Workshop proposal „market fields“
Evolving market fields: Historical and sociological case studies
Klaus Nathaus, Lise Skov, David Gilgen
This workshop brings together young scholars from history and sociology who work on case
studies on the development of market fields in various economic sectors, for instance the
constitution of a market for sustainable investments, the emergence of a field for day-care
centres for schoolchildren, the influence of the fair trade movement, the establishment of
ethical fashion as a movement and a label, the regulation of a labour market for interpreters,
the marketing of technological innovations and the institutionalization of designer fashion and
musical genres.
Studying the emergence, change and re-configuration of embedded markets within a
common framework, workshop participants look for mechanisms that link initial conditions
and actors’ strategies with the resulting state of a respective field. Mechanisms are understood
as recurring causal processes that explain change and that require historical, narrative
exploration. Moreover, the workshop aims at systematic comparisons across different
economic sectors and different historical contexts. Comparisons benefit the individual case
studies, as they enable researchers to take alternative developments into account and allow
generalisations from particular findings. Finally, by focussing on phenomena that require the
expertise of historians and sociologists alike, the workshop facilitates the interdisciplinary
dialogue.
The convenors plan a joint publication of selected contributions to the workshop,
preferably as a themed issue of a peer-reviewed journal. Therefore draft papers are invited
that can be discussed in view of the publication, allowing for a high degree of coherence
between the contributions. The convenors are going to invite two or three eminent historians
and sociologists who work on market fields and whose role will be to comment on the
individual projects and to enrich discussions.
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Workshop proposal „market fields“
Comparing empirical studies on evolving market fields:
A suggested frame of reference
The following considerations suggest a common frame of reference to facilitate comparisons
and the interdisciplinary dialogue between historians and sociologists. The first part outlines a
model of market fields that accounts for the role of social networks, institutions and cognitive
frameworks in their change and reproduction. The second part points out foci for empirical
studies and presents some guiding questions for individual studies.
What are market fields and how do they change?
Economic sociology since the 1980s is marked by an increasing awareness of the many ways
in which economic behaviour is embedded in diverse social structures. In order to analyse
economic phenomena in general and markets in particular, sociological studies generally refer
to three structuring social forces: networks, institutions of cognitive frameworks.1
Networks are social relations between market actors (producers, consumers, suppliers,
regulators, workers) that enable them to act under uncertainty. Networks promise to generate
trust, facilitate the exchange of information or reduce risk, but may also be misused by
fraudsters. Compared with arms-length ties that are founded solely on cost calculation,
network relations are closer, fewer and based on the expectation of reciprocity. Networks can
be personal and organisational. They are manifested, established and reproduced in informal
meetings of business people, in negotiations between labour organisations, in the running of
mutual associations or relations between firms that continue to do business with each other
even though alternative contractors offer their services at a cheaper rate.2
Institutions are often defined as rules and shared understandings that structure market
exchange, encompassing formal parameters such as labour laws, subsidies, intellectual
property rights and industry standards as well as informal norms, routines, ethics and
conventions that shape the practice of market actors. Some of these institutions are
1
For an overview see Neil Fligstein, Luke Dauter, The sociology of markets, in: Annual Review of Sociology,
vol. 33 (2007), 105-128; Marion Fourcade, Theories of markets and theories of society, in: American Behavioral
Scientist, vol. 50 (2007), 1015-1034; Jens Beckert et. al., Einleitung: Neue Perspektiven für die Marktsoziologie,
in: Idem (ed.), Märkte als soziale Strukturen, Frankfurt, New York: Campus 2007, 19-39; Neil J. Smelser,
Richard Swedberg, Introducing Economic Sociology, in: Idem (ed.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology,
Princeton: Princeton University Press 2005 2, 3-25.
2
Mark Granovetter, Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness, in: American Journal
of Sociology, vol. 91 (1985), 481-510; Brian Uzzi, Social structure and competition on interfirm networks: The
paradox of embeddedness, in: Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 42 (1997), 35-67.
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Workshop proposal „market fields“
implemented by actors that do not trade, but regulate markets, and therefore require the
researcher to take the role of the state into account. Other institutions are established by
sellers, buyers, workers, cultural intermediaries or consumers who populate a field and who
have settled on arrangements to produce, distribute, evaluate and consume certain products,
either as a result of conscious agreements or as a consequence of what field participants
perceive to be “normal”.3 Here, however, we want to choose a narrow concept of institutions
that excludes informal ideas, norms and practices in order to distinguish institutions from the
third dimension of embeddedness: cognitive frameworks.
