Embedded Markets, Communities, and the Invisible Hand of Social Norms

Abstract

The authors'ethnographic work on social norms is intended to unravel the noninstrumental core of embedded markets. In offering a theory of “the invisible hand of social norms,” the authors show that consumer and seller behavior have expressive, moral, and emotional underpinnings that cannot be understood without a broader conceptualization of human motives and actions. This ethnography provides a rich understanding of the role of community and the behavioral dimensions of markets, which in turn helps deconstruct the current axiomatic treatment of transaction-centric markets and to reconstruct the market as a socially embedded institution in which community ties are formed and sustained.