Markets as Conversations

The points I intend to make here are, basically, three: (a) that markets should be understood, in an ideal-typical manner, as part of a general social order which I refer to by the ancient expression 'civil society' (CS); (b) that markets reinforce that order by shaping and influencing culture, politics and society so that they proceed, or function, in a civil manner; and (c) that we may get a better grasp of the way markets act and achieve this effect by developing an understanding of markets as conversations.(...)

I develop a view of markets as conversations, that is, as a system of communication (mostly, but not entirely, by non-linguistic means) which works as an educational mechanism shaping people's habits. In turn, these habits may help them to develop a complex of capacities and dispositions, of civil and civic virtues, which we can bracket together under the rubric of 'civility'.
--Victor Pérez-Diaz, Markets as Conversations