Market Threads
How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity
1st Edition
Published on 5. September 2010
Book
Hardback
248 pages
978-0-691-14241-8 (ISBN)
Description
What is a global market? How does it work? At a time when new crises in world markets cannot be satisfactorily resolved through old ideas, "Market Threads" presents a detailed analysis of the international cotton trade and argues for a novel and groundbreaking understanding of global markets. The book examines the arrangements, institutions, and power relations on which cotton trading and production depend, and provides an alternative approach to the analysis of pricing mechanisms. Drawing upon research from such diverse places as the New York Board of Trade and the Turkish and Egyptian countrysides, the book explores how market agents from peasants to global merchants negotiate, accept, reject, resist, reproduce, understand, and misunderstand a global market. The book demonstrates that policymakers and researchers must focus on the specific practices of market maintenance in order to know how they operate. Markets do not simply emerge as a relationship among self-interested buyers and sellers, governed by appropriate economic institutions. Nor are they just social networks embedded in wider economic social structures.
Rather, global markets are maintained through daily interventions, the production of prosthetic prices, and the waging of struggles among those who produce and exchange commodities. The book illustrates the crucial consequences that these ideas have on economic reform projects and market studies. Spanning a variety of disciplines, "Market Threads" offers an original look at the world commodity trade and revises prevailing explanations for how markets work.
Rather, global markets are maintained through daily interventions, the production of prosthetic prices, and the waging of struggles among those who produce and exchange commodities. The book illustrates the crucial consequences that these ideas have on economic reform projects and market studies. Spanning a variety of disciplines, "Market Threads" offers an original look at the world commodity trade and revises prevailing explanations for how markets work.
Reviews / Votes
"All in all, an intellectually exciting book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading."--Brenda Jubin, Reading the Markets blog "Market Threads' great scholarly contribution is in highlighting and minutely describing the empirics of power in market settings."--William Davies, Journal of Cultural EconomyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
6 halftones. 4 line illus.
Dimensions
Height: 241 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
497 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-14241-8 (9780691142418)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2010
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
from
€56.19
Available for download
Person
Koray Caliskan is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogazici University, Istanbul.
Content
Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: How to Study a Global Market 1 A Review of Literature on the Market 2 Social Studies of the Market 3 New Directions in the Social Study of Markets 6 Commodity Chains, Systems of Provision, and the Social Lives of Things 9 Why Cotton? 11 How to Follow Cotton? 13 Where to Follow Cotton? 14 Summary of Arguments 16 Chapter 1: What Is a World Price? The Prosthetic and Actual Worth of Cotton 22 How Much Does an Actual Bale of Cotton Really Cost? 24 The Price Disappears Again 31 Making Sense of the Price 33 Market Reports 35 Optional Prices of Cotton 49 Conclusion 54 Chapter 2: Market Maintenance in the Worlds of Commodity Circulation 59 The World of Cotton 60 We Have on This Day Sold to You as Follows 61 The Shipment Is Brought Together 64 Two Thousand Bales to Go 66 We Hereby Confirm the Arrival of ... 75 The Market Platform: Capital, Knowledge, and Network 76 Conclusion 80 Chapter 3: Markets' Multiple Boundaries in Izmir, Turkey 84 Pit Trading in the Izmir Mercantile Exchange 85 The Rehearsal Price of the Pit 88 The Transaction Price of Postpit Trading 94 Making the Market Price of Turkish Cotton 97 Another Market Place: The Permanent Working Group on Cotton 99 Conclusion 102 Chapter 4: A Market without Exchange: Cotton Trade in Egypt 105 The World's First Cotton Futures Market and Its Historical Setting 106 Alcotexa and Cotton's Associate Price 108 We Spend All Our Time in Search of the Price 115 Three Traits of Trade 119 Cotton Comes to the Market 122 Conclusion 128 Chapter 5: Growing Cotton and Its Global Market in a Turkish Village 131 Field Preparation and Sowing in Pamukkoy 133 Mechanical and Manual Sowing 136 Irrigation 140 The Harvest 141 The Market: Exchanging Cotton in Pamukkoy 144 The Traders' Price 145 The Farmers' Price 148 Conclusion 152 Chapter 6: Cotton Fields of Power in Rural Egypt 156 Cotton Is Disappearing in Egypt 158 An Illegal Alien in the Egyptian Countryside 159 Growing Cotton in the Fields of Kafr Gaffar and ?Izbet Sabri 161 So Your Egyptians Are Kurds, No? 164 The Struggle to Survive: Farmers, Animals, and Stock 166 Financing the Plant Stock with Livestock 169 The Gamoosa Dies, the Cotton Grows 171 Research in the Wild Countryside 174 The Harvesting and Marketing of Cotton 177 Conclusion 185 Conclusion: What Is a Global Market? 188 Bridging the Global and the Regional 193 The Rural Fields of Global Markets 198 The Production and Exchange of Cotton 200 The Market Fields of Power 202 What Is to Be Done with the Market 205 Glossary 209 References 213 Index 223