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Using a moral economy perspective to understand working-class finance and the decline of home credit in the United Kingdom

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Abigail Marks

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

This article considers how discord between dominant and alternative moral economies has contributed to the decline of the home credit industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing on qualitative data from over seventy interviews, as well as media reporting and grey literature, authentic historical analysis is utilised to examine how collective values and perceptions shape discourse and reproduce inequalities. It is argued here that media, political, academic, and business actors operating within the dominant moral economy may perpetuatehegemonic (mis)understandings of alternative practices. This article advances Graeber’s work on debt and develops Polanyi’s and Thompson’s theorising on the moral economy, by arguing that social and cultural relations should be understood as being connected to – but separable from – economic relations. Analysis of the decline of home credit illustrates how cultural and economic behaviours converge to create unjust and partitioned moral economies.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Marks A, Terry E

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Economic and Industrial Democracy

Year: 2024

Pages: Epub ahead of print

Online publication date: 26/12/2024

Acceptance date: 17/10/2024

Date deposited: 05/11/2024

ISSN (print): 0143-831X

ISSN (electronic): 1461-7099

Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd

URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X241306047

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X241306047

ePrints DOI: 10.57711/cz66-dz48

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