COCHOY, 2007. A Sociology of Market-Things On Tending The Graden of Choices in Mass Retailing
COCHOY, 2007. A Sociology of Market-Things On Tending The Graden of Choices in Mass Retailing
COCHOY, 2007. A Sociology of Market-Things On Tending The Graden of Choices in Mass Retailing
Franck Cochoy
Introduction
© 2007 The Author. Editorial organisation © 2007 The Editorial Board of the Sociological Review. Published by
Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA
02148, USA
Franck Cochoy
market matters. Instead of looking for the explanation of market choices in clas-
sical or innovative ‘backstage’ mechanisms, such as cultural-political-social
constructs or theoretical frameworks, I intend to show that markets may also be
traced at the immediate ground level of ordinary transactions. (The two
approaches are of course neither exclusive nor contradictory). In order to
accomplish this, I will concentrate on ‘interobjective’ (Latour, 1996) relation-
ships occurring between consumers and market devices in the supermarket.
The perspective being proposed is supported by similar endeavours that
precede it, such as studies of situated consumer cognition (Lave, Murtaugh and
de la Rocha, 1984), some market ethnographies (Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger,
2000, 2002), and more recently the theory of markets as ‘calculative spaces’
(Callon and Muniesa, 2005). Callon and Muniesa’s expression rather nicely
insists on the fact that economic cognition, far from being abstract and purely
cerebral, is always situated and equipped. It is my conviction that the
spatial/material properties of market operations may be even more crucial than
their calculative dimension. Even when exchanging goods does not immediately
imply computing (goods may be given, stolen, or chosen routinely, blindly, etc.),
it always involves moving them from one point to another, through a wide range
of physical channels and equipments. These range from traditional bazaars
(Geertz, 1978) and flea markets (Belk, 1991) to the electronic screens, sites and
networks of financial markets (Callon, Licoppe and Muniesa, 2003) and e-
shopping (Licoppe and Picard, 2005).
Even if some markets are highly sophisticated (as financial ones might be),
most of them are quite mundane and ‘down to earth’ – just like supermarkets.
This chapter investigates the supermarket through the use of the ‘garden’
metaphor.3 This metaphor evokes soil, plants, tools and enclosures, but it also
outlines all of the work that should be done to encourage purchasing. As I have
already put it, shedding light on market labour4 and space moves us a little bit
away from theories of markets. But this does not mean that nothing is performed
by market professionals and their spatial activities. To the contrary, through the
study of the ‘gardening of choices’ in supermarket settings, we observe that per-
formation is not only about the enactment of some ex-ante, given theories. It is
also about the formation of knowledge through situated exchanges and prac-
tices. In other words – and in supermarkets at least – performation is better
defined as ‘performance’. As we will see, what is ‘performed’ is what is played,
directed, staged (or rather gardened in this case). The market performance is
about those very local and material events and devices that ‘make us do things’
(Latour, 1999), but that, in so doing, also make actors think differently, be they
consumers, producers or retailers.
Supermarket cycles
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A sociology of market-things: on tending the garden of choices in mass retailing
are in plain sight, and I will try to outline in these observations some elements,
issues and processes that, even if not always noticed, nevertheless redefine the
skills, activities and identities of consumers. To meet this objective, I will set
aside an omniscient, cartographic point of view, and adopt instead the modest
and ‘naturalist’ position of the passing stranger, the shopper, or the wanderer.
Rather than looking for hidden backstage mechanisms behind the observed phe-
nomena, rather than calling for some external knowledge in order to increase
the understanding of the field, I will try to begin simply from the surface of
behaviours and things. In order to give some depth (of field) to my perspective,
however, I will displace my point of view and proceed from particular ‘optical’
positions, alternating the observation sites. That is, I will rely on pairs of pho-
tographs for the purpose of grasping the dynamics and implications of super-
market objects through anamorphosis (ie, adopting extreme angles of vision)
and stereoscopic effects (ie, systematically looking not at one but at two pictures
of the same site or topic).5 This method is consistent with the garden metaphor
which invites us to take the supermarket not as a palimpsest whose layers should
be scraped off one after the other, but as a landscape, as a space, as a set of
clumps and paths that we have to visit with curiosity, fondness and attention,
from the right position and at the right time.
