Between perfection and damnation: The emerging geography of markets

Abstract

Economic geographers have recently taken up the study of markets after a long period of inattention. This growing literature has highlighted the diverse spaces, scales, and fields where markets are present, as well as the ways in which markets vary in form. However, the study of markets in economic geography still exists in tension between neoclassical and Marxist conceptions of markets as predictable and approaches like the social studies of economization/marketization which emphasize their contingency. This paper argues that work of Polyani and Gramsci can provide a way forward for the subfield through conceptualizing markets as sites of social struggle.

Keywords

counterhegemony economic geography marketization markets Polanyi

I Introduction

Markets are everywhere. From buying groceries at the supermarket to speculating on securitized mortgages, markets are fundamental to the organization of everyday life. This is truer now than ever, with the triumph of market ideology so prevalent that, as Massey writes, the neoclassical assumption of market perfection has ‘become so deeply rooted in the structure of thought…that even the fact that it is an assumption seems to have been lost to view’ (2013: 14). This ideology, which posits that markets are the most efficient and just method of governance (O’Neill, 1998), has led to the creation of new markets as calls for social and environmental justice are met with market-based responses such as voucher systems for education and carbon markets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Fraser, 2014). Yet despite their role in governing everyday life and as basic institutions of capitalist societies, it is only recently that economic geographers have taken up markets as worthy of study (Berndt and Boeckler, 2009, 2011a; Boeckler and Berndt, 2013; Hall, 2012; Jones, 2013; Peck, 2012; Prince, 2012; Schoenberger, 2008; Smith, 2005). While this emerging literature has done much to enhance our understanding of how markets differ in form and function, many questions remain for the geography of markets; most notably, how should markets be defined, how do space and place shape the functioning of markets, and what roles do markets play in broader societal processes?

These challenges have remained unaddressed in part because geographers studying markets have conducted their work largely in opposition to orthodox versions of neoclassical and Marxist economics, both of which project a universal view of markets and their functioning. On the one hand, neoclassical economics’ assumption of efficient markets presumes the predictable behaviour of market actors regardless of social context (Barber, 1995; Milonakis and Fine, 2009). On the other, to Marxists, the ‘coercive laws of competition’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]: 433) and the need for the continual circulation of capital place strict limits on the variability of market forms (McNally, 1993). As described by Karl Polanyi (2001 [1944]: 89), these two approaches have long polarized political economic thought, with ‘progress and perfectibility on the one hand, determinism and damnation on the other’. In contrast, recent work in geography has emphasized the contingency of market forms, using concepts from economic sociology to deconstruct markets and emphasize their complexity. For a distinctive geography of markets to emerge, however, scholars in the field cannot forge their arguments solely in opposition to these dominant theories but must also study the commonalities between them and how the functioning of markets relates to other socioeconomic processes (Muellerleile and Akers, 2015; Peck, 2012).

It is with these questions in mind that this article reviews scholarship within both the political economic tradition and the emerging geography of markets, arguing that a critical, but productive, engagement with this work can help build a nuanced understanding of how markets function and the roles they play. In particular, the paper argues that the scholarship of cultural Marxists and Polanyian scholars can help economic geographers move past the tension between new approaches to studying markets and the discipline’s longstanding tradition of political economy (Braun, 2016; Christophers, 2014a; Muellerleile and Akers, 2015; Peck, 2012). Through centring markets as sites of social struggle, cultural Marxists and Polanyian scholars have rejected deterministic readings of markets while still holding potential limits to market variability within their frame of analysis. In doing so they provide signposts as to how the geography of markets can connect the micro-politics of markets to the macro-structures of capitalism and thereby open new understandings of the role of space and place in their functioning.

To make this argument this paper engages with multiple theories of markets. This is done as a means of highlighting why the geography of markets has emerged at this moment, some of the challenges it faces, and the potential of addressing the tension between political economy and the emerging geography of markets through a hybrid Polanyian/cultural Marxist framework. The paper therefore does not present an exhaustive review of all the questions facing the subfield but, instead, highlights certain questions and challenges as a means of addressing this central debate. These arguments are made in the four sections that follow this introduction: (1) an outline of why the geography of markets matters and three challenges for the subfield; (2) an examination of how markets are conceptualized within different theoretical traditions; (3) an engagement with cultural Marxist and Polanyian thought as a means of addressing the challenges reviewed earlier; and (4) some concluding thoughts on ways forward for the subfield.

II Placing markets in economic geography: Three challenges

Following the financial crisis and the subsequent revelation of how exotic financial instruments had reshaped American housing markets, geographers started to turn their attention to markets as an important area of research. This engagement mirrored a movement throughout the social sciences by scholars seeking to disrupt the taken-for-granted understanding of markets found within neoclassical economics (Boeckler and Berndt, 2013). In economic geography this focus on markets marked a break from the long-standing disciplinary focus on production systems and supply chains, where ‘the market remains a black box and is simply taken as pre-given’ (Berndt and Boeckler, 2009: 538–9) and where the explicit study (and problematization) of markets has therefore been limited (Jones, 2013; Peck, 2012; Sheppard, 2011; Smith, 2005). Given its emergence in the wake of the financial crisis, this turn towards markets was not simply an academic question but also an urgently political one. As Fraser (2013: 119) has poignantly argued, neoclassical conceptions of markets have enabled ‘a relentless push to extend and de-regulate markets [that] is everywhere wreaking havoc – destroying the livelihoods of billions; fraying families, weakening communities and rupturing solidarities; trashing habitats and despoiling nature across the globe’. With the rule of markets expanding into new areas of everyday life, studying how markets function is both an important academic and political endeavour.

