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THE RATIONALE OF PERIODIC MARKETS∗

1975; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 65; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-8306.1975.tb01060.x

1467-8306

Ray Bromley, Richard Symanski, Charles M. Good,

Global trade and economics

Abstract The origin and persistence of periodic markets are explained in terms of the needs of producers, the traditional organization of time, inertia, and comparative advantage. Producers often wish to buy or sell in the marketplace on only one or two days per week in order not to disrupt their production schedule. The week customarily has days set aside for work, rest, ceremonies, and commerce; such temporal patterns may be ordained by civil or religious authorities. Authorities may fix market days and locations, although the initial stimuli for foundation are usually the development of social stratification, the division of labor, and long-distance trade. Both part-time trading and designation of special days for commerce encourage the foundation of periodic markets. After markets have been established, inertia and comparative advantage maintain periodicity long after daily operations would be economically feasible. Key Words: Economic location theoryExogenous theory of tradeInstitutional contextOrigin conditionsPeriodic marketsSpace-time periodicity Notes ∗ The authors wish to thank the University Research Institue at the University of Texas at Austin for financial assistance, and Ronald Briggs, Kingsley E. Hayness, J. Barry Riddell, Carol A. Smith, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on a draft of this paper. 1 James H. Stine, "Temporal Aspects of Tertiary Production Elements in Korea," in F. R. Pitts, ed., Urban Systems and Economic Development (Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon, School of Business Administration, 1962), pp. 68–88. Other examples of economic approaches are Alan M. Hay, "Notes on the Economic Basis for Periodic Marketing in Developing Countries,"Geographical Analysis, Vol. 3 (1971), pp. 393 401; and N. A. Alao, "Theoretical Issues in the Geographical Dimensions of Market Periodicity,"Nigerian Geographical Journal, Vol. 15 (1972), pp. 97 105. 2 G. W. Skinner, "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,"Journal of Asian Studies, Part I, Vol. 24 (1964), pp. 5 31; Carol A. Smith, "Market Articulation and Economic Stratification in Western Guatemala,"Food Research Institute Studies, Vol. 11 (1972), pp. 203 33; Lawrence W. Crissman, "Marketing on the Changhua Plain, Taiwan," in W. E. Willmott, ed., Economic Organization in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 215–59; and Stuart Plattner, "Rural Market Networks,"Scientific American, Vol. 232 (May 1975), pp. 66 79. 3 Works emphasizing social and institutional factors include S. W. Mintz, "Pratik: Haitian Personal Economic Relations," in Viola E. Garfield, ed., American Ethonologial Society Proceedings, Annual Spring Meeting for 1961 (Seattle: American Ethnological Society, 1961, pp. 54–63; Polly Hill, "Notes on Traditional Market Authority and Market Periodicity in West Africa,"Journal of African History, Vol. 7 (1966), pp. 295 311; and Marc Piault, "Cycles de Marchés et 'Espaces' Socio-Politiques," in Claude Meillassoux, ed., The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 285–302. 4 Cyril S. Belshaw, Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 5–9 and 78–79. 5 For example, John Whitman, "The Kolkhoz Market,"Soviet Studies, Vol. 7 (1956), p. 384; and Ching Kun Yang, A North China Local Market Economy: A Summary of a Study of Periodic Markets in Chowping, Hsien, Shantung (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944, mimeo), p. 10; and R. J. Bromley, "Periodic and Daily Markets in Highland Ecuador," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cambridge University, 1975, pp. 298–323. 6 Hutton Webster, Rest Days: A Study in Early Law and Morality (New York: Macmillan, 1916), pp. 101–23; and Martin P. Nilsson, Primitive Time Reckoning (Lund, Sweden: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1920), pp. 324–36. 7 Quoted in J. Bird, "Billingsgate: A Central Metropolitan Market,"Geographical Journal, Vol. 124 (1958), p. 464. 