Market and Society: How do they relate, and contribute to welfare? (original) (raw)
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Market and Society: How Do They Relate, and How Do They Contribute to Welfare?
Institutions, Communication and Values, 2009
The relationship between market and society is a hotly debated issue in the social sciences. At the level of theory, this discourse dates back to considerations of social order in which Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and David Hume were among the most important early contributors. The discussion has considerable ideological overtones as well, where the contribution of the market to welfare and well-being is at stake. Welfare is usually conceptualized in material terms, and we surmise that both market and society can contribute to welfare and well-being. There are spheres outside of the domain of the market that contribute to well-being, and a certain accomplishment in the market can contribute to well-being that is not captured in welfare. In this paper we do not deny that. We conceptualize the relation between market and society, focusing more specifically on periods of reform. Reforms in the health care sector are a case in point. Expanding and Purifying Markets Views on how market and society relate to each other may be classified according to figures 1 through 3. There are three broad ways in which to perceive the relation between the two spheres. First is to see market(s) and society as two separate realms (figure 1). Obviously, the neoclassical economic view, specifically the Walrasian approach, 347
British Journal of Political Science, 2017
:There has been a remarkable shift in the relation between market and state responsibilities for public services like health care and education. While these services continue to be financed publicly, they are now often provided through the market. The main argument for this new institutional division of labor is economic: while (public) ends stay the same, (private) means are more efficient. Markets function as ‘mere means’ under the continued responsibility of the state. This paper investigates and rejects currently existing egalitarian liberal theories about this division of labor and it presents and defends a new theory of marketization, in which social rights and democratic decision-making occupy center-stage.
Thinking Socially' about Markets
Journal of Australian Political Economy, 2011
For more than a century, the discipline of economics has been dominated by the neoclassical tradition of thought. This has bequeathed an understanding of markets as spheres of free exchange between autonomous, asocial individuals. Moreover, this understanding of markets is often reflected in mainstream public policy discourse. Yet the orthodox approach to understanding markets has proved inadequate for conceptualising the observed nature, practice and evolution of 'actually existing markets' (Chester 2010) in capitalist economies. As a result, it is contested on many fronts.
THE HUMAN IMPACT OF THE MARKET
For the past decade, the government has been ruthlessly pursuing free market policies. It has introduced market forces into many walks of life previously protected from them; and it has vigorously promoted the values of the `enterprise culture'. The economic and social consequences of these policies have been dramatic and profound. On the one hand, there has been a radical economic `restructuring': a ruthless sweeping away of much that was old and inefficient, and a considerable streamlining and modernizing of the economy. In the process, however, the lives of countless individuals have been disrupted. Communities, and even whole regions, have been devastated. Millions have been thrown out of work, or forced into new and often uncongenial occupations.
Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology, 2020
This chapter shows how our contemporary concept of 'market' is derived from a particular nineteenth-century theological concern with the possibility of empirical insight into human society. I propose that our idea of what markets are and what they do is in fact a theological innovation.
Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economics
The laws of the markets, 1998
Even as the market seems triumphant everywhere and its laws progressively and ineluctably impose themselves worldwide, we cannot fail to be struck by the lasting topicality of the following wellknown quotation from D. North: 'It is a peculiar fact that the literature on economics ... contains so little discussion of the central institution that underlies neoclassical economics-the market' (North, 1977).) How can this surprising shortcoming be explained? How can this self-proclaimed failure of economic theory be accounted for? By distinguishing the thing from the concept which refers to it, the marketplace from the market, the English language suggests a possible answer. While the market denotes the abstract mechanisms whereby supply and demand confront each other and adjust themselves in search of a compromise, the marketplace is far closer to ordinary experience and refers to the place in which exchange occurs. This distinction is, moreover, merely a particular case of a more general opposition, which the English language, once again, has the merit of conveying accurately: that between economics and economy, between theoretical and practical activity, in short, between economics as a discipline and economy as a thing. If economic theory knows so little about the marketplace, is it not simply because in striving to abstract and generalize it has ended up becoming detached from its object? Thus, the weakness of market theory may well be explained by its lack of interest in the marketplace. To remedy this shortcoming, economics would need only to return to its object, the economy, from which it never should have strayed in the first place. The matter, however, is not so simple. The danger of abstraction and unrealism which is supposed to threaten every academic discipline-and which time and again has been exposed and stigmatized, This means that the agent is neither immersed in the network nor framed by it; in other words, the network does not serve as a context. Both agent and network are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin. Either one enters the network through the agents and one is immediately tempted to characterize them by the shape of their 8~The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998
How mythical markets mislead analysis: an institutionalist critique of market universalism
Socio-Economic Review, 2018
Market universalism refers to the non-metaphorical tendency to use the term market to describe a wide variety of arrangements or processes in the real world. Using institutional criteria, this paper establishes some minimal necessary features of a market, to show that some particular arrangements are not markets. For example, while mechanisms of competition and interaction are ubiquitous, ordinary conversation is not literally a ‘market for ideas’ and much of politics is not literally a ‘political market’. Markets are not and cannot be universal. Yet market universalism overlooks missing markets, the theory of which implies that we are in a world of second-best solutions and that markets are not necessarily the answer to every economic problem. Also, by reducing politics to a form of ‘market’ economics, market universalism downplays the distinctive, non-market nature of the political and legal spheres and corrodes the conceptual separation of civil society from the state.
The Proper Limits of the Market : Communitarians vs . Economists
2016
Many communitarians deplore the expansion of the market beyond its traditional confines, turning our market economy into a market society. We should go beyond the narrow view of pure economic rationality, as market expansion may cause repugnance and crowd out morality and intrinsic motivation. This paper extends the traditional economic analysis to incorporate such wider effects. This does not provide a general case for or against the market expansion. However, in combination with the first welfare theorem in economics and the principle of treating a dollar as a dollar in specific issues, it provides a framework to estimate the relevant social costs and benefits in a more adequate way, providing a better guide for welfare maximization in public policy. Applying to specific issues, the paper finds that legalizing kidney sale is likely to be welfare improving in most cases, while possible inadequate blood supply in retaining voluntary and nonmonetary donation could be solved by educat...
Is the Market a Sphere of Social Freedom?
Critical Horizons, 2015
In this paper I examine Axel Honneth’s normative reconstruction of the market as a sphere of social freedom in his 2014 book, Freedom’s Right. Honneth’s position is complex: on the one hand, he acknowledges that modern capitalist societies do not realise social freedom; on the other hand, he insists that the promise of social freedom is implicit in the market sphere. In fact, the latter explains why modern subjects have seen capitalism as legitimate. I will reconstruct Honneth’s conception of social freedom and investigate how it is realised in the sphere in which Honneth sees it most successfully at work, the sphere of interpersonal relations. I then move on to the sphere of the market economy and discuss two related problems of this view that stem from his interpretation of Hegel. Next, I consider Honneth’s method of “normative reconstruction” and his reconstructions of the sphere of consumption and, finally, the labour market. My conclusion will be that market institutions cannot realise social freedom, and that this insight should orient the philosophical direction of critical social theory.