Alternativizing markets : the framing of moral commerce

Summary, in English

How are moral markets organized? While previous research has shown that moral markets combine conventional and alternative elements, it has failed to explain how these hybridizations can ensure the organization of moral markets. To this end, we take an economic-sociological approach using ethnographic materials from a study of Swedish Reko-rings, a direct-to-customer market for local foods, to analyse how actors address the key coordination problems of value, competition and cooperation. The analysis shows how participants of these markets enact an 'alternative framing', emphasizing economic certainty as instrumental for moral certainty, which enables them to develop and implement 'alternativized' solutions to market coordination problems. Thereby, participants make economic and moral values certain by making the former instrumental for the latter. We advance previous research by showing that moral markets require not just hybridization, but hybridization guided by a specific economic-moral framing that enables these markets to avoid co-option.

• Author: Jonas Bååth; Christian Fuentes
• Department/s: CIRCLE; Department of Service Studies; Centre for Retail Research at Lund University
• Publishing year: 2025-01-01
• Language: English
• Pages: 183-203
• Publication/Series: Socio-Economic Review
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 1
• Full text: - 723 kB; Download statistics
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwae068
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Topic: Business Administration; Sociology
• Keywords: coordination; economic sociology; ethics; markets
• Status: Published
• Project: Alternative Food Markets: Promoting new modes of food provisioning and consumption; Service Studies Consumption; Centre for Retail Research at Lund University
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1475-1461