8 Charles M. Good, Rural Markets and Trade in East Africa, Research Paper No. 128 (Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1970), pp. 170–225. 9 Positive feedback is discussed in Gunnar Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1957), pp. 11–22; M. Maruyama, "The Second Cybernetics: Deviation Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes,"American Scientist, Vol. 51 (1963), pp. 164 79; and Allan R. Pred, The Spatial Dynamics of U.S. Urban-Industrial Growth, 1800–1914: Interpretive and Theoretical Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966), pp. 15–32. 10 Stine, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 73-78. 11 Theoretical works more general than Stine are Hay, op. cit., footnote 1; and M. J. Webber and Richard Symanski, "Periodic Markets: An Economic Location Analysis,"Economic Geography, Vol. 49 (1973), pp. 213 27. Webber and Symanski treated the complex issue of agglomeration which, in our analysis, results mainly from historical development and inertia rather than from vendor strategies. 12 Shiw Mangal Singh, "The Stability Theory of Rural Central Place Development,"National Geographical Journal of India, Vol. 11 (1965), pp. 13 21; B. W. Hodder and U. I. Ukwu, Markets in West Africa: Studies of Markets and Trade Among the Yoruba and Ibo (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1969), p. xii; and B. W. Hodder, "Periodic and Daily Markets in West Africa," in Meillassoux, op. cit., p. 352. 13 For example, R. J. Bromley, "The Organization of Quito's Urban Markets: Towards a Reinterpretation of Periodic Central Places,"Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, No. 62 (1974), pp. 45 70; Yue-man Yeung, "Periodic Markets: Comments on Spatio-Temporal Relationships,"Professional Geographer, Vol. 26 (1974), pp. 147 51; and Kathryn L. Buzzacott, "London's Markets: Their Growth, Characteristics and Functions," unpublished doctoral dissertation, London University, 1972, p. 105. 14 Bromley, op. cit., footnote 13, pp. 64–67. 15 Richard Symanski, "Periodic Markets of Andean Colombia," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 1971, pp. 66–104; and Bromley, op. cit., footnote 5, pp. 219–38. 16 Webber and Symanski, op. cit., footnote 11, pp. 221–25. 17 Hill, op. cit., footnote 3, p. 309. 18 Ann Norton and Richard Symanski, "The Internal Marketing Systems of Jamaica,"Geographical Review, Vol. 65 (1975), forthcoming. 19 Richard Gray and David Birmingham, eds., PreColonial Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Africa before 1900 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 3–23; V. C. Uchendu, "Polity Primacy and African Economic Development,"Proceedings of the University of East Africa Social Sciences Conference, Dar es Salaam, 1970; J. Barry Riddell, "A Note on the Origin Conditions of Periodic Marketing Systems," in W. P. Adams and F. M. Helleiner, eds., International Geography 1972 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), Vol. 1, pp. 584–86; Charles M. Good, "Markets in Africa: A Review of Research Themes and the Question of Market Origins,"Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, Vol. 13 (1973), pp. 769 80; and Paul Bohannan and George Dalton, eds., Markets in Africa (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press), pp. 1–26. 20 B. W. Hodder, "Some Comments on the Origins of Traditional Markets in Africa South of the Sahara,"Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, No. 36 (1965), pp. 97 105. 21 Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1925), pp. 75–91; Max Weber, General Economic History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1927), pp. 202–22; and Karl Polanyi, C. M. Arensberg, and H. W. Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1957). 22 Hodder, op. cit., footnote 20; Good, op. cit., footnote 8, pp. 193–205; and Good, op. cit., footnote 19, pp. 771–78. 23 Prestation technically is "an exchange system in which giving may be used to create social obligations;" Belshaw, op. cit., footnote 4, p. 48. 24 Meillassoux, op. cit., footnote 3, pp. 82–83. 