Working the market
Résumé
During the last fifteen years, several studies have assessed markets through their organizational, cognitive and material dimensions. These studies have emphasized, for example, the role of market devices (Callon et al., 2007), technologies and knowledge (MacKenzie and Millo, 2003), institutions (François, 2011) and organizations (Healy, 2006) in the making of markets. These new insights on the functioning of markets also reveal the role of specific activities that both shape and regulate markets.
This new issue of ESEEN will focus on activities which “work on the market”, activities that create the conditions for economic exchange: such activities shape demand and consumers’ preferences as well as features of supply (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2013a; Zwick and Cayla, 2011), but also organize the encounters between suppliers and demanders, producers and customers, products and consumers.
These activities, which remained in under-analysed for a long time, are indeed central for the formation of
value on market: they make brands, prices, and reputations, and produce judgement devices (Beckert and Aspers, 2010; Karpik, 2011). They may be performed by specific actors and departments within firms whose marketing activities are directly dedicated to producing markets (Araujo and al., 2010), but they may also be performed outside of these suppliers, by other companies, or by single actors who play the role of market intermediaries, and make their profit directly from these working market activities. One may also consider the role of social movement organizations in making markets through specific activities that work on the market (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2013b). [first paragraphs]