Market Sociology Research Articles

Market as Engine of Historical Change: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Sociology of Market

Market is social phenomenon. This article argues that market is social phenomenon because, people perform according to their social positioning. Historically, market was changing, as per the social change. There are different stages of the market development, it was started from kinship to capitalist market.

Recent Research and Theory on Market in Sociology; A Semi-Systematic Literature Review

AbstractCurrent studies of market use social science theories and offer new theoretical approaches. This article discusses the latest theories and approaches to analyze the market. This research was conducted with semi-systemic literature review approach. The data is obtained through searching the published article in online scientific journals related to the market. Data analysis was carried out by thematically categorizing the finding and the presented descriptively. The results found two categories of approaches in the study of markets, namely Structural and Performative (consisted of institutional, network, cultural and normative approaches), and an integrative approach (consisted of integration of social forces and neo-institutionalism in sociology). This paper argues that current theories tend to analyze the market towards stability than dynamics, and the market system than the marketplace. Therefore, this paper purpose a suitable theoretical approach to understand market stability, dynamics and the market as a market place and a market system simultaneously.Keywords:Market Place, Market System, Economic Sociology, Sociology of Market

How the living shapes markets: accounting for the action of biological entities in market agencing

ABSTRACT Market sociology research has accounted amply for the importance of material devices in shaping markets. In contrast, the influence of biological entities (such as parasites, soil, and food) on market agencing has barely been considered. This article shows the relevance of covering this matter specifically. To do so, the authors refer to their analyses of the production and sales practices of organic vegetable market actors in France. Based on descriptions of four situations, they show that the biological processes involved in the cultivated ecosystems and agricultural produce itself influence the market agencing processes that these actors carry out. Based on these first observations, they propose four generic statements that clarify what considering the action of biological entities involves in terms of theory and identify avenues for future research.

The Uncertainty of Essential Oil as a Cosmetic Product Market: A Market Sociology Perspective

Essential oil as a cosmetic product is believed to be one of the highest-demand commodities, especially when the back to nature is the current leading trend. However, the essential oil market itself faced an uncertain future. The uncertainty problem in this market can be seen from the fluctuating prices and difficulties in assessing the product. The previous studies mostly saw this problem from the supply side and it can be concluded that there is lack of data and information about the market demand for essential oils. Therefore the aim of this study is to analyze the uncertainty of essential oil as a cosmetic product market. This study tried to answer the central initial problem of market sociology, the constitution of demand. Furthermore, the constitution of demand will discuss about the problem of price and quality assessment of this commodity. Library research was used by the author in this article. The findings shows that the uncertainty problem in the constitution of demand can be seen in the fluctuating price of essential oils and the difficulties faced by experts and non-experts assessing the quality of essential oils. The reason for its difficulties is that the commodities are only assessed from their material qualities. Previous studies about cosmetic and Indonesian Traditional Herbal Medicine (Jamu) and several documents of essential oil reports, will enlarge the constitution of demand side of this essential oil market.

Power resource theory revisited: The perils and promises for understanding contemporary labour politics

While their power is declining, unions and workers remain prominent actors in society. Therefore, there is a need to bring power resource theory back to the analytical forefront in the study of contemporary labour politics and labour market sociology. It provides the analytical perspectives necessary for a comprehensive and historical understanding of labour markets and labour politics. However, this article argues that the original theory developed by Korpi needs to be reassessed and further developed. Revisiting the original theory and reviewing common criticism, the authors argue that power resource theory should pay closer attention to how different types of power resources are mobilised and used and how actors’ interests are shaped during that process. The article seeks to address these issues and thus move power resource theory forward and pave the way for future theorisation.

The coronavirus crisis reveals blind spots in Nordic labour market data – A sociological perspective

The Nordic countries are renowned for their unique administrative register data that include various aspects of an individual’s labour market activities. However, studies of government-led help packages and their effects during the coronavirus crisis in Denmark reveal that the labour market statistics used by government and academics have several blind spots when it comes to some of the most vulnerable groups in the labour market. There are strong signs that we underestimate the scope and depth of atypical work and even lack reliable data. We argue in this piece that the coronavirus crisis is an important lesson for labour market sociology that calls for methodological development.

