What Are Markets For?, livre ebook

• Focuses on markets as real entities, linking ideology, politics and ethics to everyday examples in historical and geographical context

• Critically examines the ‘free market’, highlighting the violence and extraction on which contemporary market society is built

• Proposes a pathway for rehabilitating markets as a positive force in dealing with global crises

A new perspective on the role of the market, and its future place in society.

Markets are apparently straightforward: they connect buyers to sellers. But their operation is complex, depending on places, things, networks and performances. Belief in markets is a cultural and political ideology. They are a means of governance in modern society, linked to individualistic self-responsibility.

But markets also have a darker side. Not everything should be for sale. Markets wield political power: they benefit those who already have resources, they impair collective action and they can be exploitative. As well as asking what markets are for, this book asks who they are for and what needs to change if they are to enable us to thrive in the 21st century.

1 Introduction

2 Markets are Networks

3 The End of History?

4 Meeting Santa and Making Markets

5 Markets and the Law

6 Histories of Accumulation

7 What Should not be for Sale?

8 The Drama of Markets

9 Crisis and the End of an Era

10 Civilizing Markets?