Geschichte und Gesellschaft.

Ute Frevert

• Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9783525364260
• eBook ISBN: 9783647364261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Is there a moral economy of capitalism? The term "moral economy" was coined in pre-capitalist times and does not refer to economy as we know it today. It was only in the nineteenth century that economy came to mean the production and circulation of goods and services. At the same time, the term started to be used in an explicitly critical tone: references to moral economy were normally critical of modern forms of economy, which were purportedly lacking in morals. In our times, too, the morality of capitalism is often the topic of debate and controversy. "Moral Economies" engages in these debates. Using historical case studies from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries the book discusses the degree to which economic actions and decisions were permeated with moral, good-vs-bad classifications. Moreover it shows how strongly antiquity's concept of "embedded" economy is still powerful in modernity. The model for this was often the private household, in which moral, social, and economic behavior patterns were intertwined. The do-it-yourself movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries was still oriented towards this model, thereby criticizing capitalism on moral grounds.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Ute Frevert: Introduction
• Ute Frevert: Moral Economies, Present and Past. Social Practices and Intellectual Controversies
• Laurence Fontaine: Reconsidering the Moral Economy in France at the End of the Eighteenth Century
• Mischa Suter: Moral Economy as a Site of Conflict. Debates on Debt, Money, and Usury in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
• Anna Danilina: Die moralische Ökonomie der »inneren Kolonie«. Genossenschaft, Reform und Rasse in der deutschen Siedlungsbewegung (1893–1926)
• Björn Blaß: Frauensache. Städtisches Haushalten als moralische Ökonomie in New York (1880–1917)
• Thomas Rohringer: Arbeitsfreude und Selbstvertrauen. Die moralische Ökonomie der Re-Integration Kriegsbeschädigter in Cisleithanien (1914–1918)
• Reinhild Kreis: Make or Buy? Modes of Provision and the Moral Economy of Households in Postwar Germany
• Till Großmann. Moral Economies of Love and Labor in the GDR. Family Values and Work Ethics in Advice Correspondence, circa 1960
• List of Authors