This post-financial crisis research agenda has begun the process of opening the ‘black box’ of markets and highlighted the diversity of market forms and of areas under market rule. A special issue of Environment and Planning A on ‘making markets’ illustrates the breadth of these projects. The issue includes case studies of the creation of markets for financial derivatives (Muellerleile, 2015), real estate (Akers, 2015), schooling (Cohen and Lizotte, 2015) and greenhouse gas emissions (Cooper, 2015). The work therein and similar projects on agro-markets in Ghana (Ouma et al., 2013; Ouma, 2015), construction markets in the UK (Lovell and Smith, 2010), and street markets in Yemen (Lauermann, 2013) highlight the different spaces, scales, and fields that markets populate as well as the diverse methods through which they can be understood. For example, Cooper (2015) and Lovell and Smith (2010) study markets through examining how market actors make disparate commodities commensurable and therefore suitable for exchange by analysing the technologies used to calculate their value. Muellerleile (2015), on the other hand, takes a historical approach, charting how the legal-regulatory system governing financial derivative markets gradually evolved out of the trade for agricultural products in Chicago. While they take different approaches to understand market creation, these works have a common focus on the social, sociotechnical, and spatial constitution of markets that is consciously forged in opposition to the asocial market of neoclassical economics.

Peck (2012) and Muellerleile and Akers (2015) note the promise of this work but argue that for the study of markets to evolve beyond a collection of individual research projects it must move past this oppositional approach and towards a constructive intellectual program that re-theorizes the place of markets in society. Muellerleile and Akers (2015: 1784) specifically warn that ‘ignoring the possibility that actually existing markets may have some common characteristics across space and time, whether as a price mechanism or otherwise, will leave [the geography of markets] underspecified and incoherent’. By highlighting how current work has yet to fully address what ties the geography of markets together, this critique illustrates that many challenges remain for the subfield to address. While it is beyond the reach of a single paper to provide an answer to every open question in the subfield, this paper argues that a hybrid Polanyian/cultural Marxist approach can be useful in approaching at least three challenges facing geographers of markets.

The first challenge is careful consideration of what geographers mean when they refer to markets. While the general outlines of a research program can be seen through the cases discussed above, the specifics of what constitutes a market remain unclear. In their three-part review of the geography of markets, for example, Berndt and Boeckler (2009, 2011a; Boeckler and Berndt, 2013) do not explicitly problematize the definition of markets, instead focusing on ‘marketization’ as a process through which goods and services are assigned value, made ready for exchange, and circulated (see also Birch and Siemiatycki, 2016; Bryant, 2016; Ouma et al., 2013). Using this definition, geographers have extended the study of markets into realms of production in sectors such as agrifood (Ouma, 2015) or into the global circulation of commodities such as tomatoes (Berndt and Boeckler, 2011b). The question remains, however, of what roles markets themselves – as the sites where the exchange of commodities takes place and is organized¹ – play within this broader process of marketization. And, if they have no role, or if their role is simply as a pass-through between consumption and production, why should geographers study markets at all? While definitional specificity may not be needed to describe how markets break from the neoclassical ideal, if geographers want to make the case that what happens in markets matters and understand the roles markets play in socioeconomic processes, they must be clear on their object of study; without doing so, it will be difficult to understand what is common across markets.

The second challenge for geographers of markets is to provide a more fulsome exploration of the role of space and place in their functioning. This includes not only the sites (physical or otherwise) where exchange takes place, but also how market exchange remakes spatial relationships. To be clear, geographers have begun the process of unpacking how spatial relations are central to the functioning of markets. Most notably, there is a vibrant literature on how the contested process of geographically bounding a market renders it calculable and allows actors to make decisions (Berndt, 2013; Christophers, 2014b; Hall, 2015; Kama, 2014). Nevertheless, there is still work to be done in understanding the spatiality of markets (Christophers, 2014c; Hall, 2015; Jones, 2013) and several unaddressed issues remain, such as how to understand overlapping spatial relationships between markets (e.g. between local, regional, and national markets for a commodity [Jones, 2013]). Given that existing geographic work on markets has relied on adding spatial elements to theories borrowed from economic sociology (see Section III), more reflection is needed on the tension between these approaches and the spatial questions of interest to geographers.

