Market as Place and Space of Economic Exchange
Perspectives from archaeology and anthropology
edited by
Hans Peter Hahn and Geraldine Schmitz
Published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by
OXBOW BOOKS
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and in the United States by
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Oxbow Books and Hans Peter Hahn and Geraldine Schmitz 2018
Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-893-0
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-894-7 (epub)
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This book is an outcome of the academic work of the Research Training Group Value and Equivalence ( http://www.value-and-equivalence.de/ ) (GRK 1576). The printing of the book has been sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
Preface
In several respects, studying markets is a challenge. From a distance, and regardless of how you define it, the market may appear a perfectly standard and commonsensical object of study. However, the closer you come to the phenomena of the market, the more difficult it is to sustain an analytical perspective on how to describe and interpret them. Perhaps this is a specific problem for the disciplines represented in this volume. Although we have good reason to regard markets as an important aspect of most societies that these disciplines study, it is far from easy to decide which elements of society should be considered as belonging to the market and which should be treated as independent of it.
Since the constitution of the research training group on Value and Equivalence, which organized the conference Markets as Place in 2010 at Goethe University in Frankfurt (Main), the importance of markets was obvious to participating scholars. Whereas a broad range of cultural and social phenomena indicate the value of material objects in those societies that members of the group had studied, dealing with equivalence was postponed several times. It appeared difficult to gain a deeper understanding of how to investigate relations of equivalence between different artefacts in past societies and those studied by anthropologists. This explains, at least partially, why markets constitute a challenge, especially with regard to the question of whether or not they define relations of equivalence.
Given the difficulty in finding clear indications of market activities, we decided to adopt an open conceptual framework for both the conference and the papers in this volume. Whereas for some contributors the market seems to be ubiquitous in their fields of research, for others, questioning the existence and impact of a market already poses a difficulty in itself.
In order to address this quite uneven approach to markets, all the contributors were invited to choose freely whether to perceive the market in the first instance as a special place, or rather as a principle and mode of exchange. Both approaches are relevant to the contributions in this volume, and, as will be shown more in detail in the introduction, we do not treat them as strict alternatives, but rather as overlapping and sometimes even indistinguishable aspects. The contributions to this volume do not have a unified or overarching concept of the market. Instead, the variety of understandings of this phenomenon was acknowledged as a starting point in producing this volume. In the distant past, as well as in contemporaneous societies that have little connection with the global system of commodity flows, markets might have quite limited relevance, with very different understandings. We consider this perspective from the margins to constitute a specific contribution to the wider debate on what a market is and how it may change society.
In the twenty-first century, in an era, when most societies have become part of the market, regardless of whether this is a market place or part of the global principle of exchange, it might be of particular value to examine more closely societies that are less familiar with the notion of a market. This is what can be found in the contributions in this volume. Sometimes this might lead to a certain estrangement, and sometimes the indications of the existence of a market may appear surprising or go beyond what an economist might expect. But in all cases, it is worth examining more closely what constitutes the culturally specific molding of market phenomena.
Although this volume situates its contributions within the wider frameworks of economic archaeology and economic anthropology, economic aspects in the narrow sense of the term are not its focus. Instead we prioritize the cultural and social consequences of the existence of a market and the adoption of a market principle. All the contributions stress that markets come into being through historical processes and the socially acknowledged actions of particular social groups. There is no market without cultural embedding, and every market needs market actors who will actively use the market for their habitual or even professional activities.
The editors of this volume would like to thank all the contributors for their cooperation and patience through the various steps of the editing process. We also extend our thanks to the research training group Value and Equivalence (GRK 1576/2) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) for making this publication possible. Last but not least, we wish to think Johannes Skiba for taking care of so many of the practical aspects of editing the various chapters in this volume.
Hans Peter Hahn and Geraldine Schmitz
Frankfurt (Main), December 2017
Chapter 1
Introduction. Markets as places: Actors, structures and ideologies
Hans P. Hahn
It is common nowadays to believe that the market always prevails, and that the dams erected by kings, priests and communities cannot long hold back the tides of money. This is naive. Brutal warriors, religious fanatics and concerned citizens have repeatedly managed to trounce calculating merchants, and even to reshape the economy. (Yuval N. Harari 2014: 187)
Introduction
As a rule, at least two and possibly many more meanings are assigned to the term market. First, there is the idea of the market as the principle of the availability of goods and as a regulatory mechanism controlling access to and exchanges of goods. Secondly, there is the concept of the market as a spatial entity of activity. The market is a social and economic locality, often also a centre in which many people actively participate. The categorical separation of the two meanings is a manifestly analytical procedure which is frequently applied in the field of economics, as well as in the humanities.
