Bazaar Economy - Document that was mandatory to get a good grade in the course PDF

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Nicholas Nerys Professor Zimmerman SOC 4900 Reading Response #1 The Bazaar Economy: Information and Search in Peasant Marketing. American Economic Review The peasant market systems are known as Bazaar economies. In the beginning of the passage, Geertz states that there are two approaches to the bazaar market. The first approach is that the bazaar market is viewed as the “nearest real word institution to the purely competitive market of neoclassical economics.” The second approach is that it is seen as “an institution so embedded in its sociocultural context as to escape the reach of modern economic analysis altogether.” Geertz’s discussion of bazaar economy is based on a small town called Sefrou, located in the countryside region at the foot of the Middle Atlas in Morocco. In this town, Geertz states that there are two sorts of bazaar, a permanent one and a periodic one. They are both distinct in their own ways, but serve the same people and have similar boundaries. The town’s population doubles on Thursdays when the shops are open. These shops are an important part of the community, employing two-thirds of the town. The bazaar is a complex system of relationships between its guests and workers, all with the common goal of buying and selling goods and services. From reading this part of the passage, it makes me think of the farmer’s market in Union Square. I was there last Thursday walking around, and it is like its own little economy, everyone smiling and walking around from stand to stand selling and buying different things. It

is a different type of atmosphere and experience buying an apple there compared to buying an apple at the grocery store. Geertz then goes on to say that the bazaar information is “poor, scarce, maldistributed, inefficiently communicated, and intensely valued.” What he is saying is that consumers do not have the information to determine if a product is good or even priced correctly. This can also be related to the farmer’s market in Union Square. You do not know if a piece of food you buy is good or not, or even if it is priced correctly compared to others. You won’t see the vendor the next day, so it’s not like you can go back and return it. The bazaar market, just like markets in today’s society, is a game of luck, skill, and whatever information you know first-hand yourself. Like any market in any economy, a company or vendor want returning and repeating customers, giving them more and more revenue. Clientalization in the bazaar economy serves as a communication network that increases and improves the reliability of the information being transmitted among the market that consumers and vendors lack, as stated earlier. The last point Geertz goes over is the bargaining aspect of the bazaar economy. Bargaining between the buyer and seller is a battle of two sides where they both want to gain a slight advantage over the other. Bazaar bargaining is a special type of bargaining. To be successful and attain he information you need, one must ask a variety of questions to a handful of people who have been in the same situation and know the nuances to the market and products. This can be related again to the Union Square Farmer’s market. If you are someone who goes every week, you know the ins and outs of the vendors and where you can go to get the best product for the best price.

Geertz explains the bazaar economy very well and gives elaborate details and examples about every aspect of the market. This bazaar economy is not like the industrial economy today. To be successful and prosper in a bazaar market, you must gather all the information you can and determine what you should and shouldn’t buy....