The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia
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| Author | James C. Scott |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Political Science / Anthropology |
| Published | 1976 |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
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The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia is a non-fiction book by American political scientist James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. This book is a survey of the economic and political tensions in peasant communities of Burma and Vietnam during the 1930s. At the intersection between political science and anthropology, this books aims to explain the conditions and motives for rebellion of peasants in a Cold War political and economic context.
This book is a product of historical research in the colonial archives in Paris and London. It develops an influential analysis of the modes of production and the forms of resistance within peasant communities. It builds on and has had a considerable impact on the theory of moral economy. In this book, Scott argues that the intrusion of the capitalistic, market-driven economy in traditional agrarian societies has severely destabilized the complex networks of peasant subsistence.
The book is part of a larger effort by Scott to study dynamics of resistance in the world's most marginalized communities. His highly regarded work on rural communities makes broader critical observations about the nature and establishment of the state, which in turn has led it to become used by developmental economists, anarchists, and libertarians alike.
The book takes its title from The Moral Economy of the English Crown in the Eighteenth Century, an essay published in 1971 by British historian E. P. Thompson. Thompson argues that an affront to the shared values and norms of the population led to rebellious movements. The riots were triggered by the state breaching the populations' perceived consensus on the legitimate ways to make, sell, and regulate bread. Thompson argues that moral economy, the "consistent traditional view of social norms and obligations, of the proper economic functions of several parties within the community" is a historical variable that has an important impact on social movements.
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