2134/27245 Dave Elder-Vass Dave Elder-Vass Moral economies of the digital Loughborough University 2017 Digital economy Moral economy Gift economy Risk Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified Philosophy Sociology 2017-11-02 09:43:23 Journal contribution https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Moral_economies_of_the_digital/9473930 Within thirty years of first appearing, the networked digital economy has spread its tentacles into the lives of half the population of the world, and transformed the balance of power in the commercial economy. Social theory has been slow to recognise the significance and scale of these developments, and this special issue is a contribution to redressing the balance. It is organised around the concept of moral economies: the values and norms that underpin and shape our participation in larger economic structures. The digital economy today is the site of a range of competing economic models, and this is reflected in clashes between a corresponding range of moral economies. The contributors to the issue map these tensions in examples of both gift and commodity models of economy, analyse the implications for global risk, and re-evaluate classic analytic schemes for representing these tensions. Because the economy is built on moral economies, the process of economic change is already inherently a process of debate and contestation between different moral economies, with the consequence that academic work on the ethics of the economy can influence these processes of change.