This podcast is taken from my undergraduate lecture course, entitled "Markets & Society." The course reconsiders the idea of normative institutional arrangements that the post-Enlightenment positivist narrative of human progress has elevated as a feature of our modernity. It is especially focused on how markets have been institutionalised over time to counter the idea of a normative market arrangement. The larger context of the course is the looming climate crisis, which has been caused by the rise of our modern standard of prosperity, which itself rests on modern market exchange. To mitigate the climate crisis, we will need new institutions and new institutional responses. This course is designed to foster a wider mindset about how institutional, and particularly market, arrangements have been constructed and managed over our long history. Drawing on material from archaeology, anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology and economics, the class invites students (and liste
