Market as Place and Space of Economic Exchange

Perspectives from Archaeology and Anthropology

Hans Peter Hahn, Geraldine Schmitz, Hans Peter Hahn, Geraldine Schmitz

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781785708947
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Archäologie

In the context of commodification, material culture has particular properties hitherto considered irrelevant or neglected. First, the market is a spatial structure, assigning special properties to the things offered: the goods and commodities. Secondly, the market defines a principle of dealing with things, including them in some contexts, excluding them from others. The contributions to Market as Place and Space address a variety of aspects of markets within the framework of archaeological and anthropological case studies and with a special focus on the indicators of practices attached to the commodities and their valuation.

Chapter 1

Introduction. Markets as places: Actors, structures and ideologies

Hans P. Hahn

It is common nowadays to believe that the market always prevails, and that the dams erected by kings, priests and communities cannot long hold back the tides of money. This is naive. Brutal warriors, religious fanatics and concerned citizens have repeatedly managed to trounce calculating merchants, and even to reshape the economy. (Yuval N. Harari 2014: 187)

Introduction

As a rule, at least two and possibly many more meanings are assigned to the term ‘market’. First, there is the idea of the ‘market as the principle of the availability of goods’ and as a regulatory mechanism controlling access to and exchanges of goods. Secondly, there is the concept of the market as a spatial entity of activity. The market is a social and economic locality, often also a centre in which many people actively participate. The categorical separation of the two meanings is a manifestly analytical procedure which is frequently applied in the field of economics, as well as in the humanities.

However, it is also valuable to highlight the unavoidable blurring and overlapping of these two meanings. Thus, in many cases it is not clear whether a certain transaction should be regarded as an exchange of goods and, as a consequence, as an action in line with market requirements, or represents the bestowal of a gift which does not require to be directly reciprocated and is thus considered external to the logic of the market. It is possible that the location provides circumstantial evidence, even though gifts might also be made in somewhere identified as a market place. Conversely, many transactions that follow market mechanisms take place in locations other than a market place (or supermarket). In view of the limited validity and the impossibility of categorically separating the two meanings – the market principle and the market place as a social location – it is appropriate to take both meanings into account and to decide on a case by case basis which meaning has the priority. In any case, overriding considerations suggest that a degree of overlap between the two meanings should be regarded as the norm. This can be demonstrated by taking a look at any randomly selected market place, where it is usually a precondition of transactions involving goods that all the parties involved implicitly accept the market principle. On a regular basis, it is safe to assume that the meanings of the market as ‘market principle’ and ‘market as location’ meet in the market place. Therefore, this differentiation will not play a central role in the contributions to this volume.

Today, the market as a location of social interaction is increasingly losing its links to space and indeed its whole spatial relevance. Global ties and connections mean that today’s market activities include direct, socially significant interactions between individuals based in very different locations. At the present day, a localized place hardly ever now enjoys a position of priority over the de-spatialized market. As can also be seen in some of the contributions to this volume, long-distance trade already played a significant role in the past. While the consumers of today frequently possess nothing but a limited knowledge of the origins of everyday goods, we do not know to what extent knowledge of the origins and sources of goods existed in earlier periods, nor do we know the significance, if any, of the role played by these origins.

Therefore, throughout this book, the term ‘market’ will be understood and used in its double meaning, without making explicit the analytical separation or juxtaposition mentioned above. Generally speaking, formally limiting the term does not appear to be at all meaningful because the contributions included here are largely based on observations and interviews at specific, concrete locations. Market and market actions and trading should be understood primarily and essentially on the basis of observed archaeological and ethnographic phenomena. As a consequence, the focus here is on material, social and cultural observations and on the phenomena assigned to the market. Conceptual tools are relevant, but only to the extent that it is possible for the authors to link their findings to such theories.

By referring to the priorities given to observability in this volume, as well as to market actions and trading and to market structure, some indicators for a provisional definition of the term become evident. Another, equally extensive definition of the market is provided by Stuart Plattner (1989), namely that any transaction in goods or services which does not occur within a kinship group or does not take the form of a payment of tribute can be conceptualized as a market transaction. This is a very far-reaching definition, which at first sight contributes little to clarification of the term. Nonetheless it is useful to take this wide definition into account exactly because it does make clear the extraordinarily broad spectrum of different transactions that can be perceived as market trading.

