Architecture of Markets

Abstract

Markets are socially constructed arenas where repeated exchanges occur between buyers and sellers under a set of formal and informal rules governing relations among competitors, suppliers, and customers. These arenas operate according to local understandings and rules that guide interaction, facilitate trade, define what products are produced, indeed constitute the products themselves, and provide stability for buyers, sellers, and producers. Marketplaces are also dependent on governments, laws, and cultural understandings supporting market activity. Our essay provides a brief exposition of this perspective. Then, it considers cutting-edge work on three topics: (i) the formation of markets and prices, (ii) the organization of capitalism in different societies, and (iii) financialization and globalization. We suggest that in the future, path breaking research will: (i) explore the sociology of consumption, (ii) combine insights from the sociology of markets and from studies of the role of economic thought in constructing markets, and (iii) investigate national and transnational regulations.

Insurgent capitalism: Island, bricolage and the re-making of finance

“…Markets are 'social arenas where firms, their suppliers, customers, workers, and government interact' (Fligstein & Dauter, 2007, p. 107). They are not an ahistorical abstraction, but rather are formed by tangible social elements, be they institutional fields structured through resource and power differentials between agents (Fligstein, 1990(Fligstein, , 2001DiMaggio & Powell, 1986), relational networks that define the possibilities of action and shape the dynamics of exchange (Granovetter, 1985) or collections of actants that articulate valuation (Callon, 1998;Callon & Muniesa, 2005).…”

The Rise of Precarious Employment in Germany

“…By institutions, we mean stable agreements, historical settlements, rules, laws and politically powerful collective actors (Campbell 2004;Fligstein 2001;Pierson 2004). Institutions channel, constrain and regulate the behavior of firms, workers and other actors, and define the range of legitimate actions of market actors (Fligstein 2001;Thelen 2012).…”

“…Institutions channel, constrain and regulate the behavior of firms, workers and other actors, and define the range of legitimate actions of market actors (Fligstein 2001;Thelen 2012). As has been amply demonstrated (e.g.…”

The On-Going Price of Perceiving Money as a Veil

“…During the ascendancy of industrial-capital and labor between 1950 and 1970, the rentier portion of US corporate surplus increased gradually, from 20-to-30% while from the late 1980s onwards it rose to between 60-and-70% (Henwood, 1997). This reallocation is also apparent in the mounting ascendancy of finance within corporate governance throughout the conversion from post-war mass-production emphasizing growth and sales, to the present fixation with profitability and -shareholder value‖ (Ingham, 1999;Fligstein & Calder, 2001). The change in corporate strategy from growth and output to a preoccupation with rates of returns to investment, grounded the downsizing and de-layering of manufacturing that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s.…”