Morality and the Market: Contested Commodification in Eighteenth-Century England

我的研究将比较有争议商品的案例研究，包括尸体、食品和贩卖婴儿。它将探讨立法、社会团体和个人如何回应相互冲突的观点和看法，以及这揭示了社会和市场关系的什么。这个项目将重点放在18世纪的英国，因为这个世纪代表了经济变革的重要时期，作为新生资本主义和道德和市场关系转变的时期。金融、工业和消费革命影响了经济的运行，影响了社会关系、道德关切、对商品的看法以及对所有权的法律和大众态度。在探索对商品和市场的相互冲突的看法时，这个项目有可能对资本主义、身体和社会抗议的历史做出重大贡献。这个研究项目的灵感来自于与当今社会有关的社会经济、法律、人类学和哲学理论的结合，例如物权法理论家玛格丽特·雷丁（Margaret Radin）的理论，她声称商品化发生在一个复杂的范围内。认知理论家菲斯克和泰特洛克通过心理划分理论解释了对普遍商品化的抵制。人们将金钱、物品和关系划分为不同的心理类别，并发现不同类别之间的价值比较令人困惑和痛苦。这些理论应该放在18世纪的背景下考虑，以评估它们是如何补充或反驳历史学家关于道德、市场和信贷经济的发现的。我打算把这些理论与看似矛盾的观点放在一起考虑，比如汤普森的道德经济学，他认为早期现代社会对贸易的非正式认知限制比现代社会更多。这将导致对商品化理论和早期现代社会经济的更深层次的理解。为了解决对社会和市场关系的分层认知，本项目将侧重于三个案例研究：尸体贸易、食品贸易和婴儿贸易。在比较有争议的商品，它将探讨社会，道德和市场的相互作用。在18世纪，解剖学的日益普及导致对解剖尸体的需求急剧增加。围绕着尸体的商品化有很多争议，比如确定尸体的所有权。此外，尸体交易与犯罪密切相关，因为合法供应不足导致了“复活”尸体的黑市。因此，冲突在处决时的骚乱、“复活者”的法庭案件、外科医生的纪律、反解剖学的讽刺和立法改革中都很明显。完全商品化是完全不受限制的。因此，从暴乱者的角度来看，18世纪的食品骚乱是由于技术上合法的贸易行为未能达到道德标准而引起的，表明商品商品化不完全。相反，受自由放任的市场意识形态影响越来越大的法律和参与其中的商人认为这种贸易做法是可以接受的。因此，我将考虑粮食等必需品的有争议的商品化，以及不断变化的市场如何影响这种看法并导致抗议。在18世纪，尽管婴儿交易是合法的，但它还是备受争议的，主要是因为它与杀婴和非婚生有关。与今天的婴儿黑市相比，早期现代市场的婴儿供应高于需求，因此，比较今天的婴儿买卖和早期现代婴儿买卖应该提供洞察供需对有争议的商品化的影响。这项研究将纳入有关阶级，性别，年龄和宗教的想法，因为这些因素影响个人对商品的看法。

My research will compare case studies of contested commodities, covering cadavers, food-stuffs and baby-selling. It will explore how legislation, social groups, and individuals responded to conflicting views perceptions and what this reveals about social and market relations. This project will focus on eighteenth-century England as this century represents an important period of economic change, as a time of nascent capitalism and shifting moral and market relations. The financial, industrial and consumer revolutions affected the functioning of the economy and influenced social relations, moral concerns, perceptions of commodities, and legal and popular attitudes to ownership. In exploring conflicting perceptions of commodities and the market, this project has the potential to make a significant contribution to the history of capitalism, the body and social protest.This research project takes inspiration from a combination of socio-economic, legal, anthropological, and philosophical theories relating to the present day, such as that of property law theorist Margaret Radin who claims that commodification occurs on a complex spectrum. Cognitive theorists Fiske and Tetlock explain resistance to universal commodification through theories of mental compartmentalisation. People place money, objects and relationships into distinct mental categories and find value comparisons between categories confusing and distressing. Such theories should be considered in an eighteenth-century context to assess how they add to or contradict the findings of historians relating to moral, market, and credit economies. I intend to consider such theories alongside seemingly contradictory ideas, such as Thompson's moral economy, which suggests early modern society involved more unofficial cognitive restrictions on trade than modern. This will lead to a deeper understanding both of theories of commodification and the early modern social economy.To address the layered perceptions of social and market relations, this project will focus on three case studies: trade in cadavers, food and infants. In comparing contested commodities, it will explore social, moral and market interactions. In the eighteenth century, the growing popularity of anatomy resulted in a steep increase in demand for cadavers for dissection. A great deal of controversy surrounded the commodification of the dead body, such as in determining the ownership of a corpse. Moreover, the trade in cadavers was deeply connected to criminality as the insufficient legal supply resulted in a black market in 'resurrected' corpses. Consequently, conflict is evident in riots at executions, court cases of 'resurrectionists', the disciplining of surgeons, anti-anatomy satire and legislative changes. Complete commodification is entirely unrestricted. Therefore, eighteenth-century food riots, which arose following technically legal trade practices which failed to meet moral standards, indicate incomplete commodification from the perspective of the rioters. In contrast, the law, which was increasingly influenced by laissez-faire market ideology, and the merchants involved, considered such trade practices acceptable. Therefore, I will consider the contested commodification of necessities such as grain, and how the changing markets influenced such perceptions and resulted in protests. In the eighteenth century, despite its legality, trade in babies was highly controversial, largely due to its connections to infanticide and illegitimacy. In contrast to the present day black market in infants, the early modern market had a higher supply of babies than demand, therefore a comparison between present day baby-selling and early modern baby-selling should provide insight into the effect of supply and demand on contested commodification. This research will incorporate ideas about class, gender, age and religion as these factors affected individuals' perceptions of commodities.