Finally, the third challenge is to understand the roles that markets play in the societies and spaces they exist within. This challenge has been the subject of much debate within the subfield, with recent articles by Braun (2016), Christophers (2014a), Muellerleille and Akers (2015), and Peck (2012) all posing the question of how the micro-politics of markets feed back into the macro-structures of capitalism. This can be understood in part as a reaction by political economists to an alternative approach to studying the economy. However, the stakes are higher than a disciplinary squabble. Understanding the role of markets in wider power structures is integral to unpacking how what happens within markets impacts broader socioeconomic processes. For example, Smith (2005) argues that that the roles of markets are not fixed and that ‘perhaps the politics and ethics of markets can be challenged not by arguing against markets, but by making a bid for them’ (p. 17). Conversely, Christophers questions the limits of focusing on market hybridity, asking ‘if so much active work is involved in configuring and operating markets, and if in theory they are inherently contestable and fragile as a result, why, in reality, are they actually so incredibly resilient?’ (2015: 1861). In light of these conflicting assertions, geographers must explore not only the role of space in the functioning of markets but also how the demands placed on markets under capitalism may limit how this hybridity changes other socioeconomic processes. Without doing so we cannot be clear on what is at stake in studying markets.

Addressing these challenges and others is vital if the geography of markets is to follow Peck’s (2012) and Muellerleile and Akers’s (2015) calls to build a constructive program: a necessary task for geographers seeking to understand how markets impact everyday life and feed back into the broader economy. As this paper argues, there is great potential in using the work of cultural Marxists and Polanyian scholars to meet these challenges. Through conceptualizing markets as not just sites where the exchange of commodities is organized but also as sites of contestation over the distribution of resources, geographers can develop a more thorough understanding of the roles that markets play in sociospatial relations.

III Perfection, damnation, and deconstruction: The theoretical foundations of the geography of markets

That geographers have only recently begun to study markets is unsurprising given the vast shadow cast by neoclassical and Marxist economics. Despite holding hugely different visions of the results of market exchange, both traditions view markets as functioning in a largely predictable manner, and geographers in these traditions have therefore left the internal logics of markets mostly unexplored. Given the dominance of these theories, the geography of markets has largely emerged in opposition to them, drawing on the social studies of economization/marketization and other theories from economic sociology to highlight how and why markets diverge from neoclassical and Marxist conceptions. This section reviews how markets are understood in these traditions in order to explore the complicated place of markets within economic geography and the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches.

1 Perfection and damnation: Markets in neoclassical and Marxist economics

Despite their oppositional programs, orthodox Marxists and neoclassical economists both hold similar conceptions of markets as consisting of the smooth exchange of commodities, diverging on the likely effects of this functioning rather than on the nature of exchange itself (Berndt and Boeckler, 2009; Christophers, 2014a; Lie, 1997). As Harvey (2004: 73) writes, ‘Marx’s general theory of capital accumulation is constructed under certain crucial initial assumptions which broadly match those of classical political economy…[but] the brilliance of Marx’s dialectical method is to show that market liberalization…will not produce a harmonious state in which everyone is better off. It will instead produce ever greater levels of social inequality’. In both conceptions market exchange is viewed as largely predictable: for neoclassical economists markets consist of asocial actors exchanging solely to maximize profits, while for Marxist economists market actors are constrained by the social relations found in production.

There are important differences in how the two traditions view the functioning of markets, however. For neoclassical economists, markets are characterized by their asocial nature; they are sites of neutral exchange where buyers and sellers find each other and, through a rivalrous process of determining a price and exchanging commodities, where supply and demand are balanced and scarce resources are allocated efficiently. The assumed neutrality of markets in the process of exchange has meant that the origins of, and the institutions that define, markets have largely gone unremarked in the discipline and that markets themselves are rarely studied (Barber, 1995; Graeber, 2012; Jackson, 2007; Mirowski, 2007; Rosenbaum, 2000; Schoenberger, 2008). Indeed, through fashioning a ‘scientific’ discipline that uses rigid, immutable laws and mathematical modelling to explain the workings of the economy, neoclassical economists have placed their underlying assumptions about how markets function largely outside of the realm of debate (Lawson, 2013).² This does not mean that these economists uniformly hold a naïve belief that every market functions in exactly this manner, but rather that doubts about these assumptions are rarely reflected in models built to simulate the economy (Mann, 2013).

By contrast, in Marxist thought markets are predictable not because of a lack of social connections between actors but because market exchange is overdetermined by its role in the continuation of capitalist social relations. This is because in orthodox Marxist thought markets play an important but largely superficial function (Christophers, 2014a). Markets are important because they ensure that capitalists and workers perform their roles in the continual circulation of capital as the site where the disciplining force of competition is most strongly experienced. However, these roles are determined through capitalist social relations rather than within markets themselves, with Marx writing that ‘competition executes the inner laws of capital; makes them into compulsory laws towards the individual capital, but it does not invent them. It realizes them’ (1973 [1939]: 752, emphasis added).

Importantly, this relation between market interactions and the underlying social relations they express is hidden by the fetishism of the commodity, whereby market actors see only the exchange taking place and not the social relations that underpin it. Commodity fetishism allows for markets, and not social relations, to be seen as holding a coercive power which requires actors (both capitalist and working class) to engage in ways that allow them to compete in a market. This is what Marx means when he writes that competition ‘executes’ the laws of capital but ‘does not invent them’. Capitalist market exchange is how an individual worker sells their labour to a capitalist, or alternatively how a capitalist experiences the pressure to cut costs, but at their root these pressures are the result of the mode of production, which requires the constant circulation of capital to increase the capture of surplus value (Clarke, 1995; Kozel, 2013; McNally, 1993). To orthodox Marxists, then, markets, through competition, act as a coercive force that ensures that actors play by the rules of capitalist social relations; relations that are determined outside of markets.

