Introduction: the moral matrix of capitalism in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe

This special section aims to shed light on moral milieus and agencies in contemporary capitalist Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on case studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Russia, it offers insight into changing perceptions of a proper economy and proper practice amongst a broad range of actors - from landfill workers to business managers, to the super-rich. The contributors explore how actors at various scales morally construct, contest, and defend ideas of justice, (re-)distribution, and social worth, as well as socio-economic hierarchy, inequality, and harm. They analyze the capitalist moral transformation and order in the region, and examine the local appropriation of and buy-in to (as well as critique of) aspects of neoliberal moral orders - a topic side-lined in much of the existing moral economy scholarship. Exploring a broad range of moral-economic phenomena, they move beyond the conventional definition of morals as prosocial norms and action, approaching morals as a broader empirical phenomenon of economy and politics. They examine the actions, practices, and reasoning of different actors in relation to shifting notions of acceptable and unacceptable, just and unjust, and praiseworthy and blameworthy behavior. As such, this collection makes the case for widening the empirical object and analytical purchase of moral economy to include the study of not only moral critiques and resistance to capitalism, but also the (diverse) moral agencies, milieus and orders of capitalism, and the ways in which the advancement and embedding the capitalist moral order has shaped economic life in the region

Populism-in-state-practice under neoliberalism: Museveni’s ad-hoc squads to ‘halt all evictions’ from land in Uganda

Populism in Africa has been studied as political rhetoric, strategy and performance, with focus on ethnicity, nationalism, mobilisation and elections. Less attention has been given to populism-in-practice, specifically populism-in-state-practice (PISP): how a populist rhetoric by an actor in power gets translated into an administrative/executive intervention, and how this fares on the ground. This paper uses the case of populist interventions of President Museveni in neoliberal Uganda to address rampant land conflicts in the 2010s – specifically his ad-hoc initiatives aimed at ‘helping the poor’ by ‘stopping’ evictions – to explore characteristics of PISP. We thus contribute to the literature through an analysis of the implementation of a populist measure under neoliberalism. Using land laws, decided court cases, government statements, and media reports, our analysis shows that although somewhat helpful in the interim, the initiatives unleashed new turmoil, extended land (tenure) insecurity, advanced a Presidentialisation of justice delivery, deepened institutional impasse and suspended institutional efforts that could advance pro-poor change. PISP did not address the root causes of the problems that it set out to tackle, and failed to alter the legal insecurities, and perilous power position of the declared beneficiaries. Yet, it enhanced political legitimacy of the President and state

Afro-optimism and progressive modernity: the Fintech story in the African press

This article offers a first analysis of representation in the African press of the fast-emerging amalgamation of online financial services popularized under the label ‘Fintech’. Authors conducted content analysis of selected African newspapers, deploying the concept of framing to examine how the Fintech story is communicated to news readers in Africa. Authors identified nine frequently apparent tropes in a sample of Fintech news and used these tropes to reveal dominant themes in news coverage. The sample of 386 pieces was drawn from multiple African news sources published between 2016 and 2021, a period characterized by rapid uptake of Fintech across the continent and by a global pandemic. Findings suggests that the Fintech story in African newspapers is a predominantly positive, celebratory, and enabling narrative offering little critical reporting. News media examined demonstrate collaboration with the local/transnational finance sector to present a vision of progressive modernity and to reinforce afro-optimism and a techno-utopian discourse

Money talks: moral economies of earning a living in neoliberal East Africa

Neoliberal restructuring has targeted not just the economy, but also polity, society and culture, in the name of creating capitalist market societies. The societal repercussions of neoliberal policy and reform in terms of moral economy remain understudied. This article seeks to address this gap by analysing moral economy characteristics and dynamics in neoliberalised communities, as perceived by traders in Uganda and sex workers in Kenya. The interview data reveal perceived drivers that contributed to a significant moral dominance of money, self-interest, short-termism, opportunism and pragmatism. Equally notable are a perceived (i) close interaction between political–economic and moral–economic dynamics, and (ii) significant impact of the political–economic structure on moral agency. Respondents primarily referred to material factors usually closely linked to neoliberal reform, as key drivers of local moral economies. We thus speak of a neoliberalisation of moral economies, itself part of the wider process of embedding and locking-in market society structures in the two countries. An improved political economy of moral economy can help keep track of this phenomenon

‘Working with the media taught us a lot’: Understanding The Guardian’s Katine initiative

One of the more important ventures in the world of media and development over the past decade has been The Guardian newspaper’s ‘Katine’ project in Uganda. The newspaper, with funding from its readers and Barclays Bank, put more than 2.5 million pounds into a Ugandan sub-county over the course of 4 years. The project was profiled on a dedicated Guardian microsite, with regular updates in the printed edition of the newspaper. In this article, I look at the relationship that developed between journalists and the non-governmental organisation and show that the experience was both disorienting and reorienting for the development project that was being implemented. The scrutiny of the project that appeared on the microsite disoriented the non-governmental organisation, making its work the subject of public criticism. The particular issues explored by journalists also reoriented what the non-governmental organisation did on the ground. I also point to the ways the relationship grew more settled as the project moved along, suggesting the amount of work that sometimes goes into what is often characterised as the relatively uncritical relationship between journalists and non-governmental organisations

Transnational corporations, violence and suffering: the environmental, public health and social impacts from comparative case studies in Zimbabwe and Uganda

The present effects of transnational corporations (TNCs) on social, health, and environmental aspects of local societies have a long history. The preconditions for the insertion of the types of economic initiatives now seen in the Global South, and driven by TNCs, were set through histories of colonialism and development schemes. These initiatives disrupted local economies and modified environments, delivering profound effects on livelihoods. These effects were experienced as structural violence, and have produced social suffering through the decades.In this paper, we compare two African cases across time; the conjunction of development initiatives and structural adjustment in the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe in the early 1990s and industrial plantation forestry in present-day Uganda. Each case presents a specific constellation of political and economic forces that has produced prejudicial effects on local populations in their time period of application and are, essentially, different versions of structural violence that produce social suffering. While each case depicts a specific type of violent encounter manifest at a particular historical moment, these are comparable in the domains of environmental impacts, disruptions to societies, co-opting of local economies, disordering of systems of meaning and social reproduction, and nefarious effects on well-being. We analyze the conjunction of these effects through a theoretical lens of structural violence and social suffering. Our analysis draws particular attention to the role of TNCs in driving this structural violence and its effects

Justice, power and informal settlements: Understanding the juridical view of property rights in Central Asia

The article examines how judges and lawyers struggle to legitimise and normalise private property rights against attempts by poor and migrant groups to politicise housing and social needs in Central Asia. It will discuss the juridical understanding of justice and equality in relation to property rights violations on the outskirts of major cities in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It will argue that the juridical system is central in construing property rights and obligations, and in so doing social inequalities are legitimised and naturalised in a neoliberalising post-Soviet space. The article uses the concepts of 'the moral economy' and 'the juridical field' to examine how judges and lawyers justify and normalise their ways of interpreting and ordering the social world