25 The idea of economic surplus "is a red herring because only chance accident can produce a surplus over and above planned expectations of the producer who markets to obtain specific needed goals," Belshaw, op. cit., footnote 4, p. 78. 26 Belshaw, op. cit., footnote 4, pp. 75–76. 27 Bohannan and Dalton, op. cit., footnote 19, p. 7. 28 Belshaw, op. cit., footnote 4, p. 78. 29 Paul Bohannan, "The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy,"Journal of Economic History, Vol. 19 (1959), pp. 491 503; and Weber, op. cit., footnote 21, p. 214. 30 Hodder and Ukwu, op. cit., footnote 12, p. 129; and L. F. Salzman, English Trade in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), pp. 123–28. 31 Rosemary D. F. Bromley and R. J. Bromley, "The Debate on Sunday Markets in Nineteenth Century Ecuador,"Journal of Latin American Studies, forthcoming. 32 Two primary sources which deal with market periodicity in West Africa are N. W. Thomas, "The Week in West Africa,"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 54 (1924), pp. 183 209; and Willy Fröhlich, "Das afrikanische Marktwesen,"Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Vol. 72 (1940), pp. 253 66. 33 These weeks are mapped in R. H. T. Smith, "West African Market-Places: Temporal Periodicity and Locational Spacing," in Meillassoux, op. cit., footnote 3, p. 323. 34 Claude Meillassoux, "Social and Economic Factors Affecting Markets in Guro Land," in Bohannan and Dalton, op. cit., footnote 19, p. 297. 35 Gray and Birmingham, op. cit., footnote 19, pp. 12–14; and Godfrey Muriuki, "Kikuyu Reaction to Traders and British Administration, 1850–1904," in B. A. Ogot, ed., Hadith I (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968), p. 104. 36 G. N. Uzoigwe, "Precolonial Markets in Bunyoro-Kitara,"Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 14 (1972), pp. 447 48; and Hodder and Ukwu, op. cit., footnote 12, pp. 131–32. 37 For example, Rosemary Arnold, "Separation of Trade and Market: The Great Market of Whydah," in Polanyi, Arensberg, and Pearson, op. cit., footnote 21, pp. 177–87; Francisco Benet, "Explosive Markets: The Berber Highlands," in Polanyi, Arensberg, and Pearson, op. cit., footnote 21, pp. 188–217; and Alonso de Zorita, The Lords of New Spain (London: J. M. Dent, 1965), pp. 152–61. 38 For example, B. W. Hodder, "Rural Periodic Day Markets in Part of Yorubaland,"Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, No. 29 (1961), pp. 149 51; R. T. Jackson, "Periodic Markets in Southern Ethiopia,"Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, No. 53 (1971), p. 40; and Fröhlich, op. cit., footnote 32, pp. 240–51. Fröhlich cited many attributes and patterns of markets from the early ethnographic literature. 39 S. W. Mintz and D. Hall, The Origins of the Jamaican Internal Marketing System, Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 57 (New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files, 1960), p. 19; Bromley and Bromley, op. cit., footnote 31; and John Fraser Hart, The Look of the Land (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975), pp. 160–63. 40 The two main functions of precolonial West African periodic markets were "to move consumer goods through exchange cycles between areas that were not self-sufficient in their economy; and more particularly, to serve as bulking and wholesale centers for professional long-distance traders dealing in rarer and more valuable commodities." In the West African interior, "everywhere" the indigenous "preoccupation with edible surplus formed the backbone for the passage of more exotic items of trade;" Colin Newbury, "Trade and Authority in West Africa from 1850 to 1880," in L. Gann and P. Duignan, eds., Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), Vol. 1, pp. 67–68. 41 Bromley and Bromley, op. cit., footnote 31. 42 Bromley, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 62; and J. H. Kirk, P. G. Ellis, and J. R. Medland, Retail Stall Markets in Great Britain, Marketing Series No. 8 (Wye, Kent: Wye College, 1972), pp. 42–43. 43 For example, Hill, op. cit., footnote 3, p. 309. 44 Richard Symanski, "God, Food and Consumers in Periodic Market Systems,"Proceedings, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 5 (1973), pp. 262 66.