Thanks to automobiles (Strasser, 1989), big retail returned to the old site of
medieval markets at the cities’ outskirts (Braudel, 1981). In so doing, contem-
porary supermarkets remind us of the extent to which markets, just like gardens,
build bridges between cities and the open country, between sites of consump-
tion and spaces of rural production. The supermarket has displaced the market
not only geographically but also in terms of built space. When consumers enter
a supermarket they are no longer in the public space of the street. They pene-
trate instead a curious house everyone can visit and leave, without revealing
their identity, but also a house where circulation is restricted: we must first
deposit or wrap up previous purchases before entering, we go out with a full
trolley (provided you have paid for its contents) or perhaps with an empty one
(provided you pass a human or electronic security check), and, of course, you
do not steal or grab things and eat them on spot.
The historical cycle is supplemented by a seasonal one. In commercial sites as
well as in open nature, activities follow a seasonal pace: wine fairs occur in
autumn, toys appear in the winter, gardening happens in spring, sales take place
during the summer. A short day cycle also intervenes. Everyday, supermarkets
experience an alternation between two ‘dances in a ring’ which are astonishingly
symmetrical: the night work of the very special ‘gardeners’ who ‘clean’ the aisles,
‘pick out’ the products on the shelves, ‘set up’ the general display of goods; and
the activity of the day shoppers who roam through all of the aisles, pick up the
products and thus ‘undo’ the entire scene that was built for them (see Pictures 1
and 2). Having once been authorized to take some photographs before the
opening of a supermarket, I was surprised by the nocturnal agitation and disor-
der. Here and there, positioned in the aisles and in front of end displays, some
well-stocked trolleys were waiting, as if some clients were already in their midsts.
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A sociology of market-things: on tending the garden of choices in mass retailing
But I soon realized that, curiously enough, the same trolleys were being inde-
pendently filled by several people. The issue at stake was not to buy, but to collect
the aborted choices of the day before, to reassemble products abandoned in the
middle of the shelves, far away from their initial ‘success’ of having been selected.
What was also striking was the congestion induced by cardboard boxes,
pallets, rubbish, and the numbers of people rushing all over the place. I noticed
that the supermarket’s attendance in the early hours is close to that which it
faces during the quiet hours of the day. The pallet carriers and telescopic ladders
joined the trolleys of abandoned goods, but this time the ‘consumers’ were retail-
ers. Retailers place and tidy up products while consumers pick and mix them
up. Retailers come and go repeatedly from the back of the shop to the same
aisles, while consumers move from one aisle to the next. Yet in each group, one
could clearly observe the same commitment, the same silence, the same metic-
ulous orientation towards the shelves.
The parallel between the two temporally differentiated scenes became even
more striking when the speakers announced at half past eight in the morning,
that ‘the shop opens in thirty minutes’. Meaning: everything should be finished
before shop opening. As for Cinderella, it is necessary to leave on time and not
to forget anything left behind her: tape, torn up boxes, garbage, etc. The
announcement was identical to the one that would be given in the evening,
varying only the verb ‘close’, and the tone of politeness granted to visitors.
Supply is obviously the mirror of demand. But the rule is that neither one nor
the other should meet each other directly (or at least, that they meet as little as
possible). The supermarket succeeds in performing in some way the liberal,
market-view of the world reported by Karl Polanyi:
Vision was limited by the market which ‘fragmentated’ life into the producers’ sector
that ended when his product reached the market, and the sector of the consumer for
whom all goods sprang from the market. The one derived his income ‘freely’ from the
market, the other spent it ‘freely’ there. Society as a whole remained invisible. (Polanyi,
1971 {1944}: 258)
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A sociology of market-things: on tending the garden of choices in mass retailing
The nocturnal scene reported earlier helps us to identify the fundamental drives
of self-service, along with the horticultural metaphor. The alternate ballets
of retailers and buyers may for instance take us back to the strategy of an
18th century exceptional ‘gardener-marketer’: Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. In
France, Parmentier is famous for being the man who succeeded in making
French people consume potatoes. He met this objective by cultivating them on
a field given to him by King Louis XVI, and by placing guards all around (except
at night). This stratagem made potential thieves think that the mysterious
product cultivated there was precious, and enticed them to robbery during the
hours when the field was not kept. Self-service professionals, just as Parmentier
with his potatoes, set up a garden whose guards vanish (in the day, this time) in
order to let the buyers go in and take as much advantage as they can of the
windfall of an abundant and ‘open’ supply. Budgetary constraints are expelled
as far as possible: payment certainly does occur but only at the end and all at
once, after everything has been gathered without any precise idea of the total
amount (prices are marked only on shelves and not on products themselves).
