Deserved Economic Outcomes, Deserved Social Ties: Culture, Inequality and Friendship in Post-socialist East Germany after 1989

• In Event: 4255 - Section on Economic Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 9. Markets and Morality

Abstract

Moral judgments of individuals suffering economic hardship either naturalize or problematize inequality with far-reaching consequences for cultural beliefs about economic justice more generally. This paper introduces a relational model of moral economic judgment. The lessons people draw from a time of economic hardship, their ideas of “deserved” outcomes, are informed not merely or primarily by their own experience, but by the experiences of other people they are in close contact with. Data for this paper comes from an interview and survey-study with 41 respondents in the context of post-socialist former East Germany. I demonstrate that friendship ties are understood as “deserved” just as much as economic outcomes are, thus illuminating an important qualitative mechanism that allows to go beyond the culture/economics dualism in explaining inequality beliefs.

Author

• Till Hilmar, Yale University