WE HAVE NEVER BEEN RATIONAL

CONTESTING ECONOMIC MODELS FROM A MARKET PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Through anthropological texts that have addressed both the broad and abstract notions of the market, this paper aims to unpack the economic theory on which these notions rest and the assumptions behind them. Taking as examples different market ethnographies around the world, with particular emphasis on the U.S. financial market, it discusses the definition of rationality that the model assumes and the different understandings that people might have. This analysis—through moving beyond dichotomies, paradigms and debates—intends to show that the market and its ‘rationality’ are nothing more than constructions of the way actors interpret the world.