On Market Phenomena

Societal transitions are fundamentally embedded within specific market systems, which manifest multiple dimensions of these shifts in economic forms and logics. Market phenomena, in this sense, both express and actively reshape underlying values, beliefs, and ethical frameworks during moments of transition. The ways in which markets configure exchange, risk, and value reverberate into broader conceptions of progress, well-being, and notions of the good life.

A critical distinction exists between studying markets as abstract, structural entities—fixed or deterministic frameworks—and examining market phenomena as active, contingent agents embedded in human practices. The latter involves attending to the behaviours, cultural meanings, and interpretive frameworks that emerge through economic activity. This orientation aligns with the insights of scholars such as Callon (1998) and MacKenzie (2006), who demonstrate how markets are performed through socio-technical arrangements rather than existing as pre-given structures. Markets are continuously enacted through calculative practices, narratives, and institutional conventions, which shape what is perceived as valuable, possible, or legitimate.

Engaging with market phenomena in this way reveals their role not only as arenas of economic exchange but also as sites where social imaginaries and ethical commitments are contested and reconfigured. For instance, the rise of impact investing and sustainable finance illustrates how emergent market practices are reshaping values around environmental responsibility and social justice, albeit unevenly and contestedly (Sullivan & Mackenzie, 2017). These practices do not simply follow a pre-existing logic of “green” market rationality but participate in producing new meanings and expectations about economic worth and social responsibility.

This approach also reveals how markets mediate tensions between innovation and regulation, risk and security, inclusion and exclusion. For example, the gig economy disrupts traditional labour relations and welfare systems, foregrounding new forms of precarity while promising flexibility and entrepreneurial agency (Srnicek, 2017). The market here is not a neutral mechanism but an arena where political and ethical struggles over labour rights and social protection unfold materially and discursively.

Consequently, markets must be understood as complex socio-economic phenomena that cannot be fully captured through economic models alone. Their meanings and effects depend on cultural narratives, institutional frameworks, and power relations that are themselves contested and contingent. As Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) argue, economic action is embedded in multiple “orders of worth” that articulate different conceptions of value, legitimacy, and justice.

Appreciating market phenomena as active agents of social change holds practical and theoretical significance. It challenges technocratic or deterministic approaches that treat markets as neutral tools and instead opens possibilities for more reflexive governance that recognises markets as sites of ongoing negotiation and contestation. This perspective is crucial for anticipating emerging trends, identifying systemic risks, and designing market institutions attuned to ecological and social sustainability.

Markets do not simply respond to social values; they are instrumental in producing and transforming them. The performance of markets sustains a fragile coherence amid persistent contradictions—between growth and sustainability, inclusion and exclusion, innovation and regulation. Far from passive or neutral, markets are contested terrains where authority and legitimacy are continuously negotiated through practices that both conceal and reveal underlying conflicts.

Recognising markets as dynamic phenomena disrupts conventional wisdom that sees them as stable or naturalised forces. Instead, it invites a reconsideration of economic systems as political and ethical projects—unstable, contradictory, and deeply consequential. This reframing demands critical attention to how markets are enacted, whose interests they serve, and how they might be reimagined to address the profound challenges of our time.

References

Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (2006). On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton University Press.

Callon, M. (1998). The Laws of the Markets. Blackwell.

Harcourt, W. (2013). The Globalization of Responsibility: The Ethical Consumption Movement. Polity.

Jasanoff, S. (2016). The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future. W.W. Norton.

Jessop, B. (2015). The State: Past, Present, Future. Polity.

Langley, P. (2014). Liquidity Lost: The Governance of the Global Financial Crisis. Oxford University Press.

MacKenzie, D. (2006). An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. MIT Press.

Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon Press.

Zelizer, V. (2010). Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy. Princeton University Press.