ABSTRACT
These abstractions do not contribute greatly to an understanding of spatial variations in the structure and behaviour of real markets (Olsen 1991). Real markets have indeed proved awkward to define; but their definition enables us to discern the mass of exchange that is not mediated by the market. A restrictive definition of market exchange in which voluntarism, egalitarianism and informational availability are stressed has been offered by Pandya and Dholakia, ‘the simultaneous transaction of valued goods and services between two parties [who are] capable of accepting or rejecting the values offered…and [who are] uncoerced and capable of communication and delivery’ (1992:24). By contrast, Fourie sees a real market as ‘an economically qualified, purposeful interchange of commodities on the basis of quid pro quo obligations at a mutually agreed upon exchange rate…in a cluster of exchange and rivalry relations’ (1991:43,48). Here, the social relations unique to market exchange require the combination of ‘horizontal’ and adversarial competition between populations of buyers (and populations of sellers) on the one hand and a mass of ‘vertical’, exclusive, mutualistic, bilateral transactions between one buyer and one seller on the other. The implications of this definition (pace the voluntarist definition) are that exchange rates mutually agreed on may not be mutually beneficial, that vertical contractual arrangements may prevail over horizontal competition, and that purposeful bargaining and the obligations resulting from it may rest on and reinforce a highly unequal base or fall-back position.
