Description: To people operating in India's economy, actually existing markets are remarkably different from how planners and academics conceive them. From the outside, they appear as demarcated arenas of exchange bound by state-imposed rules. As historical and social realities, however, markets are dynamic, adaptative, and ambiguous spaces. This book delves into this intricate context, exploring Indian markets through the competition and collaboration of those who frame and participate in markets. Anchored in vivid case studies - from colonial property and advertising milieus to today's bazaar and criminal economies - this volume underlines the friction and interdependence between commerce, society, and state. Contributors from history, anthropology, political economy, and development studies synthesize existing scholarly approaches, add new perspectives on Indian capitalism's evolution, and reveal the transactional specificities that underlie the real-world functioning of markets.
Brief description: Douglas E. Haynes is Professor of History at Dartmouth College, Hanover.
Review Quotes: 'Working across South Asian history and ethnography, this volume builds creatively on the existing literature on vernacular capitalism and market governance with rich data and diverse approaches to customary and underground transactions. Exploring finance, small-scale industry and agricultural commodities, as well as advertising, risk and trust, the essays delve deeply into the local contexts of market practice in India, productively reactivating debates on the temporalities, performatives and regulation of 'the bazaar.'' Ritu Birla, University of Toronto