Market Matters Exploring Cultural Processes in the Global Marketplace

Globalization of trade and organizational change increase the impact of markets in peoples' lives. But in what ways do markets matter? This book is about how financial analysts, marketing people, corporate leaders and other actors in Western market economies perceive, model, and use markets. It provides an ethnographic window into the cultural processes of contemporary markets; how people employ the market to solve problems, create capital, gain political ends, challenge economic processes, and delineate moral values and responsibilities.

Introduction: Exploring Cultural Processes in the Global Marketplace; C.Garsten & M.Lindh de Montoya PART 1: CONSUMERS AND MARKETING Marketing Ethnography: Disciplines and Practices; B.Moeran The Virtual Consumer: Construction of Uncertainty in Marketing Discourse; M.E.Lien PART 2: CONCEPTUALIZING MORALITY IN THE MARKETPLACE Market Missions: Negotiating Bottom Line and Social Responsibility; C.Garsten Between the Individual and the Community: Markets and Morals in Venezuelan Life; M.Montoya 'Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!' The Market as an Arena for Politics; M.Micheletti PART 3: STRATEGIES AND LEGITIMACIES IN CAPITAL FLOWS Modes of Knowing: The Fashioning of Financial Market Knowledge; A.Hasselström Culture, Ideology and the Financial Market: Examining Pension Plan Reform; M.Lindh de Montoya The Crown Capitulates: National Currency and Global Capital in the Swedish Currency Crisis; G.Peebles Postscript: Homo Mercans and the Fashioning of Markets; C.Garsten & A.Hasselström

ANNA HASSELSTRÖM Stockholm University, Sweden MARIANNE ELIZABETH LIEN Associate Professor, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway MICHELE MICHELETTI Associate Professor, Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden BRIAN MOERAN Professor of Culture and Communication, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark MIGUEL MONTOYA Assistant Professor, Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden GUSTAV PEEBLES Columbia University, USA