ABSTRACT
This chapter considers as a social relationship, to the point where it is better to shift terminology and to talk instead in terms of 'socioeconomic attachments', rather than, as previously, of pure 'social ties'. It examines how a tie can be the result rather than the starting point of trade, by uncovering the dynamics of market collection that is inseparable from the process of selection too often exclusively associated to market mechanisms. The emergence of market collections, rather than being solely dependent on technical arrangements, and far from being confined to the world of new technologies of information and communication, involves more general political issues. In sociology, market selection is always and everywhere the subject of a pretty unanimous rejection. More generally, the market is full of 'collecting engines' which have the ability, depending on their particular logic and way of working, to collect supply and demand actors in a given way and shape their attachments accordingly.
