Putting Resistance Back in Moral Economy

This chapter examines how resistance appears in Andrew Sayer’s account of the moral economy. While E.P. Thompson, James Scott and Karl Polanyi explicitly explore how subordinate groups engage in a range of collective action to oppose unjust economic practices, Sayer is ambivalent about resistance. He argues that resignation, complicity and accommodation to economic domination are likely to occur. But drawing on his work on lay morality as well as our research on rentierism in Central Asia, this chapter suggests there is more space for resistance and activism in his moral economy perspective than he usually allows.