Deciphering Markets and Money

A Sociological Analysis of Economic Institutions

Jukka Gronow

• Publisher: Helsinki University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9789523690004
• eBook ISBN: 9789523690028

Jukka Gronow's book Deciphering Markets and Money solves the problem of the specific social conditions of an economic order based on money and the equal exchange of commodities. Gronow scrutinizes the relation of sociology to neoclassical economics and reflects on how sociology can contribute to the analyses of the major economic institutions. The question of the comparability and commensuration of economic objects runs through the chapters of the book.The author shows that due to the multidimensionality and principal quality uncertainty of products, markets would collapse without market devices that are either procedural, consisting of technical standards and measuring instruments, or aesthetic, relying on the judgements of taste, or both. In his book, Gronow demonstrates that in this respect, financial markets share the same problem as the markets of wines, movies, or PCs and mobile phones, and hence offer a highly actual case to study their social constitution in the process of coming into being.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Introduction: Making the Incomparable Comparable
• Chapter 2. Economic Sociology in a Theory-historical Perspective
• Chapter 3. What is Money?
• Chapter 4. Sociological Theories of the Market
• Chapter 5. The Three Social Formations of Taste in Economic Markets
• Chapter 6. The Aesthetization of Everyday Consumption
• Chapter 7. Finance Capital and the New Financial Markets
• Chapter 8. Conclusion
• Notes
• Literature
• Index