s’agit moins d’une réflexion critique à promouvoir le temps des vacances que de valeurs toujours construites comme désirables. Le traitement de la sexualité par les magazines ne participerait-il pas finalement d’une économie morale du bien-être ?

Based on a synthesis of the empirical scholarship on England and Germany, this paper demonstrates that in both regions, rural socio-economic developments c.1200–c.1800 are similar: this period witnesses the rise to numerical predominance and growing economic significance of the ‘sub-peasant classes’, which had a growing impact on the market as a result of their increasing market dependence, and from which towards the end of the period a rural proletariat emerged. Against the influential theory of Robert Brenner, it is argued that the period c.1200–c.1400 cannot really be categorized as ‘feudal’ according to Brenner’s definition; and ‘agrarian capitalism’ does not adequately describe the socio-economic system that obtained by the end of the sixteenth century. A genuine transition to capitalism is only evident from after c.1750, and can be found in Germany as well as in England; it is predicated both on ideological shifts, and the evolution of the rural proletariat, which is only found in large numbers by or after c.1800.

“Coolie” is a generic category for the “unskilled” manual labour. The offering of services for hire had various pre-colonial lineages. In the nineteenth century there was an attempt to recast the term in discursive constructions and material practices for “mobilized-immobilized” labour. Coolie labour was often proclaimed as a deliberate compromise straddling the regimes of the past (slave labour) and the future (free labour). It was portrayed as a stage in a promised transition. The tea plantations of Assam, like many other tropical plantations in South Asia, were inaugurated and formalized during this period. They were initially worked by the locals. In the late 1850s, the locals were replaced by labourers imported from outside the province who were unquestioningly designated “coolies” in the historical literature. Qualifying this framework of transition (local to coolie labour) and introduction (of coolie labour), this study makes a case for the “production” of coolie labour in the history of the colonial-capitalist plantations in Assam. The intention of the research is not to suggest an unfettered agency of colonial-capitalism in defining and “producing” coolies, with an emphasis on the attendant contingencies, negotiations, contestations and crises. The study intervenes in the narratives of an abrupt appearance of the archetypical coolie of the tea gardens (i.e., imported and indentured) and situates this archetype’s emergence, sustenance and shifts in the context of material and discursive processes.

Résumé :
Notre objet est une communauté de 300 à 400 passionnés-collectionneurs de vieux ordinateurs et de vieux jeux vidéo des années 1970-90, autrement appelés « vieilles machines », dispersés dans toute la France ainsi qu’en Belgique et en Suisse. Cette communauté est organisée en premier lieu par des forums sur internet réunissant tous les membres bien qu’émanant d’associations locales. Ces forums servent en premier lieu à l’échange d’informations et de matériel de collection entre passionnés. Un système de valeur riche et complexe organise les relations sociales autours de l’amour et de l’utilisation des vieilles machines, d’une volonté de partage du savoir et du rejet de la spéculation. Le partage est au cœur de l’imaginaire et des pratiques de cette communauté. Il n’est pourtant pas la règle dans les économies qui l’entourent (eBay, brocantes, sites d’enchères divers). Or à l’époque des les fondateurs de la communauté vers 1998, quand ces objets n’étaient que des rebus technique obsolètes, avant qu’ils ne deviennent des objets de collection, les passionnés pouvaient alors s’approvisionner gratuitement ou presque. Ils ont donc ressenti la mise en place d’un marché extérieur comme une forme d’expropriation. Ils ont donc réorganisé les règles de vie et d’échange au sein de la communauté pour contrecarrer la hausse des prix interne que générait la hausse sur le marché extérieur. Ils ont à la fois promu la notion d’échange mutuellement profitable contre l’idée de profit, organisé un système de tabou sur les prix réel des objets, tirant parti du statut de prescripteurs que leur conférait leur activité de promoteurs du patrimoine informatique et vidéo-ludique. Ils ont ainsi réussi à créer une niche économique, un marché à bas prix, à l’accès fermement contrôlé mais au sein duquel, une fois intégré, après avoir construit une situation par une « carrière » chacun peut profiter d’un système d’entraide généralisée et d’une générosité communément partagée.
Mots clés : communautés en ligne, anthropologie économique, socialisation, patrimoine, jeu vidéo, informatique, forums, collection, eBay, economie morale, imaginaire, réseaux, passion.