Cognitions – the cultural facet of embeddedness – are perceptions that shape the
outlook and actions of field participants. They inform actors’ self-understanding, motivate a
certain behaviour (for example the cognition of “fairness”) and underlie the values that the
traded goods or services are attributed. Cognitions encompass knowledge that new
information technologies generate as well as experiences and preferences that actors have
acquired. Together these dispositions form the basis from which actors interpret their role and
forge their strategies. They are unwritten scripts that pervade actions as well as institutions
and networks.4
Cognitions are not generated or controlled by market actors but are part of a wider
cultural context in which market activities are embedded. To get this context into view, we
suggest employing the concept of fields as devised by Pierre Bourdieu and taken up in
sociological neo-institutionalism.5 Analysing fields allow us to take all actors into account
that contribute to how values are created, such as consumers, who tend to be overlooked in
studies from economic sociology,6 but also cultural intermediaries and non-commercial actors
like social movements who propose that the production and distribution of certain goods
should not be organised on markets at all. Looking at fields also enables us to register
developments in which markets are curtailed or bypassed and other forms of exchange are
established. We are optimistic that the widening of the perspective from markets, businesses
and industries to fields will allow us to take relevant aspects into consideration, particularly
the interface between economy and culture, without losing in coherence. The pros and cons as
3
Neil Fligstein, The architecture of markets. An economic sociology of twenty-first-century capitalist societies,
Princeton: Princeton University Press 2001, 32-35.
4
Donald MacKenzie et.al., Die materiale Soziologie der Arbitrage, in: Jens Beckert et.al. (ed.), Märkte als
soziale Strukturen, Frankfurt, New York: Campus 2007, 135-150; Narasimhan Anand, Richard A. Peterson,
When market information constitutes fields. Sensemaking of markets in the commercial music industry, in:
Organization Science, vol. 11 (2000), 270-284.
5
For a critical discussion with references to the literature see Mustafa Emirbayer, Victoria Johnson, Bourdieu
and organizational analysis, in: Theory and Society 37 (2008), 1-44.
6
Viviana Zelizer, Culture and consumption, in: Neil Smelser, Richard Swedberg (ed.), The handbook of
economic sociology, New York: Russell Sage and Princeton University Press, 331-354.
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Workshop proposal „market fields“
well as the compatibility of the concepts market and field will have to be explored in our
workshop.
It has been shown in many studies that networks, institutions and cognitions influence
economic agency. Hence they provide a good starting point for sociologists and historians
who want to understand the societal context of markets. However, it has been criticised that
research has often focussed on either networks, institutions or cognitions as the decisive factor
of field formation and tends to conflate one of the three facets with the other two in order to
integrate different perspectives into one’s own approach. One consequence of this is that the
stabilising effects of each of the three social forces have received more attention than their
potential for change. Networks are said to be employed to reproduce power relations and
mitigate competition so that it is hard to see how industry structures might ever change, which
they occasionally do. The same holds true for institutions that, once in place, create a path
dependency that more or less determines the structure and performance of a market and
minimizes the space for change. Cognitions also appear static if they are conceptualised as
deep structures that are beyond deliberate attempts to alter them.
As the logic of each of the three social forces fosters stability, change can only be
explained as a reaction to exogenous shocks or as a result of contradictions within institutions
or cognitions that become visible in the course of events.7 Neither explanation accounts for
the internal dynamics of market fields. To cover this aspect, Jens Beckert now suggests a
model that takes account of the simultaneous and separate influences of each networks,
institutions and cognitive frameworks.8 On the one hand, the three dimensions of
embeddedness constrain actors, making the coordination, competition and the formation of
value reliable enough to stabilise the respective field. On the other hand, actors that try to
challenge the existing order may use networks, institutions or cognitions as resources to
enhance their position in a field and possibly transform its structure or logic. In Beckert´s
model, agency is neither determined by cultural forces nor a matter of individual rational
choice, as actors are simultaneously influenced by the irreducible forces of networks,
institutions and cognitions and try to change their environment to their own interest, using
each of these forces as a resource.
