Introduction

The word 'market' carries more meanings than we usually notice. In its most familiar sense it names a physical place — the market by the railway station, the fruit market, the wholesale market. But it can just as easily mean the people who gather there, buyers and sellers together, rather than the spot itself: a weekly vegetable market moves from village to village through the week, yet remains recognisably 'the market' wherever it is held. In a third sense, 'market' names a whole line of trade or business — the market for cars, the market for readymade clothes — or simply the level of demand for something, as in the market for computer professionals.

All of these are particular markets, each understandable from its context. But 'the market', spoken of in a general, unqualified way — without naming any one place, crowd, or trade — is a bigger idea again: it covers every one of the specific senses above, plus the entire web of economic activity and institutions that keeps an economy running. Used this broadly, 'the market' comes close to being another name for 'the economy' itself.

We are used to treating the market purely as an economic institution. This chapter argues that it is also a social one — as fully bound up with community, trust, and inherited relationships as caste, tribe, or family, the institutions examined in the previous chapter.