Market Systems

SUMMARY: Chapter 9, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers the various types of trade and exchange in past societies, and how one may assess it, including different types of interactions (e.g., gift exchange), various scientific techniques (e.g., microscopic examination of materials; trace-element analysis; isotopic analysis), studying material and/or artifact distributions, assessing production and consumption, and analyzing the various means of exchange and interaction.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. UPDATED/REVISED March, 2021, some editing and new formatting, minimal new materials.

Why and how do marginalized consumers mobilize to seek greater inclusion in and more choice from mainstream markets? We develop answers to these questions drawing on institutional theory and a qualitative investigation of Fatshionistas, plus-sized consumers who want more options from mainstream fashion marketers. Three triggers for mobilization are posited: development of a collective identity, identification of inspiring institutional entrepreneurs, and access to mobilizing institutional logics from adjacent fields. Several change strategies that reinforce institutional logics while unsettling specific institutionalized practices are identified. Our discussion highlights diverse market change dynamics that are likely when consumers are more versus less legitimate in the eyes of mainstream marketers and in instances where the changes consumers seek are more versus less consistent with prevailing institutions and logics.

The purpose of this essay is to identify factors that constrain customers’ ability to engage in sustainable energy consumption, conceived of as a consumption practice that reduces the moral hazards associated with fossil fuel overconsumption. The authors outline some marketing policy and consumer research issues related to the market system and identify four constraints to sustainable energy consumption: policies and regulation, product accessibility and availability, pricing, and customer knowledge. This topic is important because of changes in the macro context of energy consumption—namely, the growing recognition of a fundamentally resource-constrained environment and the increased salience of various global commons effects to customers. The authors conclude with directions for further research.

This article analyses current and future issues about the distinctive contribution of professional educational psychologists in a changing English service context. This is about the context of greater inter-professional and multi-agency working, but also the moves towards more quasi-market systems of service delivery. I examine the identity and service focus dilemmas that educational psychologists have to address. This raises questions about the distinction between basic and applied psychology, the nature of applying psychology and whether applying psychology requires professional educational psychologists. One of the main arguments is that how we think about applying psychology is crucial for the future in a changing context. The task is for professional psychologists to be innovative in service terms to ensure a continuing and valued position in the service network. The significance of this analysis of educational psychology in an English context for other countries is also discus...

Following the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda of ‘leave no one behind’, this article argues for a new way of thinking about markets and the private sector that addresses these new challenges. It introduces market systems development (MSD) as a new approach for engaging with the private sector using complexity and systems thinking. By understanding better the role and limits of market-based approaches, policy actors will be better able to select strategies to create an appropriate institutional environment that shapes how the private sector and other actors operate for the benefit of vulnerable target groups.

In the face of strategic and geopolitical importance of Nishapur, this city was not much taken into consideration by the archeologists of the historic period. The analysis of the new findings of the ancient castle of Sasanian Nishapur as well as the identification of some Sasanian settlements in the plain of Nishapur can make it possible to re-configure the eco-political structures of the communities that populated this area of Iran to a large extent.
This paper assesses how the the interaction occurred between Nishapur and its hinterland by ceramic analysis in the framework of the quantitative models such as regression analysis and rank-size model.
According to the historical records and archeological analysis, the magnitude of Nishapur's influence on its hinterland brings it to mind that the pattern of eco-political interaction in Nishapur's hinterland at the time of Sasaninas have resembled the core-periphery model.