Beckert’s model may provide the workshop with a useful general framework, as it
combines a) the understanding of the embeddedness of markets with b) the concept of fields
7
Jason Kaufman, Endogenous explanation in the sociology of culture, in: American Sociological Review, vol.
30 (2004), 335-357.
8
For the following see Jens Beckert, How do fields change? The interrelations of institutions, networks, and
cognition in the dynamics of markets (forthcoming in Organization Studies).
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Workshop proposal „market fields“
and c) a perspective on dynamics and change. It encourages complex analysis that ranges
from the interpretation of actors’ behaviour on the micro-level to the study of network
structures and institutional settings on a macro-level. Using the concept of field, it also opens
the analysis for taking further contextual influences, notably cultural factors, into account.
With its focus on mechanisms of change and the conclusion that theoretical generalisations
need to be developed on the basis of empirical and historical studies, Beckert’s approach also
addresses historians and invites them to contribute to the understanding of market fields.
To illustrate the model, the formation of the market field of British rock music may
serve as an example. British rock music became as a commercially viable product when the
network ties between record companies and music publishers in the United Kingdom
dissolved and new actors, namely domestic beat and rock bands, got a chance to get their
music recorded. The bands had a different understanding about making music than the “old
guard” of established publishers, composers and lyricists. They wrote their own songs, relied
on live performances to sustain themselves – and were clueless about the publishing side of
the music business. These cognitions made them attractive for record firms that could record
them cheaply and sell their music exclusively. While the experiment of recording domestic
rock groups turned out to be successful with a new audience that shared ideas that musicians
articulated, the network expanded further with music critics who latched on to the beat and
rock boom and brought their own outlook to it, turning the unwritten conventions of the new
sound into an ideology of “authentic”, “meaningful” and “artistically valuable” expression.
The institutionalization of rock as a genre reinforced the “seriousness” of the style – and
would serve the champions of punk and plastic pop as a starting point for their challenge to
what in the 70s had become the dominant template for producing, evaluating and consuming
popular music. In Germany, the interplay of networks, cognitions and institutions had a rather
different outcome, as it hemmed the development of domestic rock music. German music
publishers retained a central position in the production chain of popular music due to their ties
with foreign publishers (who supplied them with mainly American and British hits) and their
dominance of the German collecting society, the GEMA. The network of publishers,
composers, lyricists and domestic record companies held on to the cognitions of “Schlager”
music – the division of labour between authors and performers, the stress on composition
rather than sound –, even though sales declined steadily. The dominant network also blocked
the path for newcomers who wanted to bring out German rock music. On top of that, the latter
also faced since the late 60s a matured ideology of rock that had been imported as a finished
article by German music writers and book publishers. The canon of rock reserved “authentic”
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Workshop proposal „market fields“
expression for British and American bands, so that German rock was almost by default a mere
copy of the Anglo-American original.
Foci and guiding questions for case studies
Empirical studies of the emergence, dynamics and change of market fields require foci where
the interplay of networks, institutions and cognitions and the role of market actors can be
analysed. One promising approach is the study of field configuring events such as trade fairs,
festivals or conferences as sites where networks become visible, institutions are discussed and
negotiated and cognitive frameworks become manifest. As “industry encounters” these events
are the place where key actors of an industry or field meet regularly “to announce new
products, develop industry standards, construct social networks, recognize accomplishments,
share and interpret information, and transact business”.9 Field-configuring events may serve
as a magnifying glass to look at the state of a field, showing actors, differences in power and
status (the location and size of stands at trade fairs, for instance, being an indicator for the
status of a firm) and the way actors negotiate economic, but also social and symbolic value. 10
What might also make them a vantage point for research in the history of a market is the fact
that trade fairs, conferences, festivals and similar events attract a lot of attention and
consequently generate potentially valuable sources.