In this context, Plattner points to an important element which plays a role in all the contributions to this volume: a market transaction, or similarly a market as a place, creates a relationship between goods and people, as well as between people and social groups. Through the market, people become buyers or sellers, able to discern who has certain goods at his or her disposal and who is able to acquire them. Markets connect people, but they also create various different categories, depending on whether they allow access to the goods or not. On the empirical level, therefore, Plattner’s definition inspires a search for the phenomena and effects of such transactions.

A natural definition of the concept of ‘market’, one oriented towards phenomena, could also be derived from observing the categories of goods on offer and being sold. For example, we could look at markets for foodstuffs, handmade products or secondhand goods. Indeed, this method has been employed in several contributions to this book. However, in considering the possibility of deriving a general definition of the concept of ‘market’ from this, a fundamental problem arises: there is barely a single object which cannot become a tradeable good.

In his classic contribution to the collection The Social Life of Things (1986), Igor Kopytoff made clear the extent to which every object has the potential to become a tradeable good, by and large constituting a permanent area of social negotiations. Across all ages and in all cultures, people have repeatedly come to differing perceptions as to what can be considered a purchasable good and what, for whatever reasons, should not be traded at all. This suggests that the range of objects on offer in a market does not have any stable boundaries. The question as to the permissibility of the purchase or sale of certain objects is notoriously contentious and precarious, often sparking fundamental debates on the identity of a society and its value system. Even though modern societies have developed concerns regarding the endless expansion of the range of tradeable goods, there appears to be no coherent and overarching tendency, as suggested in Marxist philosophy, for example, for the scope of tradeable goods to be permanently enlarged. In the following the market sphere is treated as having an inherent tendency to be dynamic, sometimes expanding but also shrinking at other times.

Commodification, here understood as the process through which personal goods become anonymous tradeable goods, whether temporarily or permanently, has recently become an important field of research. Academic experts, like Daniel Miller, for example, have even recommended describing material culture as a whole solely in terms of the concept of commodities and their consumption (Miller 1995). Miller’s suggestion is based on the argument that it is only at the moment a material thing is purchased that the whole spectrum of the possibilities of consumption will be opened up. Only the elimination of social embedding as it occurs, at least seemingly, at the moment of purchase allows immediate confrontation with the object and thus direct analysis of its materiality. Building on these theoretical insights, one thing at least can be established: that the appearance of new goods on the market often marks the beginning of new social relationships and may be even be regarded as an expression of radical cultural change.

An extreme but at the same time important example is the transatlantic slave trade, which took place in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and made a significant contribution to the form of the modern world of commodities and the normality of global inter-connectivity (Presthold 2012). Despite these historical findings, from today’s point of view slaves are not commodities (Satz 2010). The example shows, however, how contentious the limits and boundaries of market dealings are. Generally speaking, there is no consensus on the historical development of commodification. In contrast to the thesis of a continuous expansion of the market mentioned above, it is also important to consider historical moments when markets have been suppressed. For example, the history of consumption in Europe, which can also be read as a history of the market on this continent, reveals various historical effects of control and restrictions over the market sphere.

In other regions of the world, conflicts surrounding the appearance of certain goods on the market can be followed much more clearly. Thus, Georg Elwert argued some time ago that corruption should be understood as a part of a generalized market (Elwert 1985). While in Europe certain services, for example, court judgements, may not be offered as goods, their ‘sale’ being considered a crime, in other societies these pursuits are covered by the field of activities which are in line with market trading.

As such controversial evaluations of transactions make obvious, in many concrete, historically and geographically deliminated cases, the description of goods may be a practical way of reaching a better understanding of the phenomenon we call the ‘market’. However, because the borders of a market are always in flux, it is barely possible to use the term ‘categories of commodities’ as a basis for a broader understanding of markets as a whole.

