The Architecture of Illegal Markets

Jens Beckert is Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and Professor of Sociology at the University of Cologne. He has held visiting positions at Princeton University, Harvard University, Cornell University, the European University Institute, and Sciences Po in Paris. He is the author of The Worth of Goods: Valuation and Pricing in the Economy (OUP), Beyond the Market: the Social Foundations of Economic Efficiency (Princeton University Press 2002) and Inherited Wealth (Princeton University Press 2008). His articles have been published in journals such as Theory & Society, Sociological Theory, Organization Studies, and the European Journal of Sociology.Matías Dewey is a Senior Researcher in the project area on the sociology of illegal markets at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. He studied sociology in Argentina and received his PhD in Germany. As a visiting scholar, he has spent time at the University of Oxford, at the MaxPo in Paris and recently at the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He has received grants from the Alexander von Humboldt and Volkswagen foundations. He has published extensively on social theory, economic sociology, illegal markets and qualitative research.

This creative and inspiring book provides, as the editor's note, "the start" of a much-needed conversation on illegal markets (p. 27). Also, in an era when the U.S. Supreme Court has rendered legal some transactions that were previously deemed illegal (e.g., political spending by corporations) and might be on the verge of increasingly doing so, it has never been more urgent to better unpack and comprehend (il)legality.

• PART I: CONCEPTUALIZING ILLEGAL MARKETS; PART II: SECRECY AND ILLEGAL MARKETS; PART III: THE STATE IN INFORMAL MARKET PLACES; PART IV: SHIFTING DEFINITIONS OF ILLEGALITY; PART V: ILLEGAL PRACTICES IN LEGAL MARKETS