Reprendre la main sur le marché : la construction de circuits intermédiés innovants pour la viande bovine

En s’appuyant sur la sociologie de l’action organisée et la sociologie des agencements marchands, l’article décrit la construction de nouveaux circuits marchands pour la viande bovine observés dans la Loire et en Isère. Pour leurs promoteurs, des éleveurs et des détaillants, l’objectif était de reprendre la main sur l’organisation des circuits de commercialisation sans pour autant construire des circuits courts. Il s’agissait de construire des circuits intermédiés dont les règles du jeu sont conjointement élaborées. Les auteurs soulignent l’ampleur de la tâche nécessaire à la construction de tels circuits en distinguant trois processus qu’ils nomment qualification, tarification et fluidification. Pour chacun d’entre eux, ils montrent que ne pas laisser les intermédiaires organiser le marché requiert des négociations et des apprentissages collectifs.

The Financial Markets: Between Publics and Multitudes. A Sociological Contribution to Markets from Gabriel Tarde’s Viewpoint

This paper reflects on the dynamics of today’s financial markets in the light of two concepts — publics and multitudes — which were developed by the sociologist Gabriel Tarde at the end of the 19th Century. Each of the concepts reveals a different way of structuring social links among individuals. We consider that Tarde’s concepts let us: (1) stress the communicative dimension of today’s financial markets, placing currents of opinion at the core of speculative activity in the creation and assignment of value to monetary flows and other financial instruments; (2) hypothesise that financial markets articulate the logic of ‘publics’ (or audiences). These markets are virtually, globally connected, spreading currents of opinion that link financial experts and ordinary folk. They also link the multitudes (giving rise to ‘bubbles’, key social-temporal moments, and e-valuations through community links among professional agents — all features that can pave the way to a crisis). The paper’s point of departure is a review of present theories on Market Sociology. It then delves into the contributions that the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘multitude’ make in shedding light on financial dynamics and hence on the Sociology of Finance.

How Factorial Survey Analysis Improves Our Understanding of Employer Preferences

Abstract Factorial Survey Analysis (FSA) is an analytical tool that presents respondents with fictional situations (“vignettes”) to be rated or judged. In this paper we study the use of FSA in labour market sociology, with a particular focus on employer-based surveys, and what they can teach us about hiring preferences. FSA is useful in this context as it targets employers directly and comes close to a causal design. This review article seeks to pinpoint the contributions FSA has made to the field, identify its limits and propose topics in which it may be useful.

Profit as Social Rent: Embeddedness and Stratification in Markets

This article shows how research on the social structure of markets may contribute to the analysis the growing income inequality in contemporary capitalist economies. The author proposes a theoretical link between embeddedness and social stratification by discussing the role of institutions and networks in markets for the distribution of economic profits between firms. The author claims that we must understand profit and free competition as opposites, as economic theory does. In the main part of the article the author illustrates six typical mechanisms of rent extraction from networks or formal and symbolic rules that embed markets. They emerge from material as well as symbolical access to and influence on the orientation of other market actors. Social structures in markets lead to unequal chances for rent extraction, even if actors produce them for coordination rather than for accumulation purposes. This is how market sociology and theory of capitalism can be linked more closely.

Recommendation und Reklame

Summary Recommendation and Promotion.German Fire-Engine Makers and Early Modern Practicesof Advertising This paper sets out to analyse early modern practices of advertising beyond traditional modernization narratives. Combining a case-study, the marketing of fire engines in the 18th-century Lower Rhine region, with theoretical considerations, it argues that studying practices of advertising can contribute to historicizing the ‚economic‘ in a broader perspective. The paper examines the interplay between different forms of advertising, e. g. printed advertisements, public demonstrations, and recommendation letters. It identifies various strategies used to display expertise and diversify the groups of potential customers. These strategies are mapped against the particular profile of the engine-makers who moved between the border-crossing milieu of artisan-inventors and the patronage of regional administrative elites. Finally, the paper traces the different ways engine-makers competed with each other in the regional „Intelligenzblatt“ as opposed to in the marketplace, thereby linking the historicization of advertising to current debates in market sociology.