This confirms the point about the necessary ‘faire laissez-faire’ we already men-
tioned: there is no such a thing as a market without organization, no choices
are possible without preliminary framing not only of these choices, but also of
the freedom of the framed actors (Cochoy, 2007). Last but not least, the final
virtue of this scene is to help us understand that the same space is surrounded
by different populations with their respective activities – populations and activ-
ities that now deserve a closer examination.
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both adventure and calculation, planning and exploration. Such operations and
gestures largely rely on scriptural, symbolic and material registers and thus on
a scrupulous setting up of the commercial space.
On the opposite side of the ‘buying eye’, we find not only objects, but also an
array of professionals who manipulate these objects. Aisles managers for
example obviously take advantage of the hybrid interactions between people
and products. They do so by arranging cognitive supports, by providing multi-
ple ‘choice devices’. Grasping the knowledge and action patterns of these par-
ticular professionals does not require relying on backstage information. I can
simply start from a close examination of products and shop furniture, reading
at their surface a great deal of the concerns of these ‘commercial gardeners’.
This does not exclude more direct and complete observation of market profes-
sionals (Barrey, Cochoy and Dubuisson-Quellier, 2000) which, as good land-
scape architects do, distribute commercial information along the vertical, lateral
and depth axes that are open to our eyes.
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A sociology of market-things: on tending the garden of choices in mass retailing
indexes show me not the full-range but rather a selection of products: ‘World
cuisine’, ‘Carrefour product’, ‘Reflets de France’, ‘tea time, 9 euros 49 cents’,
‘new’ (see Picture 6). Elsewhere in the shop, similar indexes also designate ‘pro-
motion’, ‘lowest price’, ‘customer card’, etc. Unlike the aerial boards presented
above, these lateral flags operate a double deviation: they attempt to stop my
eyes on such or such product (which I may have not noticed otherwise) and to
attract my attention on this or that aspect of its dimensions (that I may have
not spontaneously considered, or that I may even ignore until now).
Let’s take an example. When I read the flag ‘Carte Pass’ (Carrefour customer
card), I learn not only that this product is subject to a price reduction but also
that I need the shop’s card in order to benefit from it. The flag’s trick is double:
it succeeds both in showing members what they should buy to benefit from their
status, and to non members what they lose in not joining up. All of these sorts
of flags show new ways of grasping the products. In the process, we learn that
preferences, far from always preceding the act of purchase, are largely con-
structed along the immediate interaction with products that praise their own
properties (sometime we do not even suspect the existence of these properties,
see below).8 Finally, let us note the constant zeal of aisle managers in renewing
not only the products they introduce on the shelves, but also the ways in which
they present them. The highly rationalist slogan reading ‘At Carrefour, our prices
are frozen until the summer’, which followed the shift to the euro currency in
the first semester of 2002, was later replaced with the more seductive campaign
for the new Carrefour product range ‘J’aime’ (‘I love’) in January 2003. After
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A sociology of market-things: on tending the garden of choices in mass retailing
paradox: in the modern supermarket, references are the things that are being
bought, not products. Monetary signs are exchanged for market words and
images. Evaluating the adequacy of such references to their substantial coun-
terpart is postponed beyond transaction, in the realms of production and con-
sumption. Since I cannot move further to the product, since I stumble over an
impassable paper, a glass or a plastic barrier, since I understand that my explo-
ration of the commercial space stops at the last mediation, I wonder if my shop-
ping journey is truly over. Might I have left some important aspects aside and
should I rewind the film of my visit?
This introspective flashback is not useless. It makes me realize that I have
only accomplished a very short route. I have only visited one or two aisles. I
could have turned off elsewhere, taken other directions, scrutinized many things
– I could have completed the examination of the aisles’ diversity and multiplic-
ity. Let me leave packaging and come back upstream. Or, better, let me extend
the packaging metaphor to the garden metaphor and see the extent to which the
supermarket, as a product, is itself subjected to a packaging process. For the
shop works as a physical envelope for the market, and transforms commerce in
the very same way that a greenhouse modifies the plants growth. Marketplaces,
as any other public arenas (Latour, 2004), are matters of ‘air conditioning’ and
atmosphere management (Chung, Inaba, Koolhaas and Tsung Leong, 2002;
Grandclément, 2004). In order to make sense of such a transformation, let’s
have a look at another pair of pictures (Pictures 8 and 9).
