Markets and Culture

Field of Research

Like institutions, markets are social constructions. Contemporary economic sociology explores the social-structural, institutional, and cultural conditions that are necessary for market relations to develop and function effectively. One important aspect of investigating markets is looking at the interplay between actors and institutions in the creation of goods and their meaning. The increasing shift in consumer demand from commodities that have mainly instrumental value towards goods that are normatively and esthetically evaluated makes the understanding of the worth of goods increasingly important. Research in this field also examines the impact of categories and boundaries on central macro developments – such as social inequality, economic stratification, and lifestyles – by investigating phenomena such as the economic integration of migrants. Research on the operation of markets and their social consequences is necessary, especially in a period of liberalization and internationalization in which a growing range of social transactions are conducted through market exchanges.

On the one hand, economic transactions are increasingly being released from normative, political, and bureaucratic control and relegated to voluntary and competitive contractual exchange under free price formation. On the other hand, markets themselves are entities affected by moral considerations that come into play through regulation or the normative anchoring of choices of market actors. Researchers in the School studies market formation and the operation of markets in a wide variety of areas from a social, cultural, and political perspective. They examine new phenomena in the digital economy, for example, by looking at the marketization of formerly private spheres in business models such as Uber or Airbnb. A special focus of research at the School is on the role of expectations in economic decision making and the significance of expectations in market development and capitalist dynamics, market growth as well as its recurrent crises. Relating expectations to capitalist dynamics is seen as another promising way to strengthen links between political economy and economic sociology.