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This chapter claims that there are characteristics of the institutional structure of some indigenous societies that in some cases prevent economic development by complicating the emergence of extra-family networks (social capital), and the transition from personal to impersonal exchange; this is illustrated in the context of the Wayúu people from the Guajira Peninsula of Colombia. They have a strong tradition of craft production, which has changed much in recent years due to exigencies of Wayúu and non-Wayúu consumers. Foreign elements, such as commercial brands, are commonly included today in their traditional crafts, sometimes even replacing conventional motifs. However, artisans behave strategically – selling different designs to different markets. The main economic difficulties of the Wayúu artisans are related to the lack of commercialization of their products. From an institutional analysis perspective, the absence of extra-family social and commercial networks in locations relatively far from markets, it is argued, is one of the factors explaining these problems. It is suggested also that the promotion of cooperatives should be attempted from the bottom-up given the particular legal characteristics of this society.

Those who know it, believe it

Those who don’t know it, don’t believe it

We who know, believe it

– Old Wayúu proverb

By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted amongst waste-pickers and recycling traders in the waste paper, plastic and scrap metal sectors, and engaging with literature from economic anthropology and history, as well as archival sources, this paper documents changing perceptions of just price, morality and fairness in the Turkish recycling market. The paper suggests that multiple markets imply multiple prices, which are contingent and contested. When dealing with price mechanisms largely outside their control, actors tend to associate a fair price with the going market price, rather than factors such as state regulation. Approaches to morality and assessments of fairness become more ambiguous when prices are mediated by actors’ own practices. These range from gift relations to paternalism, envy and deception.

Purpose – How did cooperation emerge in large-scale, fluid societies? Standard theories based on direct and indirect reciprocity among self-regarding agents cannot explain the high level of impersonal exchange observed in developed market economies.

Approach and findings – Drawing upon recent research from across the behavioral sciences, we attribute the emergence of cooperation in early trade to an evolved characteristic of human psychology that makes revenge sweet: people are willing to pay a price to punish those who betray their trust. Once cooperative expectations became fixed, institutions such as the law merchant and ethnic trading networks, as well as certain “bourgeois virtues,” helped sustain and extend trade during the medieval period.

Contribution of the paper – Our argument continues the tradition begun by F.A. Hayek in The Sensory Order (1952), by providing an integrated explanation for the rise of the market based upon the coevolution of human psychology, culture, and institutions. In our conclusion, we revisit Hayek's (Hayek, 1976, 1978, 1988) analysis of the conflict between our instincts and the institutions that have created the market order.

This chapter highlights the agency of Nigerian immigrant business owners in constructing their business-related social networks. Literature on immigrant business owners emphasizes their social network embeddedness as a key explanatory factor in their economic integration. I show here ways in which members of one immigrant group purposely shape these networks into the most advantageous form: impersonal/socially distant suppliers, personal/socially close employees, and impersonal/socially distant customers.

Data for the chapter come from 36 semistructured qualitative interviews conducted in New York City with Nigerian small business owners and participant observation in their businesses.

Nigerian immigrant business owners in New York tend over time to shift from business networks of primarily Nigerian or other socially close suppliers, employees, and customers, to networks of mainly socially close employees, and socially distant suppliers and customers.

The chapter’s concern is limited to Nigerian immigrant business owners in New York City. Others in other places may behave differently.

The literature on immigrant business owners is dominated by Asian and Latin American examples while this chapter features the experiences of Nigerian immigrants. It also presents a group that does not fit the widely accepted disadvantage hypothesis of immigrant self-employment. Finally, where many studies treat social networks as static structures, this chapter emphasizes the agency of immigrants in altering the composition of their networks to maximize their position in it.

This paper explores the interface between institutional theory and Austrian theory. We examine mainstream institutionalism as exemplified by D. C. North in his work with Wallis and Weingast on the elite compact theory of social order and of transitions to impersonal rights, and propose instead an Austrian process-oriented perspective. We argue that mainstream institutionalism does not fully account for the efficiency of impersonal rules. Their efficiency can be better explained by a market for rules, which in turn requires a stable plurality of governance providers. Since an equilibrium of plural providers requires stable power polycentricity, the implication goes against consolidating organized means for violence as a doorstep condition to successful transitions. The paper demonstrates how to employ Ostroms’ Bloomington School Institutionalism to shift, convert, and recalibrate mainstream institutionalism's themes into an Austrian process-oriented theory.

