Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to suggest a dynamic perspective to understand a complicated economic behavior of farmers in the contemporary rural Africa. I focus on how the farmers' activities of moral economy have a place in a market depended rural society where the cash crop cultivation prevails. By analyzing the concrete cases, I critically examine the antinomy between moral economy and market economy, and indicate the necessity of a dynamic framework on it. It seems that the local farmers behave with making a distinction between “selling” and “sharing” according to the contexts which consist of the relationships between things, the person and the places. Their behaviors are not necessarily based on the given attribution like cash crops and subsistence crops, but people make crops either as shared wealth or occupied wealth through their interactions. In the current situation of African rural communities, moral economy is neither a strong principal nor a thing of the past. It exists as a different form of action from commodity exchange in the market and it is actualized or negotiated through the peoples' interactions.