Another focus might be the career of classifications such as genres or labels. Musical
genres for instance contain conventions that define how music is to be performed, recorded,
marketed and evaluated, and they become institutionalised in specialised charts, music media
or award categories. Finally, they are a thematic focus around which networks of producers,
distributors, consumers and intermediaries cohere. As classifications are founded on
cognitions, they shape the behaviour at least of some participants of a market field, in the case
of musical genres fans and musicians of the respective style in particular. Other actors are
detached from the norms and values of a certain genre and use it as a resource, for instance by
demonstratively distancing themselves from it or using the media attention that a dominant
style is guaranteed to promote their own music. New network ties are forged, older ones
might become weaker, as a genre offers new opportunities to actors. Finally, we see a network
9
Joseph Lampel, Alan Meyer, Field-configuring events as structuring mechanisms: How conferences,
ceremonies, and trade shows constitute new technologies, industries, and markets, special issue of the Journal of
Management Studies, vol. 45, no. 6 (2008), 1025-1035.
10
Brian Moeran, Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen (ed.), Industry encounters: Fairs and festivals, Cambridge: CUP
(forthcoming).
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Workshop proposal „market fields“
of interested actors establishing institutions such as trade associations, museums or university
research departments.11
This line of work is represented among others by Narasimhan Anand and his
collaborators who have contributed to the research on field formation with their studies of
awards such as the Booker Prize for fiction or the Grammy Awards. They have shown that
these “transorganizational structures” provide foci for the common interests and issues of
field participants and thereby shape actors’ perceptions and strategies.12 Classifications seem
of central importance for newcomers who try to carve out market niches and have to convince
consumers and business partners that their distinctiveness is worth paying more, as it is the
case in ethical fashion or fair-traded goods. Tracing the history of classifications also allows
us to study how actors managed to reconfigure respective market field, navigating around the
constraints of networks, institutions and ideas and at the same time using them to change the
field according to their own interest.
A fruitful approach that avoids the pitfalls of success stories is to follow the
introduction of inventions into markets. In many cases, the applicability of a new item is far
from clear at its inception. A real-time study of the ideas and strategies of actors who try to
promote their new product promises to show how newcomers position themselves to
networks, institutions and ideas and which possibilities they use to influence the field to their
advantage. Trade fairs or entrepreneurial activities of universities might be a good starting
point for an empirical study that adopts the perspective of actors that challenge the structure
of the field and explore how these they devise their strategies, where they look for network
partners, what resources they draw upon and whether or not they have an impact on the way a
commodity is valued and traded. In relation to fair trade or ethical fashion, the actors to look
at might well be social movements that remain outside the respective market but nevertheless
can have a considerable effect on it.
To suggest a fifth possible way to approach the topic we want to draw workshop
participants’ attention to examples of market failure, for instance when governments have set
up institutions, but trade does not happen, or when a popular demand for certain goods or
11
For studies in musical genres that look at how cognitions and symbolic value translate into economic
structures and agency see Keith Negus, Music genres and corporate cultures, London, New York: Routledge
1999; Richard A. Peterson, Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity, Chicago, London: University of
Chicago Press 1997. The role of classifications is analysed in other fields such as wine or higher education.
12
Narasimhan Anand, Brittany C. Jones, Tournament rituals, category dynamics, and field configuration: The
case of the Booker Prize, in: Journal of Management Studies, vol. 45 (2008), 1036-1060; Anand, Narasimhan,
Mary R. Watson, Tournament rituals in the evolution of fields: The case of the Grammy Awards, in: Academy of
Management Journal, vol. 47 (2004), 59-80.
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Workshop proposal „market fields“
innovative ideas are not taken up by an existing market. Such episodes may highlight the
requirement of particular conditions and provide examples for contrasting comparisons.
These approaches are not meant as a comprehensive list but as suggestions for
possible starting points and related questions. However, they all imply that we first and
foremost look for accounts that employ an actors’ perspective. Moreover, we want to single
out the relationship between culture and economy as an aspect to which the workshop wants
to draw special attention, a relationship that is of particular interest both in history and
sociology and promises to draw the still largely separated sub-disciplines devoted to the study
of economy and culture closer together.13 The overarching research question from this would
be how new market fields emerge in the contact zone between business and culture. How do
new concepts of exchange, values and product ideas that are generated in a cultural context
enter a market? Under what circumstances and by which mechanisms do they create,
transform or partly change a market or are absorbed by it?
13
Hartmut Berghoff, Jakob Vogel (ed.), Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte. Dimensionen eines
Perspektivwechsels, Frankfurt, New York: Campus 2004; Jürgen Kocka, History, the social sciences and
potentials for cooperation. With particular attention to economic history (to be published in Inter Disciplines
2010).
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