In economic geography, the dominance of these theoretical traditions has meant that markets have rarely been an explicit object of study. On the contrary, economic geographers have largely eschewed moments of exchange in favour of studying the circulation of capital and systems of production. This includes Marxist scholarship as well as post-structuralist analyses, which study how gender, race, and other axes of difference shape the functioning of economic systems and vice versa (Sheppard, 2011).³ This work, and work that trades more closely with neoclassical economics, therefore tends to leave markets and processes of exchange untouched (Berndt and Boeckler, 2011a). There are of course exceptions: some Marxists do see a role for markets in structuring exchange since value cannot be realized until exchange occurs (see Karatani, 2003), but in these cases markets remain a second-order phenomenon used to better understand production and the capture of surplus value (Christophers, 2014a). This does not mean that Marxist scholarship has nothing to offer to the geography of markets; Marx’s insights into the crisis-ridden nature of capitalist expansion can provide a guide to how and why markets are created and undergo processes of change. However, different theoretical tools are needed to address important questions about how and why markets differ in form and the impacts of these variations.

2 Deconstruction: Economic sociology and the geography of markets

Perhaps because of the discipline’s lack of attention to markets, economic geographers have turned to concepts from economic sociology for the theoretical tools needed to understand their social underpinnings (Berndt and Boeckler, 2011a).⁴ In contrast to neoclassical and Marxist conceptions of markets as predictable, work in the sociology of markets instead emphasizes their contingent and variable nature. Indeed, while economic sociologists have disparate views on the precise nature of markets, in general the subdiscipline holds a common conception of markets as spaces where social connections shape the nature of exchange and competition (Fligstein and Dauter, 2007; Fourcade, 2007; Ouma, 2015). For this reason, ideas from economic sociology have inspired much of the increased attention to markets in geography.

There are multiple schools of thought within economic sociology on how markets can be conceptualized (Fligstein and Dauter, 2007; Fourcade, 2007). In geography, however, the social studies of economization/marketization approach (SSEM) most associated with Callon has been particularly influential. To scholars using this approach markets are neither natural nor predetermined but rather ‘performed’ by actors who make decisions within a dense web of relationships between actors, from buyers and sellers to non-human actors such as economic theories or mathematical models. In order to make sense of all these relations, market actors must frame their decisions within what they consider to be the boundaries of a market and by using calculative technologies that make markets appear coherent (Boeckler and Berndt, 2013; Callon, 1998). This framing is accomplished through what Callon (1998) calls ‘performation’, whereby markets are calculated, defined, and made legible so that actors can make decisions. Importantly, the ideas of neoclassical economics have shaped the ways in which actors frame market boundaries, leading to the creation of markets that largely comport with neoclassical principles, although they often ‘overflow’ this narrow framing, causing crisis (Callon, 1998; Ouma, 2015).

While as recently as 2009 the use of SSEM in geography was referred to in this journal as being in its ‘initial stages’ (Berndt and Boeckler, 2009), its popularity in the discipline has grown rapidly. Using Callon’s ideas and their subsequent evolutions, geographers have applied the SSEM approach to study markets as diverse as exotic animal auctions (Collard, 2014), business education (Hall and Appleyard, 2011), and emissions trading (Kama, 2014). This work has allowed geographers to depart from existing geographic scholarship which views markets as predictable and, instead, deconstruct how markets function as highly contingent assemblages which turn commodities into calculable objects fit for exchange (Berndt and Boeckler, 2011a). For example, geographers have explored how the calculative technologies used to establish fishing rights as a tradeable commodity have remade the salmon industry in Alaska (Hébert, 2014) and the UK (Cardwell, 2015). Such work necessitates not only studying markets as sites of exchange but also examining the theories that guide their construction and the interaction of these theories with the human and non-human actors that make up a fishing community.

Beyond SSEM, there are other approaches from economic sociology that have had an impact on geographic thought, albeit a more limited one. This includes the embeddedness approach associated with Granovetter (1985), which examines how the networks that form through multiple interactions between actors influence the functioning of markets (see Lai, 2011);⁵ institutionalism, which examines how formal and informal institutions set the rules within which markets operate (see Hall, 2007); and the convention school of French sociology, which argues that actors make decisions through higher common principles, or conventions, with the neoclassical ‘rational’ decision maker just one of many (see Berndt and Boeckler, 2011a; Ouma, 2015; Ponte, 2016).⁶

Despite differences, these approaches all illustrate how markets change in relation to the contingent social networks, institutional structures, and/or technologies and ideas that constitute them. This work has allowed for the emergence of a geography of markets that stands in contrast to Marxist and neoclassical thought and therefore much existing scholarship in the discipline. Rather than taking markets and the process of exchange for granted, geographers using these approaches have highlighted how market exchange is always shaped by social connections between actors and therefore the necessity of undertaking in-depth research on how markets function.

