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.