Markets with Meaning: Emotion, Morality, and Justification in Economic Life

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

This panel examines how economic action is grounded in moral frameworks. Across diverse cases such as health care pricing, quantification, welfare policy, betting platforms, and everyday exchanges among households, the papers show that economic practices are infused with emotion, justified through competing moral logics, and embedded in social relations. The panel highlights the multiple ways actors use narratives of fairness, entitlement, and reciprocity to frame and justify economic transactions. Together, they illuminate how economic life depends on ongoing efforts to legitimize, interpret, and balance the meanings of exchange.

Sub Unit

• Economic Sociology Section / Economic Sociology Section Open Call Paper Sessions

Presider

• Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University

Individual Presentations

• "I Second that Emotion": Thinking About Quantification and Affect - Bruce G. Carruthers, Northwestern University

• Writing the Playbook for Profit: Framing Economic Sustainability in Online Sports Betting - Ryan Fajardo, Northwestern University

• The Social Meaning of Basic Income: How Exchange-Frames Legitimate an Anti-Poverty Program - Jeffrey J. Sallaz, University of Arizona

• Price and Economic Citizenship: Henry Ford and the Morality of Standard Prices - Roi Livne, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Balancing the Ties that Intertwine: Relational Balance in Multiplex Market Exchanges - Andrew Joseph Foley, New York University; Ruizhe Huang, Cornell University

Session Organizer

• Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas-Austin