ABSTRACT
The idea of moral economies stems from the academic appreciation for the ways in which rural or marginalised communities maintain equilibrium, especially in situations of seeming food scarcity. Arising out of localised customary practices, moral economies are generally understood as fair, equitable, and reciprocal systems of exchange. Mediums of exchanges may vary in accordance with what is most highly appreciated within such economies. In the Trobriand Islands, for instance, yams grown and stacked up in front of homesteads symbolise the work done through household labour, which earns the producers significant respect within the communities. The biggest yams are viewed as the best. In times of exchange, they convey to the receiver a reinforcement of the bond they carried over years as relatives, community members, and interdependent protectors of the territories they occupy. Such etiquette is radically different from modern economies’ practices, where exchange systems are monetary and are always presented in country or regionally specific forms of printed paper and metal coins. Despite the variations, money as a standardised form of modern transactions symbolises the superiority–inferiority dichotomous relationships between the developed West and the underdeveloped ‘South’. While the wide range of minerals, agricultural and industrial products have contributed immensely to Western economies’ development, the developing economies’ political leaderships and a select few among the entrepreneurial elite remain the major beneficiaries of their countries’ internally traded resources. Part of the reason for this situation is the ‘free-floating’ currencies that are open to manipulation by the more powerful countries. This has been shown, for instance, by the American ‘petrodollar’, the French manipulation of their ex-colonies currencies in favour of the French economy, and the British manipulation of the ex-colonial economies as well. This chapter discusses how these three countries, in conjunction with other former colonial powers, continue to wield influence over global affairs at the cost of stability, upward mobility, and political equilibrium in their former colonies cum client states.
