Revisiting marketization: from interface-markets to market-agencements

This article proposes to get rid of the vain opposition between markets as de-socializing forces and markets as civilizing processes by exploring the close relationship between innovation and competition. This suggests abandoning the traditional view of markets as interfaces for the novel conception of market as agencements. Indeed, a thorough examination of the notion of market competition leads to distinguish two ways of describing markets, depending on the role played by product innovations. In interface-markets, innovation strategies aim to reduce competitive pressure, while in market-agencements they are the expression of competition itself. In the former, the definition of market goods is secondary, whereas in the latter it is at the heart of the confrontation between economic agents. The competitive dynamics of market-agencements, which makes the establishment of new bilateral transactions and of product innovation the dominant rule, results in the constant expansion of the market sphere. The marketization process is thus at the core of markets' functioning. Thinking about marketization amounts to thinking about the architecture of markets and the organization of competition, that is, the mechanisms whereby goods are designed, the formatting of bilateral transactions, and the singularization that they imply. Political and moral reflection is at the heart of markets and not pushed out to their fringes.