ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issues related to acceptable and unacceptable economic practices in Moby Dick, trying to identify some interpretations of the crimes of the economy underlying Melville's novel. It identifies the limit beyond which, in Moby Dick, individualism, accumulation and economic enterprise are viewed as dysfunctional. Melville's novel, examines as a complex moral diagram in which he outlines his concerns about the achievements and destructiveness of economic undertakings, the development of productive forces and power, and ultimately the distinction between legitimate enterprise and crimes of economy. The chapter suggests that the novel presents with three different concepts of the crimes of the economy, and they are an intrinsic, an extrinsic, and an organizational concept. Re-reading Moby Dick one finds a wealth of illuminating points and controversial issues that would be of enormous interest to scholars drawing a research and discussion agenda in the field of environmental criminology.
