Markets from the Middle Ages to the present day

The researchers in this project want to examine how people through the ages have spoken in terms of markets. The aim is to add to our knowledge of the long and winding road leading up to modern market thinking.

The market has come to occupy an ever more central position in our world view. We are said to act in different markets: labor, services, housing, gaming, and so on. We read how “the market” reacts to decisions and events, from lower interest rates to virus outbreaks. Market thinking has become essential for ever more aspects of our existence, many of which lie outside the purely economic sphere, as the “marriage market”, for example.

This has not always been the case. The perception of “the market” as an actor has been around since the mid-1900s. The idea of the market as an abstraction, not situated in time or place, has evolved over 200 years. The word itself, however, is age-old. Acceptance of the market has varied over time. Today, we let market language permeate much of our lives, but 150 years ago the market was seen as problematic. Locally, there was criticism of market activities. Globally, there was an outbreak of protectionism and hostility toward market mechanisms.

The project is based on the assumption that the word “market” has a history, the exploration of which gives perspective on the present. The aim is to examine how the word “market”, in all its forms, has been used in different situations in source material from the medieval period to the present day. A theoretical premise is that the market as a phenomenon does not exist independently of human actions, and that the way people talk about markets not only depicts reality, but also gives form to it.

The consensus whereby we have come to frame our lives in market terms is the result of a long process. The word “market” has been in frequent use since at least the 1700s , in many contexts and in many senses. An historical analysis requires a concerted methodological effort. The project therefore brings together researchers with backgrounds in economic history, the history of ideas, Swedish language, and computer science.

The researchers will conduct four subprojects in which they explore hypotheses about the overall development of market language.

Subproject:

• no.1 draws the long timeline from the Middle Ages onwards, focusing to some extent on earlier times, to establish continuities and changes;
• no. 2 assumes that the period from the late 1700s to the early 1900s can be characterized as the time when the market was perceived to be problematic, and during which market thinking sometimes clashed with ideas about how society should be organized;
• no. 3 studies the period 1870–1970 from the hypothesis that the market became a highly productive term, constantly generating new compound words for constantly new markets, but also new ways of understanding and explaining societal developments;
• no. 4 examines the post-war era, focusing on the period from 1980 and analyzing the establishment of market language dominance, as it spread into more and more areas of daily life and in relation to the process known as “financialization”.