Moral Politics In, For and Against Transformative Change

Despite their ubiquity in social life, social and political scholars have often avoided direct confrontation with morals, preferring to study measures such as interests, choice, or values, which obscure much of morals’ shared, social, and contingent nature (Sayer, 2011). In the spheres of scholarship and politics, morals have been approached with a degree of ambivalence, their explanatory utility and their emancipatory potential subject to critique (Standring & Donoghue, 2022). The 2007–08 Global Financial Crisis prompted a rediscovery and reengagement with historical scholars such as EP Thompson and Karl Polanyi who had previously developed a moral critique of capitalism as practised (Rogan, 2017). There was also important recognition of the moral discourse used to justify responses and impacts of the crisis (Glynos et al., 2012). The concept of the ‘moral economy’, popularised by Thompson, became an important frame for understanding responses to the crisis, and resistance to those responses (Montgomerie & Tepe-Belfrage, 2016). Morals are of particular importance today. Contemporary, intersecting crises of the economy, the environment, society and politics have led to increased calls, from many sections of society, for transformative change – understood broadly as a fundamental shift in social values, beliefs and practices far beyond the techno-scientific fixes proposed to date (Lidskog, Standring & White, 2022). Crises are inherently destabilising events in which taken-for-granted norms and practices are challenged. Morals play an important role here in generating critique and framing demands, whether ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’, beyond discursive or communicative practices – drawing attention to the multiple, contentious, and often antagonistic ways social actors evaluate the actions of themselves and mediating political demands. The nature of current crises means climate breakdown and environmental degradation, social inequality and marginalisation, and political extremism and polarisation intersect to produce more frequent and severe trans-boundary symptoms. Indeed, reactions to contemporary crises frequently mobilise critique, with a plurality of normative or moral commitments (Boltanski & Thevenot, 2006). Boltanski, L & Thévenot, L. (2006). On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Glynos, J., Klimecki, R. and Willmott, H., (2012). Cooling Out the Marks: The Ideology and Politics of the Financial Crisis. Journal of Cultural Economy. 5 (3), 297–320. Hitlin, S. & Vaisey, S. (2013). The New Sociology of Morality. Annual Review of Sociology, 39(1): 51–68. Lidskog, R., Standring, A. & White, J.M. (2022) Environmental expertise for social transformation: roles and responsibilities for social science, Environmental Sociology, 8(3): 255–266. Montgomerie, J & Tepe-Belfrage, D. (2016). A Feminist Moral-Political Economy of Uneven Reform in Austerity Britain: Fostering Financial and Parental Literacy, Globalizations, 13(6): 890–905. Rogan, T. (2017). The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sayer, A. (2011). Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Standring, A. and Donoghue, M (2022) ‘Moral Crisis/Moral Critique’, Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 80(1): 51–64.