The Moral Economy as an Argument and as a Fight

Abstract

This article was written for a festschrift to celebrate the 20th anniversary of publication of the British historian E.P. Thompson's article, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century" (Past and Present, 50, February, 1971). Very few articles have made such a great impact on historians and social scientists as Thompson's. In his article Scott explains both the extent to which he has borrowed Thompson's idea of the "Moral Economy" and his own application of it in his research and writings on Vietnam, Burma and Malaysia. However, he stresses there are significant differences in what he was explaining and what E.P. Thompson was explaining. We wish to acknowledge with thanks the kind permission of the writer to reproduce this article in our tenth anniversary number. Scott is the author of several books, including the highly – acclaimed Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance, (1985), which deals with the "Moral Economy" of the Malay peasantry in the state of Kedah.