Transnational moral economies: The value of monetary and social remittances in transnational families

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 760-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia D Solari
Keyword(s):  
Moral Economy ◽  
State Building ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Transnational Families ◽  
Social Remittances ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Building Project

Although migration scholars have called for studying both ends of migration, few studies have empirically done so. In this article the author analyzes ethnographic data conducted with migrant careworkers in Italy, many undocumented, and their non-migrant children in Ukraine to uncover the meanings they assign to monetary and also social remittances defined as the transfer of ideas, behaviors, and values between sending and receiving countries. The author argues that migrants and non-migrant children within transnational families produce a transnational moral economy or a set of social norms based on a shared migration discourse – in this case, either poverty or European aspirations – which governs economic and social practices in both sending and receiving sites. The author found that these contrasting transnational moral economies resulted in the production of ‘Soviet’ versus ‘capitalist’ subjectivities with consequences for migrant practices of integration in Italy, consumption practices for migrants and their non-migrant children, and for Ukraine’s nation-state building project.

Moral economy of flexible production: Fabricating precarity between the conveyor belt and the household

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitra Kofti
Keyword(s):  
Employment Status ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Conveyor Belt ◽  
Flexible Production ◽  
Flexible Work ◽  
Production Site ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Moral Frameworks

In this article I discuss some of the theoretical implications of adopting moral economy as an approach to analysing new forms of flexible production and work. Despite a growing interest in the anthropology of precarity and work, the linkages between political and moral economies have been relatively neglected. By discussing E.P. Thompson’s approach to moral economy as well as ways moral economy has been discussed in anthropology, the article argues it is a timely and encompassing approach for the study of flexible work and precarity, as well as compliance and resistance to inequality. A nexus of diverse moral frameworks of value converge at the production site and back home, contributing to the reproduction of precarity and capital under flexible forms of accumulation. The article suggests that moral economy may offer an encompassing approach to studying individual ideas and practices and their relation with collective moral frameworks and confinements and to exploring change and change potential. It draws from an ethnography based on long-term fieldwork in a privatized factory in Bulgaria, in the context of radical economic transformations and privatization projects. It scrutinizes solidarities, tensions and inequalities developed around the conveyor belt, with a particular focus on gender and employment status inequalities and their intertwinement with managerial and household practices.

Declaring Kinship – Some Remarks on the Indeterminate Relation between Commensality and Kinship in Western Kenya

Sociologus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schellhaas ◽  
Mario Schmidt ◽  
Gilbert Francis Odhiambo
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Western Kenya ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Marriage Customs

Based upon ethnographic fieldwork in Western Kenya, this article re-evaluates the widespread assumption that commensality constructs or, at least, earmarks kin or kin-like relations. In contrast to such generalizations, our ethnographic data suggests that the relation between kinship and social practices such as eating together is culturally not predetermined in Western Kenya. This understanding of the relation between social practices and kinship as indeterminate allows the inhabitants of Kaleko, a small marketplace in Western Kenya, to use different and conflicting strategies of ‘declaring kin’. These conflicting strategies include assertions of biological kinship, refusals to clarify the specific kin-relation and evocations of love and care. Understanding kinship as an effect of strategic practices of individuals and not of cultural norms or social practices has analytical repercussions for an analysis of marriage customs and infertility.

scholarly journals The Moral Economy of Thrift: The Production of the Indebted Self in the Reality Series Getting out of Debt and Life or Debt

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 485-500
Author(s):  
Silke Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Tv Show

In this article, the intersection of the economic and social dimensions of thrift is analysed under the special condition of debt. The debt context serves as a focal glass exposing agents, their social practices and strategies of accumulation capitals with regard to appropriate spending. In order to capture the many layers of thrift, the concept of moral economies is applied. This concept tries to reconcile two seemingly divergent dimensions of human behaviour which can be described as individualistic, calculating and serving a self-interest (economy) on the one hand and community-oriented and benefitting a common good (morality) on the other hand. Starting out with an overview over studies on moral economies in historical and social science since the early 1970s, I will explain the heuristic use of the concept for the case of debts research and apply it to representations of thrift as visualised and popularised in the reality TV shows Raus aus den Schulden (Getting Out of Debt) and Life or Debt. Here, the images of homes are clues for the cultural productions of appropriateness on TV: What are suitable ways of living when in debt? What are adequate scenes of dwelling and narratives of dealing with debts and which normative structures regulate those stories, the perception of the self and potential social exclusion? By examining the TV show as a strong voice in the debt discourse, thrift turns out to be a cornerstone in the internal and external regimes of governing debt in the micropolitics of TV.