Sumary :
This work is about a community of 300 to 400 hobbyist-collectors of micro-computers and video-games from the 70’s to the 90’s which they call “vieilles machines”. They are scattered all over France and also Belgium and Switzerland. This community is communicating through online forums which gather all members although they belong to local offline associations. These forums are mainly used to exchange objects and information among collectors. A rich and complex system of value and reprensentations organizes the social relationships. The main points are: the love of the “vieilles machines”, the will to use them, the idea of sharing knowledge and rejection of speculation. The idea of sharing is the very basis of the daily behaviour and social imaginary of the community. Sharing isn’t however the rule in neighbouring economic systems (eBay, garage sales other online auction websites). Yet, during the first time of the community around 1998, when these objects were only obsolescent technical rubbishes, before they began to be seen as collectible items, the community members could collect for free or very few money. Thus they felt as if they have been stolen when an outside market developed and prices increased. As a reaction, they changed social norms and exchange rules inside the community in order to temper the internal increase of the prices caused by outside market’s increase. They both promoted the idea of mutually satisfactory exchange and organized a taboo on the object’s real price using the position of major online opinion leaders on their subjects they got from being the main promoters of video games and micro-computer heritage in French speaking internet. They managed to create a niche economy, a low price market in which one cannot integrate easily but in which when fully integrated, after building one’s position through a “career” one can beneficiate from an extend system of generosity and mutual aid and 40 to 70% lowered prices.
Keywords : online community, economic anthropology, socialization, cultural heritage, video games, micro-computers, collection, eBay, moral economy, imaginary, networks, passion.

In traditional anthropological work on the Philippines, the framework of patron-client ties has been extensively used to explain the exercise and contest of power between people in asymmetrical relationships: landowners and peasants (Kerkvliet, 1995), politicians and voters (Rafael, 1998), and the rich and the poor (Cannell, 1999). In this paper, inspired by Pertierra and Turner’s (2012) challenge to locate television within the frame of the national and the local, I explore whether and how enduring cultural normativities of patron/client can shed light on the peculiar relationship of television/audience in the Philippines. In particular, I draw attention to the unique feature of privately owned television networks as interventionist, whereby economic aid and assistance is offered to “the masses” not only in “wealth-sharing” game shows but also in the charitable projects and disaster relief operations run by media oligarchs and celebrities. While elite-owned, television confers symbolic recognition to the poor through their “overrepresentation” (Wood & Skeggs, 2009) across multiple genres, and offers material redistribution in the transactional interactions between generous tv personalities and loyal audiences in various “zones” of television experience. The paper reflects on the merits and limits of the (upper-class) critique of patron/client television as exploitative and perpetuating of a “culture of mendicancy” in developing, “third world” Philippines. It demonstrates why such media critique fails to restrain interventionist television in the face of tv owners and producers’ justifications that draw from both traditional cultural idioms and the neoliberal vocabulary of tv ratings, profits, and trust surveys.

Margaret R. Somers is a leading comparative historical sociologist and social theorist specializing in law and political economy, citizenship and rights, and the work of Karl Polanyi. After pathbreaking work early in her career on the origins of modern citizenship rights as well as on the logic and practice of comparative historical sociology, historical epistemology, and narrative analysis she turned to problems of escalating social exclusion, statelessness, and the threat to citizenship rights in the context of intensifying neoliberalism. Author of multiple articles and books and winner of numerous prizes, Somers is Professor Emerita of Sociology and History at the University of Michigan. Strongly influenced by the writing of Karl Polanyi, she has been a key contributor to debates on English legal history; dedemocratization and the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism; the political economy of predistribution, moral worth and market justice; and the political power of knowledge cultures and ideas. She also writes about contemporary social policy for a broader public in The Guardian, the Washington Post, Open Democracy, and other venues. In this interview with Daniel Hirschman, conducted between 2021-2022 in a multiplicity of synchronous and asynchronous formats befitting the pandemic moment, Somers discusses her intellectual and political trajectories and how they shaped her intersecting research programs, including her latest work on moral economy, predistribution, and the contemporary authoritarian moment.

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Traditionally, the history of Auxilio Social (AS) has been explained from a political perspective. In this tradition, both the leadership and local branches of the New State and the single party (FET-JONS) have enjoyed particular attention by historians. More recently, there have been new studies on gender, propaganda and personal memoirs (particularly by children). This article addresses the relationship between AS and the general population, exploring the organisation’s purported capacity to improving the atrocious social conditions existing in post-war Spain. Special attention is paid to the functioning of AS canteens, organisation of local branches, the extent of corruption, and how all those aspects were perceived by the poorer social strata. This study from below is a contribution to a wider debate on socio-political attitudes and daily life in early Franco’s Spain.