The moral economy of land

From Land Reform to Ownership Society, 1880-2018

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3175352
AutoresAlexander Dobeson (0000-0002-6352-3592, Copenhagen Business School, autor correspondente), Sebastian Kohl (0000-0002-8358-6021, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Sociology , Cologne, Germany)
Ano2024
Volume22
Fascículo2
Páginas737-764
Data de publicação2024-06-20
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocio-Economic Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1475-1461 • E-ISSN: 1475-147X
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ser/mwad048
OpenAlexW4386096922
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas45

This article offers a comparative-historical perspective on the moral economy of land. We reconstruct the moral economy of the popular land reform movement that opposed the illegitimate income streams of rentiers and speculators in the early 20th century, tracing the movement's legacy through a long-run analysis of political party platforms since 1880 in the USA, the UK, Germany and Sweden. We find that the land reformers' conceptualization of land as a moral good was a key topic in early 20th-century party politics. Parties across the political spectrum called for wide-ranging interventions in unregulated land markets. But despite the movement's relative success, the new ideal of the ownership society soon gained ground as an alternative to the more radical politics of land decommodification. We find growing multipartisan support for small property owners over time, culminating in the rise of a new moral conceptualization of land as capital. With the recent comeback of the land question, both rural and urban, we conclude that an understanding of historical land reform debates should inform future research toward a much-needed sociology of land

Agriculture · Archaeology · Economic system · Economics · Geography · Land reform · Land tenure · Moral economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Land Rights and Reforms · Law · Political Economy and Marxism