On the left, the wine aisle (Picture 8). This aisle goes far beyond the classical
tabular ranking of bottles’ in rows (in line) and their names (in column). Large
paper boards hanging from the ceiling simulate the vaults of a cellar, lined with
other items of rustic decoration. On the right, the health and beauty aisle
(Picture 9). Here again, the display of products breaks with the standard
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organization of the other aisles. This space is closed on three sides, giving the
impression that one is entering a restricted room. The white frame that sur-
rounds the whole scene channels customers’ eyes towards the interior. Smaller
furniture, a special cash register, a shiny floor which contrasts with the dull and
colourless floor tiles of the rest of the shop – all these create the atmosphere of
a snug and familiar bathroom.
This new way to organize supermarket aisles – known as ‘retail universe
management’ in French professional vernacular – recreates sites of production
(wineries) and consumption (bathrooms), and thus moves us away from a place
of pure exchange. In this respect it contributes to the ‘re-enchantment’ of con-
sumption evoked by George Ritzer (1999). By not gathering products along a
commercial taxonomy, as elsewhere in the shop, but along the same rationale
we use at home, ‘retail universes’ do not, however, necessarily break with mar-
keting logics. This is not a post-modern occurrence, in which the marketplace
would have turned into a pure space of sociability. On the contrary, these
universes are designed to reinforce the channelling of consumers towards pure
commercial dynamics.
Setting ‘retail universes’ consists in ‘wrapping-up’ the shop, caring for its
‘packaging’, transforming the sale space into a product. With such ‘retail uni-
verses’ we do not consume the product anymore but rather we consume the com-
mercial space itself. Consuming the shop is a possible substitute for a purely
utilitarian consumption: the supermarket experience can be justified in terms of
leisure more easily. The retail universe becomes to supermarkets what leisure
gardens are to vegetable growing. On the other hand, favouring free ‘visual con-
sumption’, encouraging not only strictly purchasing behaviour but fostering a
personal relationship with the shopping place contributes to settling the con-
sumer into a ‘regime of familiarity’ (Thévenot, 2001) – and possibly also into a
regime of reciprocity. The décor of the store might be perceived as a gift to which
the consumer is meant to correspond through purchasing. It is as if the shop’s
landscape gardeners had invented a sort of a ‘theory of efficient décor’, com-
bining the drives of the Maussian gift and the old dynamics of Elton Mayo’s
human relations, or even the lessons of the more recent Goffmanian sociology
of service relations, into a theory which insists on the civility exchanges which
are necessary to the co-production of services in intersubjective commercial or
administrative contexts (Joseph and Jeannot, 1995). The development of these
‘retail universe’ merchandising techniques obviously bets on a ‘postponed’ con-
sumption, a consumption that relies on a long-lasting loyal relationship to the
store, where the free enjoyment of a familiar place comes to encourage or anti-
cipate future purchases (Barrey, 2004).
Hopefully, my journey has comes to its end. I have scrutinized the distant
and alternating articulation of supply and demand. I have gone through the
supermarket in every direction. I have explored the framing of (either actual or
postponed) consumption choices. But I might still have missed something. While
I thought that all views were limited and channelled towards the ‘inside’ of the
commercial scene, three strange windows (one still close, another rather clan-
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A sociology of market-things: on tending the garden of choices in mass retailing
destine, and a third wide open) keep on pointing me towards something I have
missed in the ‘outside’ – an outside which is now different from the one I started
from.
The first window opens towards the French countryside. This window was
opened in the supermarket in spite of retailers. It is a fragile window, which now
seems to be closed, or even walled up. Under the social pressure of farmers fight-
ing against the gap between producers’ and retailers’ prices, this window was
once built and opened with a rule issued by the government in August 13th, 1999,
which imposed, for two months at least, the labelling of both the production
price and the retail price of some fruits and vegetables. This rule turned con-
sumers into judges in a commercial quarrel and somehow introduced a new way
for them to evaluate products, too. Moreover, this effort also anticipated a new
kind of competition: the initial intention of the rule (ie, to transform individu-
alistic consumers into consumer-citizens able to evaluate the fairness of ‘trading
margins’ in the retailing sector) turned ever so slightly into a call for more ‘com-
mercial transparency’. The tension between producers and retailers has died
down ever since this episode. The authorities’ voluntarism has gotten slack, and
this first window was thus closed after its two months validation period. It did,
however, let fresh air blow through the supermarket, an air which seems to
spread through a second window.
