The moral economy of militarism: peasant economy, military state, and Chinese capitalism in the Wa State of Myanmar

Hans Steinmüller

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: If the moral economies of underprivileged communities are defined in opposition to the rationality of political economy, it is easy to overlook the moral justifications of market and state. War economies and military states, however, force us to look at the nodes of moral and economic action that connect the powerful and the powerless. The Wa State of Myanmar, a de-facto state governed by an insurgent army, represents the making of such a moral economy of militarism. Examples from the peasant economy, the military state and Chinese capitalism demonstrate the articulation of different work ethics, moral frameworks and economic arrangements. Moral and economic values are combined specifically in codes of honour, military discipline and raison d’état, that is, the value entanglements that are at the core of the moral economy of militarism.

Keywords: moral economy; militarism; state; Wa; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2020-02-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Social Anthropology, 4, February, 2020, 28(1), pp. 121 - 135. ISSN: 0964-0282

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103170/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103170

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().