Separate spheres? The cultural contradictions of markets

Abstract

This article argues that the economic, political, and cultural spheres of society are not separate but rather mutually embedded in one another. The market is not just an economic phenomenon, but a political and cultural one as well. Markets, in this reframing, include not just the convenient fiction of atomized buyers and sellers but trade and professional associations and a field of public actors including assorted regulators and courts. It is the interaction of these parties that creates a market culture. These cultures exhibit contradictory tendencies that are generated by exchange relations and resolved by power dynamics. The contradictory tendencies reflect the tension between accumulative and regulative norms in market cultures. These include opportunism versus restraint, innovation versus standard practice, and growth versus stability. The resolution of the cultural contradictions of markets is not a natural tendency toward equilibrium, but rather an ideal of public policy to be attained by countervailing power in effective legal and regulatory institutions.

Citation

Abolafia, M.Y. (2013), "Separate spheres? The cultural contradictions of markets", From Economy to Society? Perspectives on Transnational Risk Regulation (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 62), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 265-271. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2013)0000062011