Beyond the One Best Market: An Essay on Trans-Economic Exchange Rates

Abstract

We routinely trust organizations that convert belief, truth, health, power, or beauty into money. Nonetheless, we know almost nothing about the corresponding exchange rates. Based on a system theorist concept of functional differentiation and the Bourdieu economic forms of capitals, the paper presents strong evidence for the existence of non-economic markets for the mentioned values. The conclusion of the paper is that organizations with a more polyphonic, non-reductionist self- and market concept can act strategically as change agencies between those 'markets of society', i.e. they can influence the exchange rates between economic and non-economic values in terms of trans-political trade cycle politics.

Keywords: sociology, exchange rates, Luhmann, Bourdieu, market, markets, systems theory

JEL Classification: A13, A14