25 Years After the USSR: Prospects of the Comparative Studies of Capitalism A Review Essay on: Comparative Sociology. 2017, vol. 16, iss. 1: 25 Years after the USSR: The Burden of the Past, the Bitterness of Reality, and Dreaming for the Future, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishing. 181 p

This paper is an extended review essay dedicated to the special issue of Comparative Sociology “25 Years After the USSR” (2017, vol. 16, issue 1). The issue consists of 6 original research papers that are of interest for scholars working in the field of economic sociology. The paper shows how the topic of post-Soviet transformations still remains relevant for economic sociologists, and highlights the advantages and the shortcomings of the articles presented in the issue of Comparative Sociology. The paper also demonstrates how the fall of the USSR and the disciplinary rearrangement of the social sciences, economic sociology in particular, are related to the dominance of sociology of market as a research program. In short, the historical victory of the market capitalism allowed market exchange to be treated as a paradigm of social action. The consequence of this has been twofold: on the one hand, economic sociology has increasingly concerned itself with the study of markets, however, with a particular focus on the social structures that allow, make possible, and enhance market exchanges. On the other hand, this focus on the “scaffolding” structures of the markets made economic sociology an addition, instead of a competitor, to the neoclassical economic theory. The paper briefly reviews the arguments that support such a conclusion. In the final section, the paper analyses the limits of the strategy of comparative analysis of capitalisms in different countries that is being pursued by the articles presented in the issue under review.

Categories all the way down

Categories All the Way Down Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy ∗ Abstract: »Kategorien auf der ganzen Linie«. Scores and classifications are dual to one another. Cardinal and ordinal measures are repeatedly used to produce nominal classifications of essential worth. Conversely, presumptively natural kinds provide the basis for new measurement and scoring systems. Over time, the iterative application of nominal classifications and quantifying measures produce involuted, nested systems whose structure and origins are hard to dis- entangle. While careful studies of earlier systems and methods have often un- covered these arbitrary aspects, newer technical tools for classification are at once substantially more opaque than their predecessors and more likely to be employed on very large scales. The classification situations to which they give rise thus have the potential to produce the sort of naturalized facticity charac- teristic of classical social facts. Keywords: Market classifications, scores, categories, classification situations, market sociology. The articles in this HSR Special Issue “Market Classifications” explore scoring and classification tools across a range of economic settings, and from a variety of perspectives. The settings range from the German wine market (Diaz-Bone 2017) to the American subprime credit sector (Rona-Tas 2017), from the sus- tainability and social investment sector to the British fashion world (Nagel et al. 2017; Schiller-Merkens 2017; all in this issue). The perspectives taken vari- ously see scoring and classification methods as tools for solving coordination or action problems in markets, as means for establishing and maintaining iden- tities (Pridmore and Hamalainen 2017, this issue) and as portable judgment devices with the capacity to be put to use beyond their original context (Chia- pello and Godefroy 2017, this issue). Across the contributions is the sense that, as Citron and Pasquale (2014) have suggested, we now live in “scored socie- ties” where increasingly large tracts of social life are subject to these methods, and in an increasingly automated manner. Discussing the credit crisis of 2007-08, MacKenzie (2011, 1830) asks “Should we understand the conduct of those practices and the use of their results as having been driven by belief in them, or should it be seen as cynical, as driven simply by the pursuit of gain (e.g., by Marion Fourcade, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720- 1980, USA; fourcade@berkeley.edu. Kieran Healy, Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; kjhealy@soc.duke.edu. Historical Social Research 42 (2017) 1, 286-296 Ň© GESIS DOI: 10.12759/hsr.42.2017.1.286-296

