Collecting Culture: Explaining Sociability in Collectibles Markets

Collecting Culture: Explaining Sociability in Collectibles Markets Public Deposited

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Creator

Sherry, Lucas Matthew Thomas
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology

Abstract

Cultures, like other group-level phenomena, are the result of a complex and iterative process whereby social environments provide individuals with desires, beliefs, and opportunities that guide individual actions in patterned ways. Actor-Network Theorists have been vocal in their assertion that objects are not passive intermediaries, but rather active mediators of human action. In markets, patterns in the characteristics of the objects for sale make certain trading behaviors more or less effective, profitable, etc. By analyzing books for collectibles that vary in the fungibility of the objects and organization of the markets, I find that the level of market organization and the fungibility of objects for sale are related to differences in the rates of coding the advice provided as `advised sociability,' `sociability traps,' and `anti-sociability.'

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