Jörg Wiegratz's Neoliberal Moral Economy presents a thoughtful and critical challenge to previous, somewhat hagiographical, evaluations of Uganda's IFI-recommended reform programmes of the 1990s (Kuteesa et al. Reference Kuteesa, Tumusime-Mutebile, Whitworth and Williamson2009). Its focus – summarised in its subtitle Capitalism, Socio-Cultural Change and Fraud in Uganda – is also rather more pertinent for contemporary analysis of Uganda's political economy than much of what has come before. For Wiegratz, fraud and deception are increasingly embedded in the moral economy of Uganda itself – a consequence of the neoliberal economic reforms implemented over the last three decades. Drawing on fascinating interview data collected by himself and a co-researcher (Samuel Bbosa) from traders and farmers based in Kampala and Bugisu sub-region (eastern Uganda, bordering Kenya), he reconstructs what he sees as a transformation of social, economic, moral and political norms in Uganda from the collective to the individual, delineating across a number of engaging and well-written chapters the various mechanisms embedded in neoliberal economic reforms which have driven this process. The consequence, he suggests, is the ‘moral dominance of materialism, money, individualism, opportunism, self-interest, short-termism and pragmatism and moral economies of immediate gains and survival/advancement at the expense of others’ (p. 338).

The introduction and first chapter of the book focus on conceptualising the relationship between neoliberalism, moral economy and fraud – influenced, in particular, by the work of Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan. The remaining eight chapters, though referencing different parts of the world, seek to demonstrate how this relationship has played out in neoliberal Uganda, particularly in Kampala and Bugisu. The theoretical framework developed is innovative and makes an important contribution to conceptualisations of the role of fraud in moral and political economies. What, though, of the contribution regarding Uganda? – Perhaps the more central concern for readers of this journal.

Ultimately, it feels as if the author's intellectual – dare I say, even ideological – perspectives on neoliberalism rather overly condition his methodological approach and empirical analysis. Particularly troubling for this critic, in this regard, is the somewhat peremptory and moralising reflection on using interviewees' contrasting of the past and present as a way to trace changes in moral economies. Much of Chapters 4–8 are based in – absorbing – trader/farmer reflections on current economic mores and practices versus those of the past. Analysing such contrasts is laced with challenges regarding the nostalgia effect. Though Wiegratz devotes two paragraphs to this discussion, his approach is unnecessarily defensive and lacking in critical reflection (p. 51). Similarly, subjection of data from interviewees espousing contrary views to the book's thesis to credibility criteria not applied to those on the thesis' side (‘when pressed, some of them said they had not much knowledge about actual market practices’; pp. 113–14) sows an uncomfortable seed of doubt into the reader's mind regarding how open the author was to critiquing all of his respondents' reflections on the same basis.

The question of agency is also somewhat overlooked, with the exception of Chapter 9 which explores the 2007/2008 revival of the Bugisu Cooperative Union. Even here, though, African agency is framed around resisting ‘neo-liberalisation’ and one wonders if there is a more nuanced story to be told here which takes greater account of the longstanding contours of Uganda's political economy. The presentation of the Museveni regime as a craven supplicant in the imposition of neoliberal ‘cultural dominance’ by ‘Western (imperial) states’ (p. 334) and part of a ‘transnational capitalist’ network (p. 336) is somewhat superficial and gives, in this reviewer's view, too much credit to global structures in determining the transformation of the Ugandan state under the current regime. In fact, as Sam Hickey has shown, the Museveni regime's thinking on state intervention has been rather more complicated than the Damascene conversion to neoliberalism often spoken to by Western donors – and reproduced, to some degree, in this study – would suggest (Hickey Reference Hickey2013).

Neoliberal Moral Economy nevertheless represents an engaging and intelligent unpacking and conceptualisation of the relationship between neoliberal thinking and the moral economy of fraud. It also uncovers and presents in unprecedented depth the socio-economic perspectives and experiences of traders and farmers in contemporary Uganda.