Is Friendship Consistent with Competitive Market Exchange?

Abstract

A conventional assumption within sociology of markets is that social ties are crucial in economic life, but that too strong relationships between sellers and buyers can create role conflicts and restrict business. Using qualitative interviews with Norwegian exporters and Danish importers, this article examines transactions in the international fish trade. We find that the assumed episodic and highly competitive commodity trade is rooted in dyadic networks and personal trust; inspired by the work of Goffman, we analyse transaction patterns as ‘interaction order’. The transaction pattern is dependent on a particular organization of social interaction, interaction in which business dealings are divided into delimited spheres of the ‘formal’, ‘personal’ and ‘private’. This division reflects a differentiation of the social roles, one in which traders avoid the role conflicts inherent in close relationships. We conclude by stating that economic sociology should probably be less preoccupied with formal network configurations and instead be focused more on how actors actually use social ties in the marketplace to conduct business, and on how these ties are linked to price mechanisms.