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MORAL ECONOMY
The central characteristic of economic activity in a tribal society. Rather than economic exchanges being motivated by self-interest, greed or profit, exchanges are driven by moral obligations created by kinship relations, gift giving, and rituals. A hunter or food gatherer may by obliged to give much of the food to a network of relations, thus accounting for the distribution of food within the community. It was the final collapse of economic exchange as moral obligation that Karl Marx (1818-1883) bemoaned when he described the ‘cash nexus’ that has become the central medium and motivator of exchange in a capitalist society. See: GIFT, THE / POTLATCH / .

Last updated 2002--0-9-

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Athabaca University ICAAP

© Robert Drislane, Ph.D. and Gary Parkinson, Ph.D.
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*This social science dictionary has 1000
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