Re-inventing the 'moral economy' in post-war Britain

Tomlinson, J. (2011) Re-inventing the 'moral economy' in post-war Britain. Historical Research, 84(224), pp. 356-373. (doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2010.00544.x)

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Abstract

From the nineteen-forties Britain entered the age of intensive national economic management. This required the government to ‘manage the people’ alongside the deployment of new policy instruments, requiring in turn a representation of economic arguments aimed at persuading a mass electorate. The result was a ubiquitous representation of economic issues in moral terms – a re-invention of ideas about the ‘moral economy’ which many historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have seen as crucial to arguments about economic life in those years. This article analyses the origins, deployment and consequences of the use of such arguments in this new context.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Tomlinson, Professor Jim
Authors: Tomlinson, J.
College/School:College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Economic and Social History
Journal Name:Historical Research
Publisher:Wiley-Blackwell
ISSN:0950-3471
ISSN (Online):1468-2281

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