Trustworthy Government and Legitimating Beliefs

2019 ◽  
pp. 362-384
Author(s):  
Margaret Levi
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Advanced Democracies

A trustworthy government is one that keeps its promises (or has exceptionally good reasons why it fails to), is relatively fair in its decision-making and enforcement processes, and delivers goods and services. A legitimate government is one that appeals to widely accepted justifications for its selection, maintenance, and policies. Investigations across history and countries reveal that the more trustworthy the government, the more likely it is to evoke observation of its laws and acquiescence to policies. Less clear is the link between perceptions that government is trustworthy and beliefs that it is legitimate, at least in countries claiming or trying to be democratic. Being trustworthy in practices and outcomes may contribute to perceptions of government legitimacy. However, trustworthiness is, at best, a necessary but not sufficient condition for legitimating beliefs. This chapter explores the relationship between the trustworthiness of government and its legitimacy by considering cases from both advanced democracies and state-building efforts. It argues that current democracies may need to refashion their moral economies—the extra-market reciprocal rights and obligations that link populations, governments, corporations, and all the other various organizations that make up the society—if they are to reestablish strong grounds for legitimacy.

Rebranding Desolation

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb
Keyword(s):  
Regional Planning ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
State Building ◽  
Negev Desert ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Urban And Regional Planning ◽  
Economic Threat ◽  
Hebrew Culture ◽  
Building Project

This article explores the trope of desert desolation in the Zionist state-building project. It traces the strategic uses of desolate imagery in the pioneer narrative (1880s–1920s), by the New Hebrew culture (1923–1948), during the ‘golden age’ of urban and regional planning (1948–1956), and through marketing the Negev desert town of Mitzpe Ramon to tourists (1993–present). These eras highlight the tension between desolation as reflecting the alienated ‘outsiders’ gaze’ versus desolation as energizing and inspiring place making. I argue that since unproductive, desolate landscapes pose an economic threat, both Israel’s collectivist and capitalist settlement projects have confronted the challenge of strategically rebranding desolation to promote its allure.

Criminalizing Resistance: The Cases of Balata and Jenin Refugee Camps

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alaa Tartir
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
State Building ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Palestinian Authority ◽  
Security Sector Reform ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Building Project

The Palestinian Authority (PA) adopted donor-driven security sector reform (SSR) as the linchpin to its post-2007 state-building project. As SSR proceeded, the occupied West Bank became a securitized space and the theater for PA security campaigns whose ostensible purpose was to establish law and order. This article tackles the consequences of the PA's security campaigns in Balata and Jenin refugee camps from the people's perspective through a bottom-up ethnographic methodological approach. These voices from below problematize and examine the security campaigns, illustrating how and why resistance against Israel has been criminalized. The article concludes by arguing that conducting security reform to ensure stability within the context of colonial occupation and without addressing the imbalances of power can only ever have two outcomes: “better” collaboration with the occupying power and a violation of Palestinians' security and national rights by their own security forces.

scholarly journals ‘People are willing to fight to the end’. Romanticising the ‘moral’ in moral economies of irrigation

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-217
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Development Policy ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Irrigation Development ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Emic Perspective ◽  
Moral Discourses

This article is about the continued salience of a particular understanding of moral economy in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the fact that a significant body of anthropological theory argues against simplified binaries of market and moral economies, such binaries persist. These either romanticise or vilify moral economies and exist in both policy and academic contexts. Thus, moral economies are said to drive corruption or shape anti-market cultural stances. Meanwhile, a romantic fantasy of a non-capitalist rural economy oriented by morality rather than economic rationality continues to animate areas of development policy and to direct funding. My argument is not with the concept of moral economy itself, but with how it is marshalled in support of both romantic and sometimes negatively essentialised conceptions of people and places. The article sets out the case for the persistence of these ideas, focusing on their application to irrigation development and the problems with this. I then use an example from southern Malawi to illustrate how moral ideas of fairness and reciprocity interplay with processes of differentiation in access to (and exclusion from) land and labour and influence how people manage scarce resources. Whilst there are moral discourses and a mutual embeddedness of the moral and economic, these reflect a range of ethically informed positions which are influenced by social position and power. However, this emic perspective is largely absent from the more romanticised models. I conclude by reflecting on the politics of their persistence.

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