La construction sociale d'un marché parfait

Abstract

The Social Construction of a Perfect Market. The computerized market in Fontaines-en-Sologne, which distributes part of the region's high-quality strawberry crop, is equippedwith advanced technology designed to ensure that market trading takes place in conditions very close to those which correspond to realization of the model of pure, perfect competition described in economic theory. Study of the social conditions of the creation and functioning of this market shows, however, that this perfect correspondence with theory is the pure product of an economic and social construction performed by a certain number of agents with convergent interests, and that it is the economic theory itself which served as a direct frame of reference in the setting-up of each detail of this market, particularly in the definition of the space and the regulations which obtain within it.