3 Strengths and tensions in the geography of markets

This grounding in economic sociology has helped develop a vital geographic literature on markets. By adopting a focus on the networks, institutions, and/or technologies and ideas that surround the process of exchange, geographers have illustrated how space and place are integral to the functioning of markets. This has included studying how China’s emerging financial markets have been shaped by competing knowledge networks of Western experts and Chinese bankers (Lai, 2011), how racial segregation has facilitated the spread of education markets in the United States (Cohen, 2016), and how markets for Fair Trade goods depend on geographic imaginaries (Doherty et al., 2015). In each case these authors have emphasized that the social/sociotechnical constitution of markets cannot be removed from its spatial context, with the clash between circulating models of finance resulting in a distinctly Chinese financial market or the geographic imaginary of the fairly-treated, Southern farmer shaping Fair Trade markets.

A central feature of this work has been studying how the social/sociotechnical process of geographically bounding markets is essential to how markets operate. As Christophers (2014c: 754–5) deftly points out, it is difficult to discuss a market without referring to its geographical boundaries: ‘the French automobile market, the New York housing market, the global financial services market, and so on: when we attempt to identify and define markets, geographical scope…is invariably one of the key dimensions on which we do so’. As geographers have illustrated, studying how these boundaries operate is essential to understanding the nature of markets. For example, Kama’s (2014) work on emissions trading highlights how carbon markets depend on the boundaries which allow for the calculation of carbon emissions and therefore for their trade. Or alternatively, Christophers (2014b) has shown how pharmaceutical corporations use territorial boundaries to enable differential pricing and thereby increase their market power. In both cases, geographic boundaries are used to constitute a market, shape how it functions, and allow certain actors to gain power.

Similarly, a focus on the social/sociotechnical has allowed geographers to trace what Collard (2014) refers to as the ‘spatial momentum’ of markets. Collard argues that the ways that exchange is organized within a market can extend outwards to remake the relationships between sites and to create new geographies. Using the case of auctions for exotic wildlife in the United States, she writes that understanding the valuation and commodification of animals that occurs at these sites is essential to understanding the ecological impact of the exotic wildlife trade on the Guatemalan landscape. Likewise, Ouma (2015) traces how the shape of Ghanian agrifood production along a just-in-time model was driven by competition in European retail markets. In both cases the specific social practices through which these markets assign a price remake the connections between places and reshape sites far removed from the marketplace itself. This work highlights how markets are often central nodes in the development of spatial relations.

However, while the approaches borrowed from the sociology of markets are well suited to understand what Muellerleile (2013: 1638) refers to as the ‘internal logic by which markets function’ and therefore many questions that geographers of markets are interested in, they are an uneasy fit with the political economic tradition in economic geography. Critiques of these approaches in both economic sociology (Krippner, 2002; Lie, 1997; Mirowski and Nik-Khah, 2007; Fourcade, 2007) and geography (Christophers, 2014a, 2015; Muellerleile, 2013; Muellerleile and Akers, 2015; Peck, 2012) have made the point that studies deconstructing the internal functioning of markets must also address the wider frame of reference within which markets exist. These critiques highlight a tension between scholarship on the micro-politics of markets and work that is focused on the economy at a much wider scale.

This critique is central to the most active debate within the geography of markets: how the contingency and spatiality of markets feeds back into the macro-structures of capitalism. While many scholars of SSEM would reject this micro/macro divide,⁷ recent articles by Braun (2016), Christophers (2014a), Jones (2013), Muellerleille and Akers (2015), and Peck (2012) have raised this question and pushed geographers to integrate it into their research programs. Braun (2016: 258) sets the stage clearly, writing that ‘the empirical challenge, then, is to show how market devices, market structures and forms of capitalism are interwoven – that is, to establish both micro–meso and meso–macro connections’. For the most part these authors suggest that geographers design research projects focusing on the common elements between markets in order to uncover these connections. For example, Peck (2012) advocates using Polanyi’s concept of the ‘always embedded economy’ to develop a collective program investigating how markets are embedded in the social and spatial relations they exist within (see also Muellerleile, 2013). Alternatively, Jones (2013) suggests following the distinctive spatialities that shape markets as a means of creating a practice-oriented approach that informs debates on market regulation.

Christophers (2014a) takes a different tack, arguing that a ‘weaker’ version of the SSEM approach is compatible with Marxist political economy. Drawing on Harvey, he argues that ‘capital will tolerate all manner of exchange (and distribution and consumption) structures, so long as they do not restrict accumulation for accumulation’s sake’ (p. 19). In doing so he charts a way forward by emphasizing that the variability of markets may be constricted by the demands placed upon them in ensuring the continual circulation and accumulation of capital. Christophers makes the case that geographers should therefore use the SSEM approach as a method of studying how markets relate to value and the value form under capitalism. However, he does not provide a road map for doing so, instead writing that ‘much more can and needs to be said about this’ (p. 19) and thereby neglecting the ‘meso’ step that Braun (2016) calls for in linking the micro-politics of markets to the macro-structures of capitalism. Nevertheless, by drawing attention to how studying the limits of market forms can help reconcile the deconstruction of markets with Marxist political economy, Christophers provides the basis for advancing the conversation beyond an uneasy tension.

