ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the social structure of markets in the sense of pre-existing roles, as well as wider social relations among traders. It examines a stratified view capable of encompassing the structural and social aspects of trade within a single theoretical framework. Of particular relevance are the structural properties of trade, how traders relate to each other in standardised ways capable of variation but not unique to each transaction. All trade has a structural quality, insofar as sellers and buyers interact within an organised institutional setting. Networks are structural, as they rely on relationships but emphasise the personal. A variant of network analysis comes from theories that track the clustering of networks. Networks often give rise to relationship clusters with strong internal bonds but only weak external bonds to other clusters. Network theorists have discovered trading relationships in markets supposedly competitive and impersonal.
