The discursive emergence of 'the market' in capitalist political economy: crisis system and the Longue Durée

This paper presents a longue duree account of the discursive emergence of 'the market'. It seeks to develop understanding of the 'crisis system' by showing that the crises of the present have their origins earlier than some critical realist scholars have suggested and can be better understood by the theorization of the generative mechanisms that emerged from the economic and political chaos of the early 1600s. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to show that in the context of the emergence of capitalism in England, these generative mechanisms resulted in the meaning of the word 'market' slipping loose of the geo-spatial semiotic bounds by which it had commonly been delineated - i.e. as a physical space in a town or city where goods were bartered or sold - and being re-semioticised to refer to abstract space where all acts of capitalist economic exchange, including those impacting upon the natural world, take place.

Automated summary

This paper presents a historical account of the emergence of discourses around 'the market' and argues that the crises of the present have their roots in the economic and political chaos of the early 1600s. By employing critical discourse analysis, the author shows that the meaning of the word 'market' expanded from a physical space for bartering and selling goods to an abstract space encompassing all capitalist economic exchanges, including those impacting the natural world.