Thinking Socially' about Markets (original) (raw)
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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.
2007
Prominent economic sociologist Richard Swedberg has argued that economists have failed to develop a theory of the market that recognizes it as a “social phenomenon in its own right.” While this may be true of mainstream economics, the Austrian school’s theory of the market is much richer than the standard view. For Austrians, the market has always been a central concern. And, Austrians have always argued that the market is a social structure where both exchange and competition occurs. Still, Austrians give little more than scant attention to the non-economic sociality that occurs in markets. The market, however, is both a conversation and an arena where meaningful conversations can occur. This paper is an effort to focus attention on the market as a social space where social activity (beyond competition and exchange) takes place and where non-economic relationships as well as economic relationships develop.
Market and Society: How do they relate, and contribute to welfare?
2004
This paper discusses how markets and society relate to each other. We present and discuss three views: markets as separate, markets as embedded, and markets as impure. One’s stance on the contribution of markets to welfare hinges on the conceptualization of market and other spheres in society. If, for instance, one perceives of the economy (the economic domain) as an all-encompassing sphere or as a sphere totally separate from others, then one would believe markets necessarily contribute to welfare. Markets are presumed to be ubiquitous in mainstream economics; the orthodox view is that of the ‘market as separate’. Indeed, Frank Hahn notably conceded that neoclassical economics does not describe markets, but ‘conjures’ them up. Mainstream conceptions of the market are functionalist – in the appropriate conditions the market is an efficiency conduit, and hence wealth and welfare generating. Creating these appropriate conditions then drives policy, such as the provision of health care...
Conceptualising Markets (with Julian Gruin)
Centre for International Policy Studies, 2019
The rise of novel modes of governance, such as China’s authoritarian capitalism, is challenging commonly held assumptions about what markets are. See our blog post on why our conceptually impoverished definition of markets distorts contemporary debates on China and the Global Liberal Order, on the regulation of new markets or on how to design inclusive economic policy.
Ruling markets: the marketization of social and economic policy
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2015
It has become a commonplace observation that the long-standing focus on the realm of production in economic geography came at considerable costs. While economic geographers' attention remained strongly fixated on the production side of the economy, mainstream economics moved towards an ever more abstract focus on exchange equilibriums modeled in analogy to auctions and the functioning of stock exchanges (Knorr Cetina, 2006). The resulting division of labor, while so important for the emergence of economic geography as a critical, politically viable project, turned into a liability at a time when the idea of the perfect market increasingly imposed itself, influencing ever larger swathes of social life. Fortunately, this situation has changed. Economic geographers have finally rediscovered the market both as an abstract institutional logic as well as in its materialization ''on the ground'' (
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
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
'Historicizing the Ideology of "the Market"', Competition & Change, 25 (2021), 5, 517-533.
Competition & Change, 2021
The concept of the market is a linchpin notion in the analysis of contemporary capitalism. This article seeks to question how the term has tended to oscillate between two problematic types of use: either underspecifying the history and politics tied to the concept or, conversely, overloading the notion with a proliferation of too many meanings and applications. As a way to chart an alternative approach which can objectify and critique some of these patterns, this paper re-excavates the notion of 'the market' through a historicization of its ideological production and consumption. In particular, the argument brings political economy scholarship into a conversation with theoretical advances in the analysis of ideology, notably Michael Freeden's so-called 'morphological approach'. The article illuminates not only past usage patterns but also how the potency of the expression has been refreshed within recent decades associated with neoliberalism. In this way, through a dissection of this master category, the article also aims to contribute to identifying more precisely what is new in the neoliberal ideological ecosystem.