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Balsiger, Philip (2019)Socio-Economic ReviewThis article describes the distinctive features and structural properties of ‘moralized markets’, that is, markets in which producers set higher moral standards than those governing conventional market practices, and consumers buy products that respect those higher moral standards. Starting from a critical discussion of existing theoretical conceptualizations in terms of conventionalization/co-optation, quality conventions and resource partitioning, this article conceptualizes moralized markets as fields where actors are in strategic interaction. Using illustrations from several empirical studies, it suggests that all moralized markets are composed of a plurality of actors whose understanding of and commitments to moral principles vary. It reveals the main dimensions of the field, characterizes typical positions, and identifies and describes the core strategies used in struggles around field boundaries and the issues of policing and regulation of field settlements. The article concludes by offering six propositions regarding different possible outcome scenarios for the dynamics of moralized market fields, highlighting the role of the state for the stabilization of field settlements.EXCERPTNot everyone studying organics subscribes to this view. An alternative position is taken by Coombes and Campbell (1998) who suggest that there are multiple paths to sustainability; not all of organic production needs to become conventionalized and it is thus possible to reconcile markets with organic production. This position is reminiscent of theoretical approaches that stress the plurality of markets. Variants of this have developed out of a number of theoretical traditions. In the French économie des conventions (EC), scholars have revealed how market coordination is made possible by quality conventions, which rely on multiple ‘economies of worth’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Conventions are ‘cultural logics [of] how to coordinate in economic institutions to collectively produce products. EC assumes a coexisting plurality of such quality conventions as the industrial convention, the market convention, the domestic convention, the green convention and others’ (Diaz-Bone, 2013, pp. 46–47). A plurality of quality conventions often coexists in markets for a given good, allowing for the production of different qualities and processes of valuation. (p. 4)