ABSTRACT

In this chapter I want to look again at the ‘other side’ of market governmentality in China: markets. However, I will only marginally describe and analyse the particular mechanisms of markets, such as markets for grain or stock markets, but I investigate the normative and institutional foundations of markets, or, in other words, I look at the ritual aspects of markets. This involves two more specific questions. The first is how markets root in basic normative concepts and ethical values. I put this question in the context of the modernism component of ritual and relate it to the muchdebated issue of whether ‘modernization’ also means the transition to a particular set of values which are largely associated with ‘Western’ values. In this view, markets are not simply economic technologies governing the allocation of goods in society, but also go along with certain values that have been characterized, for example, by Max Weber as ‘rationalization’. This also ties in with the question of how far the Chinese economy gyrates towards capitalism, thus also adopting a particular value system that is often seen as undergirding capitalism. One core topic here is ‘individualism’, standing in opposition to ‘collectivism’. As we have seen, markets have been a pervasive element in the traditional ritual economy, so any belief that traditional culture and markets may stay in tension can be easily refuted by empirical facts. Yet, there remains some doubt about whether ‘capitalism’, in whatever form, still makes a difference in terms of the necessity to transform the value basis of Chinese society. In practical terms these issues pop up in more specific shape; for example, when the issue of the ‘middle-income trap’ is currently raised, and some observers would argue that China still faces obstacles to the transition to a truly innovative and liberal society which is deemed necessary to break through the trap. In these views, and similar to explanations of failure in Imperial China, Chinese ritual would be seen as an obstacle to market modernization. In the context of economics, this boils down to the philosophical question whether markets can be

approached in an instrumental view only, which is dominant in China today, or whether they also embody a distinct value system of their own that also constrains political action and hence market instrumentalism.1