This second window opens on several types of relationships that can occur
between consumers and producers: fair trade, organic food, GMO-free food, or
environment protection. The ‘fair trade’ movement (Cochoy, 2004) opens a dis-
crete window directly on the surface of products. The Max Havelaar label, for
instance, guarantees that ‘the coffee you’ll consume was bought directly from
small producers at prices higher than world rates, after a partial financing of their
harvests’. This label works as a window aimed at opening consumers’ eyes to
farming issues in southern countries. It attempts to foster a political consump-
tion (Micheletti, 2003) in which everyone works, at their own level, for a fair
allocation of profits in distribution channels. This device may be seen as a global
and voluntary equivalent of the French regulatory measure mentioned above.
Its promoters expect that its non-mandatory character will (paradoxically)
support its visibility and success, through the development of competition based
on better ethical commitment.
The third political window is the largest, most visible and spectacular one. It
first half-opened at the shop’s entry, in the context of a temporary commercial
show which took place in March 2002 in the very French supermarket I have
been walking you around in. The shopping mall was transformed into a ‘living
farm’, with real animals such as a calf, and even a real ‘gardener’, with a straw
hat, apron, trolley and flowers (see Picture 10). The third window opens com-
pletely, in a more serious, solid and lasting manner at the back of the super-
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Franck Cochoy
market, in the ‘quality channel’ of the meat aisle. In the latter, I observe a ter-
racing of perspectives: in front of me lies the packaged meat (see Picture 11).
Meat is clearly visible under the plastic film, well described through references
to price, quality, origin and traceability guarantees. A little bit farther, I see the
butchering chain which precedes the display of products. Finally, in the back,
some windowpanes grant me visual access to the cold room, to the carcasses
and to other pieces of meat. The scene just stops of a final window, which would
open onto the farms, rendering the overall effort of transparency complete. In
fact, the cattle were nevertheless already there in some way, with the quiet calf
near the shop’s entry, bringing into surrealism the modern requirement for
product traceability.
This kind of ‘visual marketing’, which consists in setting up a ‘transparent’
staging of a product’s distribution path, is an obvious attempt at clearing away
the foolish fears of consumers – a hole is pierced in the shop’s walls so they can
see beyond. Emphasis on traceability invites consumers to base their choices on
safety issues and even to exchange taste (or ‘older’ concerns of the like) for pre-
caution (Cochoy, 2001).
Through these three windows, I see how well mass retailers monitor and
adjust to market evolutions, just as farmers from the old days looking at moon’s
phases or clouds’ shapes. To promote GMO-free foodstuff, sustainable devel-
opment, or product traceability is to follow the wind (opinion streams), seasons
(fashion) and temperatures (more or less ‘hot’ crises), at least to some extent.
The three windows point in different directions, but these directions all turn the
consumer towards the ‘outer world’. They try to take the consumer out of the
realm of pure price economics and immediate satisfaction. They propose dif-
ferent relations between consumers and producers, between ‘the city’ and ‘the
country’. They connect to other values, to other concerns.
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Conclusion
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Notes
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A sociology of market-things: on tending the garden of choices in mass retailing
9 Colour codes serve to identify the characteristics of some products like coffee (black for Arabica,
red for mixtures, blue for decaffeinated, etc., at least in the case of France).
10 The capture or ‘captation’ of consumers articulates two apparently contradictory hypotheses.
The first is that the consumer’s trajectory is predictable (it follows a particular action scheme or
disposition). The second is that with the help of ad hoc devices – ‘dispositifs’ in French – any
trajectory, even predictable, may be cut, seized, or even replaced with another ‘cognitive program’
or disposition (Cochoy, 2003).
11 I believe that theory-less or un-analytical ‘sociography’ should be considered as respectable as
sociology.
12 For instance, when Callon and Rabeharisoa (1999) discuss Peneff’s (1997) ethnography of
surgery work, they do not question the excellence of the description (which they praise for its
precision and vividness), but rather they challenge its theoretical standpoint (surgery as a
‘butcher’ work) which led the author to forget the patient as ‘living flesh’ and to neglect other
crucial elements such as the anaesthetist’s role.
13 I admit I have occasionally transgressed this rule in referring to supermarkets’ night life, or in
bringing here and there some additional information into my ‘superficial’ exploration of market
pictures.
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