Classification Situations: Life-Chances in the Neoliberal Era

Classification Situations: Life-Chances in the Neoliberal Era Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy ∗ Abstract: »Klassifikations-Lagen. Lebenschancen in der neoliberalen Ara«. This article examines the stratifying effects of economic classifications. We argue that in the neoliberal era market institutions increasingly use actuarial tech- niques to split and sort individuals into classification situations that shape life- chances. While this is a general and increasingly pervasive process, our main empirical illustration comes from the transformation of the credit market in the United States. This market works as both as a leveling force and as a con- denser of new forms of social difference. The U.S. banking and credit system has greatly broadened its scope over the past twenty years to incorporate pre- viously excluded groups. We observe this leveling tendency in the expansion of credit amongst lower-income households, the systematization of overdraft pro- tections, and the unexpected and rapid growth of the fringe banking sector. But while access to credit has democratized, it has also differentiated. Scoring technologies classify and price people according to credit risk. This has allowed multiple new distinctions to be made amongst the creditworthy, as scores get attached to different interest rates and loan structures. Scores have also ex- panded into markets beyond consumer credit, such as insurance, real estate, employment, and elsewhere. The result is a cumulative pattern of advantage and disadvantage with both objectively measured and subjectively experienced aspects. We argue these private classificatory tools are increasingly central to the generation of „market-situations“, and thus an important and overlooked force that structures individual life-chances. In short, classification situations may have become the engine of modern class situations. Keywords: Market classifications, market sociology, market order, categoriza- tion, credit scores. Marion Fourcade, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720- 1980, USA; fourcade@berkeley.edu. Kieran Healy, Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; kjhealy@soc.duke.edu. The article is reprinted with the kind permission from Elsevier B. V. Reprint of: Fourcade, Marion, Kieran Healy. 2013. Classification situations: Life-chances in the neoliberal era. Ac- counting, Organizations, and Society 38 (8): 559-72. doi: 10.1016/j.aos.2013.11.002. Historical Social Research 42 (2017) 1, 23-51 © GESIS DOI: 10.12759/hsr.42.2017.1.23-51

The emerging global education industry: analysing market-making in education through market sociology

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the rise and consequences of an emerging global education industry (GEI), which represents new forms of private, for profit involvement in education across the globe. The paper explores the emergence within the GEI of new and varied, largely transnational, markets in education by focusing on three examples of the GEI at work. The first example addresses the issue of Charter Schools, what they have come to represent, how they have been implemented, and, especially, the impact they have had on public schooling more broadly. While they have taken different forms in different places, they have succeeded in installing the idea of quasi-markets in education, which has been directly instrumental in opening up opportunities for private investment in education. The second example concerns the ways that the increasingly global standardisation of education policies, provision and practices, presents lucrative opportunities for investment and profit. The forms and consequences of such standardisation are described in the contrasting cases of Qatar, Mongolia and Indonesia. The third example concerns low-fee private schools in the Global South. Far from such schools being seen as local initiatives, the paper shows how they have become a major opportunity for profitable investment by international corporations.

Managing political market agencements: solar photovoltaic policy in France

ABSTRACTThe development of renewable energy is one manifestation of current transformations in the organisation of European energy production and markets. To illuminate the changes triggered by renewable energy policy, the evolution of solar photovoltaic policy in France is analysed with a focus on its central instrument, feed-in tariffs (FITs). FITs for photovoltaics raised difficulties in many countries, but their effects were particularly dramatic in France. Market sociology and science and technology studies are employed to describe FITs as agencements organising the markets and politics of electricity production. FITs are considered as inherently unpredictable insofar as they encourage innovation and the emergence of new actors. The ways in which three successive agencements of FITs for photovoltaics framed the politics and economy of photovoltaics in France, and how they addressed unanticipated effects, are discussed. This is suggestive of transformations and tensions in the construction of French energy policy.

