Political scientists debate as intensely as ever the idea of a moral economy, which contains both descriptive and prescriptive elements. The descriptive element reflects the contributions of, among others, anthropologists and refers to the various, essentially noneconomic norms and obligations (e.g., reciprocity) that mediate the central social, political, and/or economic relations of a given (almost always pre- or nonmarket) people. The prescriptive element refers to moral economy's status and value as an instrument for social and political analysis. Whether used to evaluate the distinctive social and political features of various systems of exchange (Booth 1993a; Dalton ...