For this reason, there is no separate section on ‘commodities’ in this introduction, whereas several other aspects will be outlined in greater detail in the following. We will concern ourselves with actors in the markets, the development of equivalence, the spatial structure of markets and networks as a special characteristic of the interrelationships between goods and people in the market place, as well as the market as a model. Following these sections, the individual contributions to this volume will be briefly summarized.

Actors in the market

Historians of consumption have dated the beginnings of the consumer society back to the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries (McKendrick et al. 1982; Trentmann 2009). The term ‘consumer society’ suggests a situation in which, in the narrow sense, the majority of goods appear as ‘commodities’. They are no longer produced by the individuals who use them or exchanged with their neighbours, but rather are purchased, for example, in a market. The point in time when society switched from being one where domestic production and subsistence were foregrounded to a society in which the acquisition of commodities represents the most important method of access to consumable goods is disputed. From a historical point of view, this undoubtedly represents a profound transformation, and it is not by chance that this is frequently associated with the earliest transcontinental trade links. In the England of the seventeenth century, this pertains to the then rapidly growing trade in cotton and sugar, both products of the triangular transatlantic trade.

Professionalization also played a significant role: long-distance trade was only possible because of the existence of trading companies and of considerable specialist knowledge in purchasing and processing (Findlay and O’Rourke 2007). Both sugar and cotton are plantation products that require a high level of technical investment in their production and processing (Mintz 1985; Beckert 2007), in addition to long trade routes. Against this backdrop, demand constantly grew, at least at the time.

Traders therefore had to meet the challenge of ensuring constant levels of availability and quality. A further aspect arises from issues of standardization. To offer something as a commodity repeatedly means, at least to some extent, to promise consistency of quality. When a commodity appears on the market, it is at first anonymous: it is the traders (or producers) who guarantee its particular qualities. But for the buyer this is, in a similar sense, also valid: in buying the goods they are expressing their trust in them and their sellers. John Harold Plumb supports the theory of the modernization of society through the assertion of the market principle, pointing in particular to printed media – books and newspapers – the distribution of which increased rapidly in the eighteenth century (Plumb 1982).

Printed products are a very typical example of a standardized commodity, for which at the same time the promise of certain properties is valid. A further characteristic is also of significance here: those commodities that feature in the process of an increasing orientation towards consumption rarely fall into the category of basic needs. As Stephen Hugh-Jones shows (1992) using the example of the increasing market penetration into the Amazon Basin, a more general formulation can be made: the scope of the goods and the markets asserts itself by means of luxury articles, that is, of goods that go beyond everyday needs. Paradoxically, the negative perception of the market and the sensation of dependence on it only come to the fore later on, namely when basic goods such as food have become available mainly as a commodity (Weismantel 1991).

With this, some of the characteristics of traders and vendors as actors in the market arena have been outlined. Alongside professionalization, the promise that certain features of the commodities on offer will generally be constant has been highlighted. It is exactly these aspects which make participation in the market interesting in the first place: if goods do not have these qualities, then it is better to buy them somewhere else or not to buy them at all and then make them yourself.

Within a longer historical perspective – including archaeological findings – the idea of a temporally definable ‘consumerist turn’ seems to be an unnecessary or even problematic restriction. Consumption and participation in the market were already playing an important role in significantly earlier periods, as, for example, substantiated by Karl Polanyi in his case study of ancient Greece (Polanyi 1957). The idea of a linear development is altogether far too oriented towards quantitative data. For many periods, as for some non-European regions of the world, we should accept that it is hardly possible to evaluate the significance of the market for a specific society at all adequately. A pure estimate of the quantity of goods traded is not enough to provide an understanding of the specific evaluation of markets.

Additionally, Polanyi pointed to a special feature of groups of traders in ancient Greece: alongside the free citizens and the slaves, the metic tradesmen formed a sharply distinguished population group in the city state of Athens. Metics were subject to a special tax, were not allowed to purchase land and had only partial civil rights (Spahn 1995). Even though they were by no way only tradesmen, still, according to Polanyi, the social structure of t...