Towards a unified theory of market prices: turning to pricing in practice

Abstract

Abstract This article proceeds from the question: how do prices in markets work? In socio-economic theories, I find two answers to this question. The structural-coordinative approach explains prices as outcomes—coordinative effects of pricing scripts installed by exogenous, institutionalized social structures. The performative-epistemological approach explains prices as market devices—endogenous performative-epistemological tools of marketization. While not necessarily antithetical, the two theories define market knowledge, pricing and price in distinct ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from the Swedish meat industry, this article examines the merits of the two aforementioned theories and the prospects for unifying them. The conclusion presents an empirically grounded proposal for such a unification, emphasizing that prices, in practice, simultaneously express embedding social structures and mobilize marketization. A unified theory of market prices allows for identifying and analysing the recursive relation of social structures and performed episteme in pricing; how prices both express and realize market organization.