One social phenomenon that I am interested in, and which I have been researching in my village, is something called moral economy. This is a complex notion, but it describes the patterns of expected behaviour by different people, what is considered right and appropriate. For example, at Christmas time shop owners might expect their workers to work overtime, because that is what a good, hardworking loyal employee does, and the workers themselves might expect their bosses to give them a nice Christmas bonus, because that is what a good, generous boss does. Of course, the boss can punish workers that they consider to be ‘lazy’ by not giving bonuses if they don’t work hard, and workers can punish ‘tight’ bosses who don’t give bonuses by not working. The interesting thing is that this is an economic relationship (exchanging labour and money), but one that is put in the language of morality (good generous boss and good hardworking employees). As people try to punish what they see as wrong behaviour, it is useful for understanding how groups are able to modify the excesses of others.

Lecture over.

The reason I am very interested in this is because this system, which many people have found to be hugely powerful in making sure that certain things did or didn’t happen, is almost non existent in my village. Whilst others have argued that the reason why few peasant revolutions occur is because this moral economy offers a more effective and less risky way to be revolting, I have found that it is unable to prevent even the most minor of abuses. Every time a communal project has been initiated, a women’s group or a cooperative, it has quickly dissolved as someone runs off with the funds. It has been a constant emotional struggle to continue my research when everybody is busy telling me who stole what from who, who siphoned off the communal funds, and so on. I must have heard a story like this about everyone in the community, and I find it a challenge to cope with maintaining friendships with so many people who I know to have murky pasts. I do have a large amount of faith in human nature, that fundamentally people are good, but the constant bitching and crimes of the last five months have thoroughly battered this.

One friend described to me that how the Dominican Republic is a shame culture, rather than a guilt culture. When people do something illegal or immoral, they feel no guilt, but they do feel shame when they are caught. Hence what might stop or limit the crimes they commit is not how bad they will feel for having done something bad, but the potential for shame should they be caught. I am not even certain that this provides much of a disincentive.

Part of the problem here is that people who are found to be stealing aren’t necessarily looked upon with shame, due to the cult of the tiguere. This is a Dominican word used to describe someone who uses their mind to avoid doing things the standard way. It is a word one hears everyday, used in different contexts to describe a variety of personalities from common thugs to Machiavellian dictators and manipulative drugs barons. In a large part of its usage, it is used not as a pejorative description but as a complement – someone who is not just getting ahead through illegal and immoral means, but more importantly because they are using their brains. People often describe the situations when someone steals money from a community group as “the most intelligent people take it all for themselves” – the most intelligent rather than the most devious. It is almost a mark of respect to have outwitted your fellows to steal everything for yourself.

There is a secondary problem in that people let other people get away with these things because they would have done the same if they had a chance. This leads to a kind of perverse moral economy – people do not act to stop people from thieving from the community because they want to be able to do the same if they too had the chance. One of the more bizarre justifications I have heard for the system of botellas, government jobs given to people on the basis of their party loyalty rather than qualifications, is that this person will be guaranteed a job for four years, but with the new elections and a change of government, it will be someone else’s turn to get a free salary. It is a system of social redistribution of state funds, if governments change regularly, lots of people have a chance of gaining a job that they don’t deserve, rather than just a few. When people in the village see their neighbours illegally hooking up to electricity they do nothing, even though they pay for it with higher bills, because “everyone has the same right to do this” – they don’t do anything because they would do the same in their situation. It is a moral economy that allows abuses rather than prevents them.

As I am studying why peasants aren’t revolting, this is of great interest to me. It is also a bit frustrating, as I can see many ways in which the community can make life better for all of its inhabitants by acting together, but this never happens as any communal group quickly dissolves through people running off with funds. There is a very strong individualistic streak to people here, based on a long experience of the collapse of communal projects.

The reason I am particularly animated about this today is that I have only a few days left here, so as a way of thanking the community for helping me with my study and being very hospitable, I went to town and bought enough Mandarin saplings to give one to each family. As soon as they were unloaded, people started to appropriate trees for themselves. I quickly let it be known that there was only enough for one for each family, and that they were to be considered as a thank you present, but this did not stop people from walking away with two or three trees “one for me, and I am taking my neighbour’s up to their house for them”. There is a great trend here to try and grab as much for oneself as possible, before someone else does exactly the same. The justification for these sorts of theft is that if they don’t do it, someone else will.

The most interesting thing about this, and perhaps also the most frustrating, is the reason why this occurs. It would be very easy to slip into simplistic arguments about the selfishness and childlike behaviour that stops a community and a country from developing (in many senses of the word). Reality is a bit more complex that this, and the reason why this occurs is because there are no social sanctions to stop this taking place. In many society there is a range of responses that prevent people from breaking the rules, from feelings of guilt and shame to actions such as boycotting shops who are known to overcharge. Here people often say that the only way of stopping someone from cheating the system is to confront them followed by a fight, and they feel forced to tolerate many things because it is not worth getting into a fight about. With a lack of sanctions, misbehaviour becomes not just the norm but in some ways it becomes what is expected.

It may not have always been like this. In the past, when people lived from subsistence agriculture, there were successful cooperatives that provided many hands to one man’s fields in times of large tasks. People could not afford to break the rules, to not cooperate, because they knew that at some point they would need extra labour too, and as there was no money they had no other means to obtain it other than to ask for a favour, which is dependant on good social relations. With the shift to a market dominated economy in the village in the last fifteen years, people have become accustomed to being able to pay for labour, so the old social ties that provided cooperative work have broken down. The conclusion, as usual, is that we academics can point to a social breakdown that has resulted from Capitalism. Some of my colleagues will take this as a good reason to mount The People’s Revolution, even though life is clearly better in so many other respects since the marketisation of the economy.

I feel much more annoyed and disappointed that my trees have been misappropriated than when hearing the stories about misappropriation of much more valuable and important things such as community funds. Firstly, it is affecting me directly, I feel hurt rather than the mere disappointment in my friends that results from hearing about their corruption. Secondly, it was something that was a present to thank each member of the community individually. Rather than being merely a tree, it was a statement of gratitude.

I don’t feel that I have lost my faith in humanity, but that it has been taken away from me.