Contemporary Perspectives on African Moral Economy

Contemporary Perspectives on African Moral Economy
Author: Isaria N. Kimambo
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9976604653

The topic of African moral economy was first raised by Goran Hyden in 1980 as one of the main obstacles to economic transformation of the African peasantry. The suggestion caused serious academic debates between the proposer and other scholars on African societies, especially those using political economy as the framework of their analysis. But Hyden continued to defend his thesis until interest in the debate faded out. More recently Japanese scholars have taken up the topic as it appears to have new relevance in comparison with the fast transformations which have taken place in Southeast Asian rural communities. The focus of this book is to give a detailed comparison between African rural communities and those of Southeastern Asia. Attention is focused on the two main aspects of African peasantry life: the right to subsistence and the norm of reciprocity. A wide interdisciplinary approach is employed to demonstrate the dynamism displayed by these societies.

Why Do Elections Matter in Africa?

Why Do Elections Matter in Africa?
Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2021-02-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 110841723X

A radical new approach to understanding Africa's elections: explaining why politicians, bureaucrats and voters so frequently break electoral rules.

Moral Education in sub-Saharan Africa

Moral Education in sub-Saharan Africa
Author: Sharlene Swartz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317982487

The term ‘moral’ has had a chequered history in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly due to the legacy of colonialism and Apartheid (in South Africa). In contrast to moral education as a vehicle of cultural imperialism and social control, this volume shows moral education to be concerned with both private and public morality, with communal and national relationships between human beings, as well as between people and their environment. Drawing on distinctive perspectives from philosophy, economics, sociology and education, it offers the African ethic of Ubuntu/Botho as a plausible alternative to Western approaches to morality and shows how African ethics speaks to political and economic life, including ethnic conflict and HIV/AIDS, and may be an antidote to the current practice of timocracy that values money over people. The volume provides sociological tools for understanding the lived morality of those marginalised by poverty, and analyses the effects of culture, religion and modern secularisation on moral education. With contributions from fourteen African scholars, this book challenges dominant frameworks, and begins conversations for mutual benefit across the North-South divide. It has global implications, not just, but especially, where moral education is undertaken in pluralist contexts and in the presence of economic disparity. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Moral Education.

Islam and the Moral Economy

Islam and the Moral Economy
Author: Charles Tripp
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 24
Release: 2006-07-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1139457152

How do modern Muslims adapt their traditions to engage with today's world? Charles Tripp's erudite and incisive book considers one of the most significant challenges faced by Muslims over the last sixty years: the challenge of capitalism. By reference to the works of noted Muslim scholars, the author shows how, faced by this challenge, these intellectuals devised a range of strategies which have enabled Muslims to remain true to their faith, whilst engaging effectively with a world not of their own making. The work is framed around the development of their ideas on Islamic socialism, economics and the rationale for Islamic banking. While some Muslims have resorted to confrontation or insularity to cope with the challenges of modernity, most have aspired to innovation and ingenuity in the search for compromise and interaction with global capitalism in the twenty-first century.

Economics in Christian Perspective

Economics in Christian Perspective
Author: Victor V. Claar
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2015-04-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830899901

Victor Claar and Robin Klay introduce students to the basic principles of economics and then evaluate the principles and issues as seen from a Christian perspective. This textbook places the economic life in the context of Christian discipleship and stewardship. This text is for use in any course needing a survey of the principles of economics.

Social Im/mobilities in Africa

Social Im/mobilities in Africa
Author: Joël Noret
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2019-11-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805393979

Grounded in both theory and ethnography, this volume insists on taking social positionality seriously when accounting for Africa’s current age of polarizing wealth. To this end, the book advocates a multidimensional view of African societies, in which social positions consist of a variety of intersecting social powers - or ‘capitals’ – including wealth, education, social relationships, religion, ethnicity, and others. Accordingly, the notion of social im/mobilities emphasizes the complexities of current changes, taking us beyond the prism of a one-dimensional social ladder, for social moves cannot always be apprehended through the binaries of ‘gains’ and ‘losses’.

Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi
Author: Gareth Dale
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2010-06-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0745640710

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.

The Moral Economy

The Moral Economy
Author: Samuel Bowles
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2016-05-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300221088

Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.

Moral Commerce

Moral Commerce
Author: Julie L. Holcomb
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2016-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501706624

How can the simple choice of a men’s suit be a moral statement and a political act? When the suit is made of free-labor wool rather than slave-grown cotton. In Moral Commerce, Julie L. Holcomb traces the genealogy of the boycott of slave labor from its seventeenth-century Quaker origins through its late nineteenth-century decline. In their failures and in their successes, in their resilience and their persistence, antislavery consumers help us understand the possibilities and the limitations of moral commerce. Quaker antislavery rhetoric began with protests against the slave trade before expanding to include boycotts of the use and products of slave labor. For more than one hundred years, British and American abolitionists highlighted consumers’ complicity in sustaining slavery. The boycott of slave labor was the first consumer movement to transcend the boundaries of nation, gender, and race in an effort by reformers to change the conditions of production. The movement attracted a broad cross-section of abolitionists: conservative and radical, Quaker and non-Quaker, male and female, white and black. The men and women who boycotted slave labor created diverse, biracial networks that worked to reorganize the transatlantic economy on an ethical basis. Even when they acted locally, supporters embraced a global vision, mobilizing the boycott as a powerful force that could transform the marketplace. For supporters of the boycott, the abolition of slavery was a step toward a broader goal of a just and humane economy. The boycott failed to overcome the power structures that kept slave labor in place; nonetheless, the movement’s historic successes and failures have important implications for modern consumers.