At the Crossroads: The Embedding Work of Market Participants in and around Markets

Market participants stand at the intersection of at least two perennial contexts: their target market and their experience in other social spheres. A question remains regarding how market participants manage this position at the crossroads and how it affects their market activities. Thus far, market sociology has paid scant attention to these issues. To more closely investigate the enmeshment of market participants in multiple contexts, this article introduces the concept of embedding work and applies it to self-employed market participants, who engage in embedding work in two directions: They establish equivalences to target markets and biographic experiences, and at the same time, they draw distinctions from these contexts. Case studies of nascent entrepreneurs in Germany illustrate how embedding work impacts the choice of target markets and the maneuvering within these markets. The article contributes to market sociology by dealing with the embedding of markets in other social contexts as mediated by market participants.

On the outside looking in? Transitions out of non-employment in the United Kingdom and Germany

This article investigates differences in the likelihood of becoming an insider in Germany and the United Kingdom. Consistent with recent literature on dualization it contends that insider protection is more pronounced in the corporatist system and conservative welfare state of Germany. In conjunction with micro-level labour market sociology, the study argues that this affects the job matching process of the labour market. Using individual level panel data in event history models, it contrasts leaving non-employment for an insider position, that is, permanent full-time employment, with staying on the outside of the core labour market, that is, remaining without employment or taking up an atypical job. Results demonstrate that insider positions are harder to attain in the German labour market as a consequence of the institutional context that makes the said posts so appealing in the first place. At the same time, the German labour market regime strengthens the mechanisms of selection in terms of gender, age and education. The insider/outsider divide thus works in two ways. First, it increases inequality between insiders and outsiders in terms of economic and positional stability. Second, a stronger divide interacts with micro-level matching processes on the labour market. By reinforcing social differences in the chance to obtain an insider position, inequality is thus even further pronounced.

On Public Forms of Competition

Competition is among the few social-scientific concepts clearly associated with the transparency discourse—obvious today when a myriad of public “ratings” and “rankings” evaluate states, universities, and other actors while often claiming to advance the transparency of those actors and their performances. This article deals with this association from a historical-sociological perspective. It argues that public rankings and similar discursive devices not only symbolize competition but also create and reproduce it, creating what is called here, “artificial zero-sum games.” On this basis, it also makes the case that a more sophisticated conceptualization of public forms of competition draws attention to a long-term historical trend, the beginnings of which can be traced to the 19th century. The argument is presented in two steps: In the first part, a sociological model of public forms of competition is proposed that combines classical sociologist Georg Simmel’s concept of “indirect” and “pure” competition (= competition as a struggle for the favor of a third party) with insights from communication theory, market sociology, media, and globalization research. This model implies that public communication processes create competition by imagining an anonymous audience that enables this kind of competition through its very indefiniteness and anonymity. Thus “publicity” or “publicness,” rather than “transparency,” seem to be the more adequate terms to conceptualize these forms of competition. The second part discusses historical-sociological implications of this model, analyzing competition between nation-states (and national collective identities) in the light of recent globalization research, claiming and describing three trends—toward competition for modernity prestige, specific cultural achievement prestige, and attention/legitimacy —since the late-19th century.

A sociologia dos mercados

A sociologia dos mercados tem sido um dos campos mais vibrantes da sociologia nos últimos 25 anos. Há uma boa dose de concordância de que os mercados são estruturas sociais caracterizadas por relações sociais extensas entre firmas, trabalhadores, fornecedores, clientes e governos. No entanto, assim como em tantas literaturas sociológicas, os campos teóricos que se formaram com frequência parecem falar sem levar os demais em consideração. Nós demonstramos que parte das discordâncias entre os campos teóricos se deve a diferenças na linguagem conceitual, e outras discordâncias estão ligadas ao fato de que os campos teóricos ignoram os conceitos em outros campos, o que torna suas teorias menos completas. Nós terminamos discutindo controvérsias mais profundas na literatura que parecem abertas tanto a novas conceptualizações, quanto a pesquisa empírica adicional.