Politics of Markets

Last week I attended an excellent day conference organised by the University of Westminster under the title 'The Politics of Markets'; full details are available from http://www.westminster.ac.uk/csd/events/the-politics-of-markets-shaping-steering-and-evaluation. What was interesting was the mix of papers. On the one hand there was a real attempt to revisit some of the debates about politics and markets from before New Labour's Third Way muddied the waters and to develop a rigorous alternative to the neo-liberalism that seems to have been the Third Way's legacies. On the other hand, there were reviews of the very specific forms that new market construction was taking, particularly in relation to public services. The new quasi-markets for personal care and in the NHS more generally were subject to much discussion. Of particular note was the discussion of the role that third-sector, non-governmental and community groups can play. I was very taken with the account of how such groups were managing the supply chain with regard to agricultural products, presented by Liz Cooper of Edinburgh University: http://lizcooper.info/working-on-fair-trade-at-the-university-of-edinburgh/. Liz's talk really showed that markets are socially constructed and that small-scale actions by individuals and groups can shape what people get out of market transactions. The planning system can similarly construct land and property markets, opening up and closing down opportunities for urban development. The problem at the moment is that the focus seems to be almost entirely on opportunities for private sector development by major corporate actors. The question to address is how the planning system can be changed to offer more opportunities for community-based development as well.