Concerned Markets

Economic Ordering for Multiple Values

Edited by Susi Geiger, Associate Professor of Marketing, University College Dublin, Ireland, Debbie Harrison, Associate Professor, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway, Hans Kjellberg, Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing and Strategy, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden and Alexandre Mallard, Director of the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Ecole des Mines ParisTech, France

When political, social, technological and economic interests, values, and perspectives interact, market order and performance become contentious issues of debate. Such ‘hot’ situations are becoming increasingly common and make for rich sites of research. With expert empirical contributions investigating the organization of such ‘concerned’ markets, this book is positioned at the centre of the rapidly growing area of interdisciplinary market studies. Markets investigated include those for palm oil, primary health care and functional foods. The authors also examine markets and environmental concerns as well as better market design for those at the bottom of the pyramid.

‘The insightful chapters collected here show that markets are a matter of concern because they can be spaces for making concerns matter.’
– David Stark, Columbia University, US and author of The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life

‘Do those impersonal allocation mechanisms that we call markets even exist as such? Or should we drop this questionable euphemism if what we want is to address the political struggles and bureaucratic processes that control economic life? Readers interested in a measured approach to the subject matter will find a set of clues here. By considering markets as nodes of concerns, the works assembled in this volume guide us along a subtle path.’
– Fabian Muniesa, Ecole des Mines de Paris, France