Markets: Anthropological Aspects
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Markets: Anthropological Aspects North D C 1977 Markets and other allocation systems in history: ‘market’ [is] the social institution of exchanges where prices or The challenge of Karl Polanyi. Journal of European Economic exchange equivalencies exist. ‘Marketplace’ refers to these History 6: 703–16 interactions in a customary time and place. … A market can Schmoller G 1904 Grundriss der Allgemeinen Volkswirtschafts- exist without being localized in a marketplace, but it is hard to lehre. Teil 2. Duncker und Humblot, Leipzig imagine a marketplace without some sort of institutions Swedberg R 1994 Markets as social structures. In: Smelser N J, governing exchanges. (p. 171) Swedberg R (eds.) The Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp. 255–82 Marketplaces embody a localized set of social Vanberg V J 1982 Markt und Organisation. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul institutions, social actors, property rights, products, Siebeck), Tu$bingen, Germany transactional relationships, trade practices, and cul- Vanberg V J 1997 Institutional evolution through purposeful tural meanings framed by a wide variety of factors selection: The constitutional economics of John R. Commons. including, but not limited to, ‘purely economic’ or Constitutional Political Economy 8: 105–22 Walras L 1954 [1874] Elements of Pure Economics or the Theory ‘market’ forces. Of course, anthropological analyses of Social Wealth [trans. Jaffe! W]. Richard D. Irwin, of markets in the first sense are often ethnographically Homewood, IL focused on marketplaces in the second sense. Weber M 1978 Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretie Anthropological approaches to markets sometimes Sociology [trans. Fischoff E]. University of California Press, focus on the formal properties of exchange systems as Berkeley, CA, 2 Vols. frameworks for organizing behavior, relying on quan- titative analyses of exchange relationships. However, V. Vanberg anthropologists generally place such analyses within wider ethnographic contexts that see marketplaces as specific locations and social frameworks, charac- terized not only by economic exchanges in and among them, but also by their equally vital roles as arenas for Markets: Anthropological Aspects cultural activity and political expression, nodes in flows of information, landmarks of historical and Markets are so routinely regarded as fundamentally ritual significance, and centers of civic participation economic institutions that long-standing and quite where diverse social, economic, ethnic, and cultural varied anthropological perspectives on them are often groups combine, collide, cooperate, collude, compete, overlooked. Anthropological attention focuses on and clash. Anthropological and sociological analyses patterns of individual and small-group exchange emphasize this ‘embeddedness’ of markets in ongoing relationships within specific markets, on institutional patterns of social organization and cultural meaning structures that organize markets, and on the social, (Polanyi et al. 1957, Granovetter 1985); that is, political, and spatial hierarchies through which mar- economic behavior is not analyzed as an autonomous kets link social classes, ethnic groups, or regional sphere of human activity, but as inseparably inter- societies into larger systems. Anthropological studies twined with a wide variety of social, political, ritual, of markets analyze them as nodes of complex social and other cultural behaviors, institutions, and beliefs. processes and generators of cultural activity as well as realms for economic exchange. Anthropologists’ interests in markets, therefore, are partially distinct 2. Marketplaces as Ethnographic Sites from—although certainly overlapping with—the con- cerns of economists. Marketplaces vary enormously. They differ according to the local, regional, or global scope of production, distribution, or consumption of the goods and services 1. Markets and Marketplaces they trade. Retail and wholesale markets are struc- tured quite differently around the distinct activities The term ‘market’ is inherently ambiguous. Abstract- and social roles of consumers, producers, and traders. ly, ‘market’ refers to exchange organized around Some markets handle physical commodities; others principles such as ‘price’ or ‘supply-and-demand.’ trade intangible financial assets. Many marketplaces ‘Market’ may also refer to specific social relationships are permanent, but in some societies markets are and frameworks through which economic transactions periodic, held at regular or irregular intervals, some- take place. Markets, in the first sense, are networks of times as one stop along regional circuits for peddlers economic processes and transactions which may occur who visit specific sites on a fixed cycle. (The tiny without specific locations or spatial boundaries for the handful of ethnographic studies of markets listed in transactional universe. In the second sense, markets the bibliography give only a glimpse of the wide are social institutions, often located in geographically variety of anthropological analyses of markets, their distinct places, which encompass specific social, legal, internal structures, and their wider social and cultural and political processes that enable economic trans- contexts: e.g., Acheson, Bestor, Bohannan, Clark, actions, but also extend far beyond them. Plattner Cohen, Geertz, Hertz, Meillassoux, Mintz, Polanyi, (1989) makes a useful distinction: Plattner, Roseberry, Skinner, Smith, Trager.) 9227 Markets: Anthropological Aspects Many small-scale markets are socially embedded in (Plattner 1985). They emphasize how economic ac- communities, where producers and consumers deal tivity is embedded in social institutions and relation- face-to-face over the vegetables, chickens, or bolts of ships which structure solutions to economic problems cloth that are the stuff of daily life, whether in a (sometimes conceptualized as ‘transaction costs’ peasant community, an urban bazaar, or a farmer’s (Acheson 1994)). These costs, which any market or market in a middle-class suburb. Local markets, as enterprise inevitably faces, are not only direct over- well as much more specialized ones such as urban head expenses on specific exchanges. More generally, wholesale markets of professional traders, are often the economic and social costs of exchange include organized around complex, multistranded relation- those of establishing trust and reliability among trade ships that intertwine gender, ethnicity, class, and partners, soliciting or extending credit, guaranteeing kinship, as well as economic role. stable sources of supply, enforcing compliance with Other very different kinds of markets (not market- agreements, recruiting labor, distributing profits, places) embody diffuse, impersonal (and perhaps monitoring employees, obtaining information on mar- anonymous) ties among trade partners, such as in ket conditions, creating or enforcing property rights, ‘spot markets’ where economic actors interact only managing risk, and so forth (Geertz 1978). through a one-time transaction, as in many real estate Various patterns of social structure that enable markets, labor markets, and global commodity mar- markets to form and economic transactions to occur kets for things such as sugar, coffee, or rubber. are often conceptualized—by anthropologists influ- Long-distance trade—both in exotic products and enced by institutional economics and sociology—in mundane commodities—may pass through highly terms of ‘governance structures,’ the institutional specialized marketplaces that coordinate a regional or structures that organize, constrain, and coordinate a global industry, such as Dutch flower auctions. economic activities, that sanction some behaviors and Some long-distance markets are organized around provide incentives for others. Different governance small tightly knit communities of professional traders structures—different forms of market relationships, who transact business within networks of trust built different forms of business organization—provide on ethnic solidarity, such as New York’s diamond different solutions to the challenges of achieving social exchanges or Ibadan’s Hausa traders. and economic integration over the ‘transaction costs’ Markets exist along continua between the most that all economic institutions must bear. Governance informal sectors of society and the most highly structures are, therefore, social institutions and regulated. Some markets are organized through in- systems of norms familiar to anthropologists in many formal or quasi-formal institutions (open and above other contexts and subject to similar kinds of social board, but outside the realm of legal or political and cultural analyses. attention), while others are ‘gray,’ ‘black, ’ or entirely Governance structures range along a theoretical illegal. Other specialized markets for professional continuum, from ‘market governance’ to ‘governance traders are organized within tightly regulated insti- by hierarchy.’ In the former, an economic actor relies tutional frameworks that govern access, terms of on the competitive forces of a spot market to obtain exchange, reporting requirements, or public account- the goods, services, and trustworthiness it requires; in ability; some examples include stock markets, the latter, an economic actor controls goods, services, commodity exchanges, and other financial markets. personnel, and reliability through direct ownership Whether informal or formal, the frameworks of and administrative fiat (as in a vertically