IV Markets as sites of struggle: Ways forward for economic geography

As outlined above, concepts from economic sociology have allowed geographers of markets to break from a longstanding focus on production and circulation in economic geography. However, it is also clear that these concepts present challenges when placed in conversation with the discipline’s tradition of political economy and in understanding how what happens within markets shapes, and is shaped by, the functioning of wider socioeconomic processes. It is by integrating the work of cultural Marxists and Polanyian scholars into the existing geography of markets that geographers can best address this tension and move forward, tackling the three challenges outlined in Section II. In this section, then, cultural Marxist and Polanyian scholarship on markets is reviewed before the potential of using its insights in the geography of markets is outlined.

1 Struggle in and of markets

The work of cultural Marxists and Polanyian scholars provides a general theoretical approach through which markets can be understood as variable within the ‘finitude of possibility’ set by capital that Christophers highlights (2014a: 15). Scholarship in both traditions views the proliferation of markets as driven by capitalist accumulation while also conceptualizing social institutions such as markets as sites of struggle that help to contain the most brutal of capitalism’s destructive forces (Burawoy, 2003). Studying markets within these frameworks therefore presents a method of understanding markets as social/sociotechnical while keeping wider power relations within the frame. While they have important differences, both conceptualizations have great potential in helping geographers understand how the variability of markets relates to the functioning of the wider economy and, conversely, how broader socioeconomic processes affect the internal functioning of markets.

Specifically, this potential lies in understanding markets not only as sites where the exchange of commodities is organized but also as sites of struggle over the distribution of resources. This is essential in the current moment where the expansion of market rule into new areas of everyday life has added importance to struggles over the social/sociotechnical processes through which markets organize exchange. Polanyi (2001 [1944]), writing about an earlier era of market rule, argued that struggles over markets in such eras take the form of a ‘double movement’ whereby the most destructive effects of markets are met with opposition as society moves to protect itself. This occurs as those most negatively impacted by market-based governance push for interventions that will mitigate their worst tendencies. Because of this double movement, markets become a central site of class struggle as the working classes attempt to protect themselves from the dominant class’s project of market expansion and the two use ‘government and business, state and industry, respectively [as] their strongholds’ (Polanyi, 2001 [1944]: 139).

Updating Polanyi’s ideas for the current moment, Fraser (2013) argues that the double movement fails to capture the importance of social reproduction and emancipation in struggles over the shape of markets. She makes the point that Polanyi’s theory cannot capture the importance of the post-1960s’ growth in emancipatory struggles against racism, imperialism, war, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and transphobia that do not fall neatly into the market/anti-market divide. For those fighting against these systems of oppression, anti-market forces (as embodied in the welfare state) are often as oppressive as the market system itself. Fraser thus sets up a three-sided conflict, or a triple movement, between pro-market, anti-market, and emancipatory political forces. Notably, she argues there are no easy alliances between the three, with those pushing for emancipation often aligning with market projects promoted as opening access to resources that marginalized groups have long been prevented from using.

Burawoy (2003) sees parallels between Polanyi’s work and the scholarship of culturally oriented Marxists such as Gramsci who posit that society forms the terrain of class struggle. Like other Marxists, Gramsci viewed the economy as driven by the social mode of production, but on the terrain of the superstructure he believed that the shapes that capitalist societies take are the result of a complex interplay of economic, social, and political dynamics. Gramsci argued that, through struggle, different societal formations could emerge in ways not entirely determined by capitalist logics (Burawoy, 2003; Hart, 2002). This focus on the indeterminacy of society can help us understand the workings of markets, since markets, as social/sociotechnical, are also likely to be shaped by ideological struggles over their form. Furthermore, Gramsci wrote of ‘historical blocs’ where dominant powers promote ideologies that ‘create the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle, etc.’ (2012 [1971]: 377). This is important in the current moment, where the dominant ideology is the ideology of market efficiency; in the words of Hall:

In a world saturated by money exchange, and everywhere mediated by money, the ‘market’ experience is the most immediate, daily and universal experience of the economic system for everyone…[and has become] the model of other social and political relations. (Hall, 1986: 38, emphasis in original)

As Hall argues, the neoclassical ideal of the market has become the model for other social relations and this centrality of markets means that they have become a necessary terrain upon which hegemonic struggles must occur. As such, struggles within markets are often part of a greater hegemonic project to promote, or resist, the ideology of market rule and, as Fraser (2013) highlights, markets can also become the site of proxy battles against other hegemonic forces.

Understanding markets as not only sites of struggle but as key sites in wider contests over market hegemony is what distinguishes a hybrid Polanyian/cultural Marxist approach from others that also view markets as sites of struggle. For example, while Barry (2002), Callon (2007), and Fligstein (1996) focus on the internal dynamics through which market contestation is pacified and Bourdieu (2005) conceives of the economy as fields of struggle between firms, these conceptions are largely geared at internal market relations. In the conception advocated here, however, because, as Marx argued, markets are sites where the compulsory laws of capital are ever present, it follows that contestation within markets is often connected to a general contestation of market rule. In essence, struggles over how markets are governed, over their ideology, may cut across the particularities of specific markets and be a common occurrence across many market institutions. Indeed, Hall (1986: 36, emphasis in original) argues that mounting an ideological struggle over markets was one of Marx’s purposes in Capital, writing that:

There is no fixed and unalterable relation between what the market is, and how it is construed within an ideological or explanatory framework. We could even say that one of the purposes of Capital is precisely to displace the discourse of bourgeois political economy…and to replace it.

