A formative ethnography of the relationship between markets and social
life, back in print.
Originally published in 1979, Clifford Geertz's essay on the Moroccan
bazaar is a classic ethnographic account of the interplay of economic,
social, and religious lives in the bustle of transaction. Drawing on
years of fieldwork in the Middle Atlas town of Sefrou, Geertz explores
how actors from diverse backgrounds assess the worth and meaning of
other people's wares, words, and ways of doing business. He shows how
the search for market information, so central to the theorization of
markets by economists, is here based on careful appraisals of social
relations, embedded in understandings of the broader institutional
environment of the market town and its hinterlands. With a richness of
insights procured for generations of readers, Geertz's essay on the
sūq is a model of and for the craft of ethnographic theory. Long out
of print, it is republished here in a stand-alone edition introduced by
Lawrence Rosen.