Meanings of the Market

Meanings of the Market

Author: James G. Carrier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1000184439

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For almost twenty years, the 'Free Market' has been a central feature of public debate in the West, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. In the name of the Market and its supposed benefits, governments and international agencies have imposed massive changes on peoples' lives. Curiously, scholars have paid little attention to the ways that the idea of the Market is invoked, to what it might mean and how it is being used. This book helps correct that state of affairs. Focusing on the United States, where the Market model is strongest, authors analyze portrayals of the Market, its values and the people within it, as a way of teasing out its assumptions and contradictions. They also describe extensions and practical applications of the Market model in policy-making in the United States and in explaining how firms work, show its political strengths and conceptual limitations. In bringing rigor and sustained critical analysis to a topic of growing global significance, this truly interdisciplinary study represents a coherent and incisive contribution to anthropology, sociology, politics, history and economics, as it challenges these disciplines to come to grips with one of the most potent cultural symbols of postmodernity.


Meanings of the Market

Meanings of the Market

Author: James G. Carrier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-28

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1000181251

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For almost twenty years, the 'Free Market' has been a central feature of public debate in the West, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. In the name of the Market and its supposed benefits, governments and international agencies have imposed massive changes on peoples' lives. Curiously, scholars have paid little attention to the ways that the idea of the Market is invoked, to what it might mean and how it is being used. This book helps correct that state of affairs. Focusing on the United States, where the Market model is strongest, authors analyze portrayals of the Market, its values and the people within it, as a way of teasing out its assumptions and contradictions. They also describe extensions and practical applications of the Market model in policy-making in the United States and in explaining how firms work, show its political strengths and conceptual limitations. In bringing rigor and sustained critical analysis to a topic of growing global significance, this truly interdisciplinary study represents a coherent and incisive contribution to anthropology, sociology, politics, history and economics, as it challenges these disciplines to come to grips with one of the most potent cultural symbols of postmodernity.


The Meaning of the Market Process

The Meaning of the Market Process

Author: Israel M Kirzner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1134915500

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Israel Kirzner is the foremost proponent of the modern Austrian theory of the market process. This book offers substantive insights in support of this theory and a new historical interpretation of how the ideas of modern Austrians emerged.


Economy/Society

Economy/Society

Author: Bruce G. Carruthers

Publisher: Pine Forge Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780761986416

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Economy/Society provides an introduction to the ways in which economic exchanges are embedded in social relationships. It offers insights into advertising, consumer behaviour, conflicts in the work place, social inequality and other issues.


The Meaning of the Market Process

The Meaning of the Market Process

Author: Israel M Kirzner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1134915497

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Israel Kirzner is the foremost proponent of the modern Austrian theory of the market process. This book offers substantive insights in support of this theory and a new historical interpretation of how the ideas of modern Austrians emerged.


Talking Prices

Talking Prices

Author: Olav Velthuis

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2007-08-19

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0691134030

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do dealers price contemporary art in a world where objective criteria seem absent? Talking Prices is the first book to examine this question from a sociological perspective. On the basis of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including interviews with art dealers in New York and Amsterdam, Olav Velthuis shows how contemporary art galleries juggle the contradictory logics of art and economics. In doing so, they rely on a highly ritualized business repertoire. For instance, a sharp distinction between a gallery's museumlike front space and its businesslike back space safeguards the separation of art from commerce. Velthuis shows that prices, far from being abstract numbers, convey rich meanings to trading partners that extend well beyond the works of art. A high price may indicate not only the quality of a work but also the identity of collectors who bought it before the artist's reputation was established. Such meanings are far from unequivocal. For some, a high price may be a symbol of status; for others, it is a symbol of fraud. Whereas sociological thought has long viewed prices as reducing qualities to quantities, this pathbreaking and engagingly written book reveals the rich world behind these numerical values. Art dealers distinguish different types of prices and attach moral significance to them. Thus the price mechanism constitutes a symbolic system akin to language.