Channelling Gramsci and following Hall’s thought, we can therefore understand markets as shaped by the material force of market ideology while recognizing that this relationship is not fixed and unalterable but rather is itself the site of struggle; this recognition opens an understanding of the double or triple movement as a consciously-forged ideological struggle rather than a defensive one (Burawoy, 2003).

This line of reasoning is used by Burawoy (2003) when he puts the Polanyian notion of the double movement in conversation with a Gramscian understanding of hegemony to create what he calls a ‘Sociological Marxism’. Central to this project for Burawoy (p. 244) is understanding the relationship of markets to society; as he writes, ‘Sociological Marxism’s task is to understand under what conditions and in what form state and society will hold up the market juggernaut, throw up barriers to or rush headlong away from the commodification of land, labor, and money’. Burawoy departs from orthodox Marxism in approaching markets as the central relation defining his approach. He does this based on the idea that, while production creates the basis for hegemony, counterhegemony is most likely to emerge from an ideological break with the market ideology in the manner predicted by Polanyi’s double movement:

Gramsci makes a convincing case that accumulation based on capitalist relations of production is the material basis of capitalist hegemony but errs in thinking that production, or at least the experience of production, can also provide the basis of counterhegemony…Whereas alienated and degraded labor may excite a limited alternative, it does not have the universalism of the market that touches everyone in multiple ways. It is the market, therefore, that offers possible grounds for counterhegemony. (Burawoy, 2003: 231)

The ‘Sociological Marxism’ proffered by Burawoy thus places markets at the centre of struggles over civil society and offers a meso-level theory that can help answer the three challenges outlined earlier. Drawing on Polanyi and, like Hall (1986), recognizing the commonality of the market experience, Burawoy suggests that a Gramscian understanding of hegemony and counterhegemony be focused on markets rather than production. This focus on counterhegemonic projects brings into markets not only class dynamics but, following Fraser (2013, 2014), an array of other struggles. This is witnessed in the way that claims for justice become depoliticized through the creation of markets or the implementation of market solutions. For instance, calls for climate justice spur the creation of markets for greenhouse gas emissions and the increasing inequality of wealth is channelled into a demand for higher minimum wages on the labour market rather than other redistributive mechanisms. In this manner, markets become central to struggles over social and ecological justice.

Burawoy’s blending of the double movement with a Gramscian understanding of hegemony and counterhegemony therefore offers a bridge whereby the limits to markets can be held inside the frame while also studying the variability between markets. Importantly, this is not to say that every market will include a double or triple movement whereby destructive tendencies are curbed or demands for justice change how a market operates. Indeed, Block (2011) points out that in an era where market ideology dominates, counterlogics are often overridden and battles between capitalists over exchange will dominate market structure. Barry (2002) further argues that markets are often sites of a strong anti-politics where the use of expertise and technologies of calculation overwhelms resistance to market rule (see also Ouma, 2015). What it does mean is that in many markets, especially markets where the advantages accrued to powerful actors are clearly visible or where markets are explicitly used to address calls for redistributive justice, struggles over the shape of markets can include a counterhegemonic element that may help account for how and why markets diverge from the shapes assumed by rigid understandings of their functioning.

2 Markets as sites of sociospatial struggles

Conceptualizing markets as sites of struggle in this manner provides several promising directions for the geography of markets. Through linking the social struggles within markets to wider power relations, the approach outlined here provides a meso-level theory between the micro-politics of markets and the macro-structures of capitalism. In doing so it also allows geographers to move forward in addressing the three challenges laid out in Section II: (1) defining markets, (2) understanding the role of space and place in their functioning, and (3) studying their roles in the societies and spaces they exist within.

Regarding the definitional challenge, given the arguments by Polanyian and cultural Marxist scholars, it is clear that markets must be understood as more than just sites where the exchange of commodities is organized. This limited definition fails to capture the complexity of markets in an era where market rule is a defining feature of everyday life and, therefore, where contestation is an important element in many markets. In this light, a definition of markets as sites of struggle over the networks, institutions, and/or ideas and technologies through which the exchange of commodities is organized allows geographers to be clear about what makes a market – the organization of exchange – without tightly binding markets to the act of exchange in isolation from other social processes. Importantly, keeping exchange central in this definition provides a focal point for the subfield and allows geographers to study the commonalities that exist amid market variations. Furthermore, it provides a core element from which geographers can move outwards as they study the distinct networks, institutions and/or ideas and technologies that characterize different markets, thereby providing a common thread and addressing Muellerleile and Akers’s (2015) concern about the incoherency of the subfield.

