Introduction: Visible Hands

In the twentieth century, exchange has triumphed over other forms of circulation. One form of exchange, market exchange, has been allowed to encircle the globe and penetrate deeply into societies. It is therefore a matter of no mean irony that so little is known about how markets work in developing countries. Discourse on markets generally proceeds on two tacks: backwards — making inferences from indicators of outcomes; or forwards — making deductions from theory. In between there is a rather small space filled by empirical research, relating with discomfort both to theoretical preoccuptions and to performance outcomes, which too often have been reduced by economists to prices. It is the purpose of this book to help fill that small space by exploring the difficult practice of that empirical research. And it is the purpose of this introduction to review how market exchange has been defined, to outline the commonest methods by means of which agricultural markets have been practically researched and to explain how each essay in this collection is located with reference to this body of theory and methods.