The Market

What is "the market"? What are "market forces"? Is it an abstract economic idea, or is there a real-life couterpart? This book explores this fundamental concept and the historical, social and political realities in which it is necessarily embedded.

The market is one of the most readily identifiable manifestations of the modern economy: the locus of supply and demand, the object of countless production and consumption decisions. As an abstract idea, it has spilled over from economic theory to inform the way we speak about our relationship to the economic system as a whole. However, what does it really mean to allow ourselves to submit to market forces? And does economic theory really provide insights into the market institutions that shape everyday life, or can it only talk about an abstract idea of the market that has no real-life counterpart? Matthew Watson tackles these questions and in so doing provides an important contribution to the deeper appreciation of the dominant economic language of our time. It is a book that will be welcomed by students across the social sciences and humanities and it will challenge readers' assumptions about why they think what they think about markets and the way they act in a variety of marketplaces.