The moral economy tradition argues that markets are never morally neutral: legitimacy depends on embedded norms and enforceable obligations. This essay traces that lineage from E. P. Thompson’s account of “just price” expectations in English crowds, through Polanyi’s embeddedness and “fictitious commodities,” to Scott’s subsistence ethics, Granovetter’s networked markets, and Akbar’s built-environment responsibility regimes — ending with a practical framework for diagnosing modern “decoupling” and what re-embedding requires.
#MoralEconomy #Polanyi #Thompson #Granovetter #SocialTheory #Governance #Legitimacy #Embeddedness
#PoliticalEconomy #EconomicSociology #InstitutionalDesign
#Accountability
Moral Economy
Embeddedness
Political Economy
Economic Sociology
Institutional Design
Accountability
Legitimacy
Social Theory
Karl Polanyi
E. P. Thompson
James C. Scott
Mark Granovetter
Jamel Akbar
Built Environment
Governance
Re-embedding
Why markets aren’t morally neutral: from grain riots to fictitious commodities to network embeddedness — an intellectual genealogy of responsibility.
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thinkingprospectus.substack.com/p/the-moral-...
#MoralEconomy #SocialTheory #Embeddedness #PoliticalEconomy #EconomicSociology