Consumption logistics and the ordering of market systems

Abstract

This article argues that consumption logistics are fundamental modes of ordering markets. Constructivist Market Studies (CMS) and Market System Dynamics (MSD) approaches improved our understanding of, respectively, the practical and symbolic processes of market organization. On this backdrop, previous research has predominantly framed logistics as a practical performance of this organization. Conversely, we argue that logistical performances are as much practical as they are symbolic. Drawing on both CMS and MSD research, we therefore conceptualize consumption logistics as the system of interrelated practices ordering the heterogeneous entities of consumption in space and time. Put differently, by integrating market and consumption practices, consumption logistics recursively (per)form the context of markets, that is, the situated conditions affording subjects the possibility to consume and objects to be consumed within specific markets. Our theorization brings forward the complex practical-symbolic ordering of markets, with implications for discussions of spaces, subjects and meanings of market phenomena.