The Illusion of Free Markets

The Illusion of Free Markets

Author: Bernard E. Harcourt

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-05-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0674059360

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It is widely believed today that the free market is the best mechanism ever invented to efficiently allocate resources in society. Just as fundamental as faith in the free market is the belief that government has a legitimate and competent role in policing and the punishment arena. This curious incendiary combination of free market efficiency and the Big Brother state has become seemingly obvious, but it hinges on the illusion of a supposedly natural order in the economic realm. The Illusion of Free Markets argues that our faith in “free markets” has severely distorted American politics and punishment practices. Bernard Harcourt traces the birth of the idea of natural order to eighteenth-century economic thought and reveals its gradual evolution through the Chicago School of economics and ultimately into today’s myth of the free market. The modern category of “liberty” emerged in reaction to an earlier, integrated vision of punishment and public economy, known in the eighteenth century as “police.” This development shaped the dominant belief today that competitive markets are inherently efficient and should be sharply demarcated from a government-run penal sphere. This modern vision rests on a simple but devastating illusion. Superimposing the political categories of “freedom” or “discipline” on forms of market organization has the unfortunate effect of obscuring rather than enlightening. It obscures by making both the free market and the prison system seem natural and necessary. In the process, it facilitated the birth of the penitentiary system in the nineteenth century and its ultimate culmination into mass incarceration today.


The Moral Meanings of Markets

The Moral Meanings of Markets

Author: Ryan Langrill

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 17

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Market supporters have consistently emphasized that markets make it so that self-interested or even greedy individuals can only help themselves by serving their fellow men and women. This channeling of self-interest away from predation and toward profit seeking explains why market economies tend to be materially prosperous. Yet if markets only succeed in providing a wealth of goods and services at the cost of turning people into myopic hedonists, then it might very well be reasonable to despise them. The moral meanings of markets, however, are not suspect. This article offers a critique of the traditional defenses of the morality of markets and explains how markets depend on and promote virtue.


Ethics, Meaning, and Market Society

Ethics, Meaning, and Market Society

Author: Laszlo Zsolnai

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-12-12

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 1351799126

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the underlying causes of the pervasive dominance of ‘unethics’ in contemporary affairs in economics, business, and society. It is argued that the state of unethics is related to the overexpansion of market and market values in all spheres of social life and human activities. A correlate of this development is the emergence of an extremely individualistic, materialistic and narcissistic mind-set that dictates the decisions and behavior of people and organizations. The author argues that art can help to overcome the dominant market metaphysics of our age, as genuine art creates models of 'poetic dwelling,' which can generate non-linear, progressive change that opens up a larger playing field for ethics. Aesthetics and ethics go hand in hand. Ethical action is not just right for its own sake, but makes the world a richer, livable and more beautiful place. Ethics, Meaning, and Market Society will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics, researchers and professionals. It addresses the topics with regard to ethics in economics, business, and society in a contemporary context.


Making Meaning

Making Meaning

Author: Steve Diller

Publisher: New Riders

Published: 2005-12-21

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 0132704927

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“ We’re now hip-deep, if not drowning, in the ‘experience economy.‘ Here‘s the smartest book I‘ve read so far that can actually help get your brand to higher ground, fast. And it‘s written by people who not only drew the map, but blazed these trails in the first place.” –Brian Collins, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Brand Integration Group In a market economy characterized by commoditized products and global competition, how do companies gain deep and lasting loyalty from their customers? The key, this book argues, is in providing meaningful customer experiences. Writing in the tradition of Louis Cheskin, one of the founding fathers of market research, the authors of Making Meaning observe, define, and describe the meaningful customer experience. By consciously evoking certain deeply valued meanings through their products, services, and multidimensional customer experiences, they argue, companies can create more value and achieve lasting strategic advantages over their competitors. A few businesses are already discovering this approach, but until now no one has articulated it in such a persuasive and practical way. Making Meaning not only encourages businesses to adopt an innovation process that’s centered on meaning, it also tells you how. The book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team. With insightful real-world examples drawn from the Cheskin company's experience and from the authors' observations of the contemporary global market, this book outlines a plan of action and describes the attributes of a meaning-centric innovation team. Meaningful experiences—as distinct from trivial ones—reinforce or transform the customer’s sense of purpose and significance. The authors’ vision of a world of meaningful consumption is idealistic, but don’t be fooled: this is a straightforward business book with an eye on the ROI. It shows how to bring R&D, design, and marketing together to create deeper and richer experiences for your customers. Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences is an engaging and practical book for business leaders, explaining how their companies can create more meaningful products and services to better achieve their goals.