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Suq: Geertz on the Market
A formative ethnography of the relationship between markets and social life, back in print.
Originally published in 1979, Clifford Geertz’s essay on the Moroccan bazaar is a classic ethnographic account of the interplay of economic, social, and religious lives in the bustle of transaction. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the Middle Atlas town of Sefrou, Geertz explores how actors from diverse backgrounds assess the worth and meaning of other people’s wares, words, and ways of doing business. He shows how the search for market information, so central to the theorization of markets by economists, is here based on careful appraisals of social relations, embedded in understandings of the broader institutional environment of the market town and its hinterlands. With a richness of insights procured for generations of readers, Geertz’s essay on the sūq is a model of and for the craft of ethnographic theory. Long out of print, it is republished here in a stand-alone edition introduced by Lawrence Rosen.
Originally published in 1979, Clifford Geertz’s essay on the Moroccan bazaar is a classic ethnographic account of the interplay of economic, social, and religious lives in the bustle of transaction. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the Middle Atlas town of Sefrou, Geertz explores how actors from diverse backgrounds assess the worth and meaning of other people’s wares, words, and ways of doing business. He shows how the search for market information, so central to the theorization of markets by economists, is here based on careful appraisals of social relations, embedded in understandings of the broader institutional environment of the market town and its hinterlands. With a richness of insights procured for generations of readers, Geertz’s essay on the sūq is a model of and for the craft of ethnographic theory. Long out of print, it is republished here in a stand-alone edition introduced by Lawrence Rosen.
269 pages, Paperback
Published April 27, 2023
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About the author
Clifford Geertz
72 books245 followersClifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist and served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.
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September 7, 2025
Clifford Geertz spent lots of time with his then wife Hildred (they divorced in 1981) in the little town of Sefrou in Moroccos, nestled up against the edge of the Sahara and at one time an important node on the trans-Sahara trade routes. With the collapse of that trade in the early and mid-twentieth century, Sefrou contracted into a local market town that supported an ongoing stationary market and a repeating temporary one. Suq is the fruit of that detailed, complex research.
Geertz unveils the complex social and cultural aspects of the market. It's not just a place where people buy and sell--though of course they do that--but also a set of interlocking social institutions that both make the market work and extend deeply into Sefrou's social life. Especially crucial is the lack of reliable information, which every market-goer must have and try to overcome; there are many mechanisms for doing so, all of which get plenty of attention. There are also specialists of various kinds--auctioneers, money-lenders, traveling merchants, prostitutes--who work within organizational structures that both help them and see to it that problems are solved internally.
Suq is a classic of social and economic anthropology. Its conclusions cannot, of course, simply be transferred to other market economies, but they provide lots of food for thought for anyone thinking about how face-to-face markets work.
My only complaint is that this reprint, edited by Geertz's student and partner Lawrence Rosen, omits the detailed appendices in the original. That's a shame, because that wealth of detailed data would be very useful both to show the empirical basis on which Suq rests and to provide scholars with much food for thought.
Geertz unveils the complex social and cultural aspects of the market. It's not just a place where people buy and sell--though of course they do that--but also a set of interlocking social institutions that both make the market work and extend deeply into Sefrou's social life. Especially crucial is the lack of reliable information, which every market-goer must have and try to overcome; there are many mechanisms for doing so, all of which get plenty of attention. There are also specialists of various kinds--auctioneers, money-lenders, traveling merchants, prostitutes--who work within organizational structures that both help them and see to it that problems are solved internally.
Suq is a classic of social and economic anthropology. Its conclusions cannot, of course, simply be transferred to other market economies, but they provide lots of food for thought for anyone thinking about how face-to-face markets work.
My only complaint is that this reprint, edited by Geertz's student and partner Lawrence Rosen, omits the detailed appendices in the original. That's a shame, because that wealth of detailed data would be very useful both to show the empirical basis on which Suq rests and to provide scholars with much food for thought.
Displaying 1 of 1 review