Markets, Class and Social Change : Trading Networks and Poverty in Rural South Asia

At the beginning of the 21st century an idealized view of markets informs government policy. Real differences in how markets interact with social change are obscured and public action on poverty is constrained. This book uses a detailed study of the grain trade in Bangladesh to show how socially-constrained patterns of market involvement may systematically benefit the rich while disadvantaging the poor. The book suggests that markets are implicated in the making of society, its division, identities, and directions.

Ben Crow is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.