The social order of markets
TLDR
In this article, the authors develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets and argue that these problems can only be resolved based on stable reciprocal expectations on the part of market actors, which have their basis in socio-structural, institutional and cultural embedding of markets.Abstract:
In this article I develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets. The initial premise is that markets are highly demanding arenas of social interaction, which can only operate if three inevitable coordination problems are resolved. I define these coordination problems as the value problem, the problem of competition and the cooperation problem. I argue that these problems can only be resolved based on stable reciprocal expectations on the part of market actors, which have their basis in the socio-structural, institutional and cultural embedding of markets. The sociology of markets aims to investigate how market action is structured by these macrostructures and to examine their dynamic processes of change. While the focus of economic sociology has been primarily on the stability of markets and the reproduction of firms, the conceptualization developed here brings change and profit motives more forcefully into the analysis. It also differs from the focus of the new economic sociology on the supply side of markets, by emphasizing the role of demand for the order of markets, especially in the discussion of the problems of valuation and cooperation. Markets are the central institutions of capitalist economies. The development of modern capitalism can be viewed as a process of the expansion of markets as mechanisms for the production and allocation of goods and services. This applies not just to labor markets, which only emerged on a significant scale with industriali- zation, but also to the organization of the production and distribution of consumer and investment goods, services, and commodities. The increasing separation of the economy from the household and its organization through market exchange allowed for a scope in the development in the division of labor and production of wealth that would otherwise have been unattainable.read more
Citations
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Changing Landscapes: The Construction of Meaning and Value in a New Market Category—Modern Indian Art
Mukti Khaire,R. Daniel Wadhwani +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a descriptive study of the process of meaning construction in modern Indian art is presented. But little is known about the meaning construction process in new categories or how meaning translates into valuation criteria.
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How Do Fields Change? The Interrelations of Institutions, Networks, and Cognition in the Dynamics of Markets
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The Credit Crisis as a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the role in the credit crisis of the processes by which market participants produce knowledge about financial instruments, and presented a historical sociology of the clusters of evaluation practices surrounding ABSs and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations).
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The Local Sources of Market Formation: Explaining Regional Growth Differentials in German Photovoltaic Markets
Ulrich Dewald,Bernhard Truffer +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a conceptual framework for analysing the spatial characteristics of market formation processes in emerging technological innovation systems, thus proposing a shared field of research for economic geographers and transition scholars.
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Institutional change in economic geography
Harald Bathelt,Johannes Glückler +1 more
TL;DR: The authors developed a rigorous concept of institutions to investigate the interrelationships between institutional and economic change from the perspective of economic geography, and explored three modes of institutional change: hysteresis, emergent change, and institutional entrepreneurship.
References
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The Strength of Weak Ties
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another, and the impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored.
Posted Content
Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance
Douglass C. North,John Alt +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the role that institutions, defined as the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction, play in economic performance and how those institutions change and how a model of dynamic institutions explains the differential performance of economies through time.
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Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness
TL;DR: In this article, the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society, is examined, and it is argued that reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong.
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Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
John W. Meyer,Brian Rowan +1 more
TL;DR: Many formal organizational structures arise as reflections of rationalized institutional rules as discussed by the authors, and the elaboration of such rules in modern states and societies accounts in part for the expansion and i...
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The Market for “Lemons”: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a struggling attempt to give structure to the statement: "Business in under-developed countries is difficult"; in particular, a structure is given for determining the economic costs of dishonesty.