Editing Gift economy (section)

===Moral economy===
English historian [[E.P. Thompson]] wrote about the [[moral economy]] of the poor in the context of widespread English food riots in the English countryside in the late 18th century. Thompson claimed that these riots were generally peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political culture rooted in feudal rights to "set the price" of essential goods in the market. These peasants believed that a traditional "fair price" was more important to the community than a "free" market price and they punished large farmers who sold their surpluses at higher prices outside the village while some village members still needed produce. Thus a moral economy is an attempt to preserve an alternative exchange sphere from market penetration.<ref>{{cite book |last=Thompson |first=Edward P. |title=Customs in Common |url=https://archive.org/details/customsincommon00thom |url-access=registration |year=1991 |publisher=New Press |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/customsincommon00thom/page/341 341]|isbn=978-1565840034 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Thompson |first=Edward P. |title=Customs in Common |url=https://archive.org/details/customsincommon00thom |url-access=registration |year=1991 |publisher=New Press |location=New York|isbn=978-1565840034 }}</ref> The notion of peasants with a non-capitalist cultural mentality using the market for their own ends has been linked to subsistence agriculture and the need for subsistence insurance in hard times. However, James C. Scott points out that those who provide this subsistence insurance to the poor in bad years are wealthy patrons who exact a political cost for their aid; this aid is given to recruit followers. The concept of moral economy has been used to explain why peasants in a number of colonial contexts, such as the Vietnam War, have rebelled.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scott |first=James C. |title=[[The Moral Economy of the Peasant|The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia]]|year=1976 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton}}</ref>