The insights of cultural Marxist and Polanyian scholars also provide a theoretical frame through which geographers can better understand the role of space and place in the functioning of markets. This is because the social conflicts discussed by these scholars are inherently spatial, with markets functioning as central sites through which sociospatial relations are contested. Notably, this approach allows geographers to understand markets as key nodes in the ‘geographies of power’ which are often mobilized to remake the politics of a place or define new geographies (Prince, 2012: 140). Indeed, existing work has examined how transnational networks of travelling expertise are used to set up particular kinds of markets in a manner that can have profound consequences for the future of a place (Cohen, 2016; Lai, 2011). More work of this nature is possible if the ways that the internal politics of markets are connected to broader sociospatial processes is integrated into research programs. By providing a theoretical framework for examining how dynamics such as the scalar politics of state restructuring or the financialization of the economy are rolled out (or contested) through markets, this approach helps geographers conceptualize the articulation between the often place-based politics of markets and circulating geographies of power.

An approach centred on markets as sites of social struggle also has the potential to meet Jones’s (2013) call to study how markets overlap and relate across different spaces and scales. Again, work within the geography of markets hints at this potential but takes on new significance when read within the frame of markets as sites of struggle. For instance, processes of boundary drawing around markets have already been a source of scholarship (Berndt, 2013; Christophers, 2014b; Kama, 2014; Hall, 2015), but how and why groups contest and remake the scale of a market has significance beyond the politics of a particular market. Much as political ecologists have argued that the ‘continuous reorganisation of spatial scales is an integral part of social strategies to combat and defend control over limited resources’ (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003: 913), so too is this reorganization a strategy for market actors who pick the scale of action which fits their mode of politics and advances their other projects. For example, Hall (2015) argues that the marketization of English higher education through the introduction of student fees depended on a depiction of the national, rather than global, labour market as the scale of action. While work studying the spatiality of markets is only in its nascent stage (Christophers, 2014c; Hall, 2015; Jones, 2013), the two examples above illustrate how a hybrid Polanyian/cultural Marxist approach can help advance the subfield’s understanding of the role of space and place in the functioning of markets.

Finally, it is in understanding the roles that markets play in the societies and spaces they exist within that this approach has the most potential. Taking up where Christophers (2014a) leaves off in questioning how the variability of market forms may be limited by their roles under capitalism, understanding markets as sites of struggle provides a mechanism to study both this variability and its limits. By probing how (or whether) resistance to capitalist and other hegemonic logics results in the contest of market rule and how (or whether) power is used to ensure that markets continue to function in a manner that ensures the smooth circulation of capital, geographers have a method of exploring the missing meso-level connections between the micro-politics of markets and the macro-structures of capitalism. This means an attention to the uneven power relations between actors struggling over markets and to how power is used to restructure markets and to pacify counterhegemonic projects. In other words, by studying how struggle occurs in markets and the resulting mobilization of power, geographers can trace connections between markets and other social forces.

Importantly, the potential of this approach also includes tracing how changes within markets reverberate into other social relations. Geographers cannot be content to understand how power is marshalled to pacify markets, but must also study how contestation within markets can impact other social and economic processes. For example, geographers could trace how contestation over how a market functions is received by the various circuits of power invested in that market’s structure, or how different struggles against market rule are connected through social movements. In either case the priority must be tracing how changes in markets are linked to, and perhaps change, other arenas of social and economic life. In doing so, this approach builds on a long history of geographers studying the sociospatial connections that link seemingly disparate phenomena.

V Conclusions

The growth of scholarship on markets is an important and exciting development in economic geography. Current work demonstrates the potential of studying the spatiality of markets, highlighting the material effects of variations in their form and the important role of space and place in how markets function. The popularity of the subfield is only likely to grow as the expansion of market rule continues unabated despite the lessons of the financial crisis. Addressing critiques of, and challenges to, this work is an important next step as geographers studying markets engage with wider disciplinary debates. As recent articles have emphasized, addressing these critiques and challenges requires a focus on the commonalities between markets and on the roles they play in the spaces and societies they exist within (Braun, 2016; Christophers, 2014a; Muellerleille and Akers, 2015; Peck, 2012) – a process which requires new theoretical tools.

This paper has argued that an approach to markets which highlights their role in social struggles can help geographers of markets address many of these challenges and provide a promising theoretical approach to understanding both market variability and its potential limits. Through probing how markets are tied to capitalist logics, how they become proxy sites of other hegemonic struggles, and how resistance is built within their institutional walls, geographers can advance their understanding of the sociospatial nature of markets. While the suggestions in this paper have been principally theoretical, it is essential for empirical work to further probe these connections given the strength of market ideology under neoliberalism. This is especially important if Burawoy is right and there is the potential for counterhegemonic projects within markets. If this is the case, then how do such projects arise, and what are the characteristics of the particular markets that allow them to do so? Or, if it not the case, what are the geographies of power marshalled in defence of markets and how do they work? Geographers should have much to say in answer to these important questions.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Jamie Peck and Martin Danyluk for commenting on multiple drafts of this article and Josh Akers, Rosemary Collard, and Chris Muellerleile for their helpful feedback on the initial draft. I would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers and editor Christian Berndt who helpfully pushed this paper in a new, productive direction. All errors are my own responsibility.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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