Everyday Exchanges: Marketwork and Capitalist Common Sense

This original work challenges a familiar assumption within cultural studies: that cultural practices happen in an everyday realm that is potentially open-ended, involving everyone; whereas economics, by contrast, is alien, a force field determined by international financial interests and legitimized by the arid discourses of professional economists. The author argues that, in fact, for most people, most of the time, economic issues are a central part of everyday life. Separating economics from everyday practices has resulted in seemingly interminable debates over the relative importance of economic conditions and cultural factors in determining the real configurations of power relations; it has also reinforced the perception that the capitalist marketplace, now global, permits no alternatives. The author shows instead that a kind of economic sense-making is at work, a common sense that conditions a great deal about how many people organize their lives and understand their powers as social agents.