The ‘s’ in markets: mundane market concepts and how to know a (strawberry) market

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that concepts of markets as empirical objects are central to singling out particular markets as objects of analysis, and thus that market studies need to systematically investigate market concepts as part of advancing the agenda of adding a plural 's' and making particular markets object of inquiry. This argument is made by revisiting the strawberry market in Sologne, France as analyzed by M. Callon and M.-F. Garcia-Parpet, respectively. Two decades have passed since the publishing of The Laws of the Market, and considering its great impact, this anniversary gives occasion for revisiting the central place the particular market for strawberries is given in the argument and discussing the concepts developed by Callon with a view to how Garcia-Parpet comes to identify a particular market. This revisit shows that although Callon in part distracts from a systematic attention to concepts of market as an empirical object of inquiry, he also offers distinctions valuable for better understanding concepts of markets. It also shows that, following one part of Callon's argument, we should not expect to find concrete markets and that attention to market concepts thus becomes even more important.

KEYWORDS:

• Identification
• markets
• economics
• concepts
• calculation

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to José Ossandón, Rasmus Ploug Jenle, Trine Pallesen and Peter Holm Jacobsen, Taylor Nelms, Kean Birch, two anonymous reviewers and to the special issue editors who have all been generous with helpful and critical comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Christian Frankel is associate professor at Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School. His work focuses on markets and organizations, and how they become objects of knowledge by practitioners as well as by social science inquiry. He is currently engaged in a research project on markets for collective concerns with a particular view to markets designed to alleviate climate problems.

ORCID

Christian Frankel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5094-3686

Additional information

Funding

This essay has benefitted from the financial support of Dansk Standard. The usual disclaimers apply.