Current theoretical frameworks within economics have so far been unable to adequately explain why people tip. This chapter synthesizes anthropological method and theory into a symbolic interactionist approach, attempting to access, through ethnography, the negotiated meanings underlying and actuating tip payment in Vancouver restaurants. Customers tip for a variety of reasons, including (1) for good service, (2) to follow a social norm, (3) out of sympathetic feelings, (4) to demonstrate or enhance social standing, and (5) to secure a specific preference. The disconnect between common rationalizations for tipping, which are often reflections of formalist economic canon, and how customers actually tip, that is, according to social, cultural, and moral factors, suggests that the popular distinction between “economic” and “non-economic” exchanges is ideologically maintained. Tipping illustrates the existence and contours of what Hart (2005) refers to as the two circuits of social life – but also that these two circuits are ideological constructs.

The market cross was a common structure and symbol used in early markets in England and Scotland. Although its precise origin is obscure, its use appears to be connected with religious traditions. Early markets in medieval Britain, especially rural markets with no central authority present, likely faced obstacles in serving as places of trade between strangers. Many market towns and trading centers did exist at church or religious gatherings, but these might have followed pre-Christian or pagan sites, and similarly, the market cross itself may be related to the pre-Christian practice of constructing stone pillars to create trade sanctuaries or to represent a divine witness. Such structures used as religious symbols, therefore, are likely to have facilitated the emergence of impersonal markets of exchange.

Purpose – The chapter compares gift and market exchange in Hawaiian and New Zealand fisheries.Methodology/approach – The chapter draws upon a combination of original ethnographic fieldwork and literature pertaining to fisheries in both New Zealand and Hawaii.Findings – The privatization of fishing rights in New Zealand, in conjunction with a social policy directed toward Maori addressing colonial dispossession, has resulted in the dominance of market exchange, the creation of a purified version of indigenous gift exchange, and the attempted elimination of any hybrid activities. This has not been a positive outcome for the majority of coastal Maori. Fisheries development in Hawai’i has taken a different path. The flexibility that inheres in Hawaiian fisheries enables ongoing participation in both gift and cash economies.Originality/value – Over the last few decades western economies have witnessed a rapid extension of market approaches to many commonly owned environmental goods, a movement which has been entrenched as global policy orthodoxy. The social consequences of this development have been under researched. This chapter challenges the neoliberal model of using market mechanisms and property rights as “the way to do” natural resource management.

The purpose of the chapter is to engage with the relationship between the gift and the market in the context of philanthropic micro-lending. We seek to move beyond theorizing separate, ex-ante gift or market regimes and transactors who independently navigate between oppositional modes of transaction.

We turn to recent efforts of hybridizing charity and venture finance, exemplified by microfinance platforms such as Kiva.org. We combine data from an existing study of Kiva and its online community, with additional participant observation and third-party accounts detailing the evolution and workings of microfinance.

We illustrate how market-like elements are productively and problematically deployed in philanthropic giving and address the need to consider a broader range of socio-material relations involved in the framing of transactions.

A complex network of actors and (trans)actions needs to be assembled for the philanthropic loan to be enacted. We touch upon the making and role of the socio-material devices that actively participate in such enactment only tangentially. Further research is needed to flesh out the respective transaction complex, taking additional note of the work of borrowers, local loan officers, and other less visible actors.

Organizations need to recognize and creatively address the complex interplay of gift and market elements. They need to pay attention and take advantage of the tensions and synergies emergent in hybrid gift-market contexts.

We engage with a complex, less studied transaction context. The chapter shows that philanthropic gift relations can be reproduced through market-like elements and arrangements. Such production entails complex socio-material networks mobilizing a broad array of human and nonhuman actors.