Suchergebnisse

Uganda is regarded as the African country that has adopted the neoliberal reform package most extensively. Notably, neoliberal reforms have targeted the reshaping not only of the economy but also of the society and culture. The reforms aim to create a 'market society', which includes a corresponding set of moral norms and behaviour. Reforms, therefore, have to undermine, overwrite and displace pre-existing non-neoliberal norms, values, orientations and practices among the population; they also have to foster norms, values, orientations and practices that are in line with neoliberal ideology. This article looks at the process of neoliberal moral restructuring in Uganda since 1986. Extensive interviews in Kampala and eastern Uganda reveal that the cultural dimension of rapid neoliberal reform has negatively affected the relationships and trade practices between smallholder farmers and traders in rural markets. Since the onset of liberal economic reforms, face-to-face rural trade practices have been characterised by higher levels of 'malpractice' and a change in their form. Neoliberal Uganda is furthermore characterised by a spread of destructive norms and practices in other economic sectors and sections of society that have been 'modernised' according to neoliberal prescriptions. Many respondents invoked ideas such as 'moral degeneration', 'moral decay', a 'rotten society' and 'kiwaani' (the title of a popular song, used interchangeably with deceit, tricking, or fake to describe behaviours and objects) and were worried about the future of moral norms and business practices in the country. The changes and trends described in this paper seem difficult but not impossible to reverse.

There is evidence that economic fraud has, in recent years, become routine activity in the economies of both high- and low-income countries. Many business sectors in today's global economy are rife with economic crime. Neoliberalism and the Moral Economy of Fraud shows how neoliberal policies, reforms, ideas, social relations and practices have engendered a type of sociocultural change across the globe which is facilitating widespread fraud. This book investigates the moral worlds of fraud in different social and geographical settings, and shows how contemporary fraud is not the outcome of just a few b̀ad apples'. Authors from a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology and political science, social policy and economics, employ case studies from the Global North and Global South to explore how particular values, morals and standards of behaviour rendered dominant by neoliberalism are encouraging the proliferation of fraud. This book will be indispensable for those who are interested in political economy, development studies, economics, anthropology, sociology and criminology.

SUMMARY
This briefing explores anti-fraud measures (AFMs) in Eastern Africa (Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Madagascar). The second of a three-part briefing series, it complements previous accounts of AFMs in southern Africa and confirms key AFM features that the authors previously identified concerning typical actors and their alliances, major sectors, fraud types and measures against fraud. The evidence suggests an expansion of anti-fraud agencies and initiatives, collecting and sharing more data within and across borders; of official governance of financial and product flows; and of efforts by AFM actors to enable the detection of genuine products, with related controversies among actors with divergent views and interests.

SUMMARY
In response to the rising levels of fraud in many countries and the global economy more generally, public and private actors in both the global North and the global South have in recent years introduced initiatives in the name of countering fraud in the 'private sector'. This briefing explores such anti-fraud measures in four countries in the Southern African region: Malawi, Botswana, South Africa and Zambia. Using online data (news outlets and reports on websites of private companies and governmental agencies), the authors provide a country-by-country account of some of the drivers and characteristics of these measures.

Neoliberal restructuring has targeted not just the economy, but also polity, society and culture, in the name of creating capitalist market societies. The societal repercussions of neoliberal policy and reform in terms of moral economy remain understudied. This article seeks to address this gap by analysing moral economy characteristics and dynamics in neoliberalised communities, as perceived by traders in Uganda and sex workers in Kenya. The interview data reveal perceived drivers that contributed to a significant moral dominance of money, self-interest, short-termism, opportunism and pragmatism. Equally notable are a perceived (i) close interaction between political–economic and moral–economic dynamics, and (ii) significant impact of the political–economic structure on moral agency. Respondents primarily referred to material factors usually closely linked to neoliberal reform, as key drivers of local moral economies. We thus speak of a neoliberalisation of moral economies, itself part of the wider process of embedding and locking-in market society structures in the two countries. An improved political economy of moral economy can help keep track of this phenomenon.