ABSTRACT
Neoclassical, neo-Marxist and new institutional approaches have suggested particular concepts of market exchange and models of agricultural development or stagnation. As markets can be enabling or restricting conditions for farmers’ social practices, they have also an effect on agricultural development. Most development theories, however, have used an abstract concept of the market that neglects qualitative aspects and social embeddedness of markets. Market interactions usually are repeated and often build up marketing chains and networks for particular commodities that stretch over time and space. The horizontal component of markets refers to structural properties and general conditions such as numbers of buyers and sellers, degree of competition, seasonal and spatial demand-and-supply structures and prices. According to neo-Marxist theory, therefore, crop markets are not primarily characterized by relative prices but by exploitative relations that must be analyzed together with the whole set of agrarian relations, which reach into land, labor and credit relations.
