ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the cultural ramifications of the globalization of commerce in the modern period. It addresses aspects of the problem by considering the ways in which the market itself has been conceptualized. The market specifically, and the economy generally, have traditionally been ciphers for larger analyses of human motivations. The chapter analyses these ideas in relation to, for example, luxury and desire, leisure and work, and mind and self. The chapter shows how the shifting terrain upon which the market was thought to exist or function has changed dramatically in the modern period. The ways in which the market itself was imagined – its qualities, its power and even its ability to transform the basic elements of human existence – are also deeply reflective of historical changes in the culture of the West.
