Market Making and the Contested Performation of Value in the Global (Bulk) Wine Industry

Abstract

Recent economic geography scholarship has emphasized (1) the performative work of market making (i.e., the geographies of marketization perspective) and (2) value-creation practices in markets (particularly the geographies of association and dissociation perspectives). In this article, we propose making stronger connections between these bodies of literature to gain a better understanding of how the performative constitution of markets and of brand and commodity value in markets are connected. More precisely, we argue that not only the b/ordering of the market and market outside (i.e., the world outside the market) but, equally, b/ordering processes within markets are essential components of performative market making and key to the contested attribution of value to commodities and brands. We flesh out this conceptual argument by empirically investigating the global wine market, which is characterized by high significance of brand building and of symbolic qualities—particularly geographic origin. In recent decades, the global wine market has been marked by a massive globalization process, strongly linked to the trading of wine in bulk form and outsourced bulk wine assembly for retailers’ private labels. Building on ethnographical research, we analyze the associative and dissociative b/ordering of the bulk wine market vis-à-vis the (premium) wine market, arguing that this performation struggle is key to the attribution of value to wine. Bearing in mind that we are witnessing an increasing aestheticization of consumer goods in the global economy, resulting in a dramatic rise in branding activities, contested b/ordering processes within markets, we argue, will grow in importance in the future.