Academic populists, the informal economy and those benevolent merchants: Politics and income security reform in Newfoundland

Abstract

Academic populists in Newfoundland are wont to celebrate the informal economy and even the system of merchant credit in the country — and, after 1949, Canadian province — as a kind of proto‐welfare state. Now, in an era of crisis in the fishing industry, mass unemployment and state retreat from responsibility for providing support for the poor and unemployed, the putative value of the old ‘moral economy’ of rural Newfoundland is being rediscovered by those who are promoting social policy reform. Their argument is that we should look to the informal economy to provide a degree of security for people in a future of diminished state support. This article outlines a critique of the populists which is theoretical, empirical and political.