Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Relational Brokerage: Interaction and Valuation in Two Markets

  • Published:
Qualitative Sociology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Across various markets, consumers rely on brokers to help them select goods. How do brokers shape consumers’ valuation? We address this question by drawing from two independent but analogous ethnographies of brokerage and purchasing in the New York housing market and the New York art market. Building upon the relational turn in economic sociology, we identify the interlocking mechanisms by which brokers influence valuation in face-to-face interaction: Brokers (1) build trust by establishing rapport and displaying expertise, (2) prepare consumers to purchase by priming the consumption setting so that consumers compare a specified set of goods and experience urgency, and (3) posit matches between consumers and products, relying on demographic and cultural characteristics of consumers to complete transactions. Our novel theorization of brokerage has broader implications for understanding valuation and consumption.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Service labor occupations generally require high levels of impression management and quick assessment of clients (Davis 1959). Various kinds of service workers have heuristics for categorizing customers (Bearman 2009; Butler and Snizek 1976; Hochschild 1983; Roth 1972; Seim 2020; Shamir 1980; Sherman 2007) as well as scripts for making economic transactions rote (Chan 2012; Leidner 1993; though see Patrick 2018).

  2. More generally, in markets where goods are illicit or morally questionable, brokers are often a distinct social type for whom dealing is deemed more appropriate (Rossman 2014).

  3. While understanding value as socially constructed is an early insight in different strands of sociological theory (Dewey 1939; Marx 1976; Simmel 1971; 2004; Weber 1964), sociologists have increasingly focused on how intersubjective understandings of value shape the worth of goods (Aspers and Beckert 2011; Fourcade 2011; Hutter and Stark 2015; Lamont 2012; Mears 2011; Smith 1989; Velthuis 2005; Zuckerman 2012).

  4. This insight goes back to foundational network scholarship. Granovetter (1985, 490) theorized that repeated interactions in markets generated social context that created trust and reduced opportunism (though see Barbalet 2009; Chan and Yao 2018). Moreover, as Zelizer (2005) has noted, people assert relationships characterized by friendship and intimacy in markets to downplay the transactional nature of such exchanges. See also Rossman (2014) and Velthuis (2005).

  5. 7 Past work has shown that how brokers can use the physical environment—such as their office decor—to maintain their reputations (Zafirau 2008). Similarly, Furnari and Rolbina (2018, 32) argue that brokers smooth interactions between creative producers and funders by “design[ing] in advance the ‘stage’ so that it is conducive to spontaneous interactions that can create and reinforce high levels of mutual attention and emotional energy among the parties.”.

References

  • Akerlof, George A., and Robert J. Shiller. 2015. Phishing for phools: the economics of manipulation and deception. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Almeling, Rene. 2011. Sex cells: the medical market for eggs and sperm. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Aspers, Patrik. 2009. Knowledge and valuation in markets. Theory and Society 38: 111–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aspers, Patrik, and Jens Beckert. 2011. Value in markets. In The worth of goods: Valuation and pricing in the economy, ed. J. Beckert and P. Aspers, 3–38. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bandelj, Nina. 2009. Emotions in economic action and interaction. Theory and Society 38: 347–366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bandelj, Nina. 2012. Relational work and economic sociology. Politics & Society 40 (2): 175–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bandelj, Nina. 2020. Relational work in the economy. Annual Review of Sociology 46: 251–272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barbalet, Jack. 2009. A characterization of trust, and its consequences. Theory and Society 38: 367–382.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bearman, Peter. 2009. Doormen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beckert, Jens. 2011. Where do prices come from? Sociological approaches to price formation. Socio-Economic Review 9 (4): 757–786.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Besbris, Max. 2016. Romancing the home: emotions and the interactional creation of demand in the housing market. Socio-Economic Review 14 (3): 461–482.

    Google Scholar 

  • Besbris, Max. 2020. Upsold: real estate agents, prices, and neighborhood inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Besbris, Max, and Jacob W. Faber. 2017. Investing the relationship between real estate agents, segregation, and house prices: steering and upselling in New York State. Sociological Forum 32 (4): 850–873.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Besbris, Max, and Gary Alan Fine. 2023. Planning as social practice: the formation and blockage of competitive futures in tournament chess, homebuying, and political organizing. Theory and Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09516-5.

  • Besbris, Max, and Shamus Khan. 2017. Less theory. More description. Sociological Theory 35: 147–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Besbris, Max, and Elizabeth Kover-Glenn. 2023. Value fluidity and value anchoring: race, intermediaries, valuation in two housing markets. Socio-Economic Review 21: 79–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bessy, Christian, and Pierre-Marie Chauvin. 2013. The power of market intermediaries: from information to valuation processes. Valuation Studies 1 (1): 83–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bidwell, Matthew, and Isabel Fernandez-Mateo. 2010. Relationship duration and returns to brokerage in the staffing sector. Organization Science 21 (6): 1125–1179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. The social structures of the economy. Malden: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchholz, Larissa, Gary Alan Fine, and Hannah Wohl. 2020. Art markets in crisis: how personal bonds and market subcultures mediate the effects of COVID-19. American journal of cultural sociology 8 (3): 462–476.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Burt, Ronald S. 1992. Structural holes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Burt, Ronald S. 2005. Brokerage and closure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Suellen R., and William E. Snizek. 1976. The waitress-diner relationship: a multimethod approach to the study of subordinate influence. Work and Occupations 3 (2): 209–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Cheris S.-c. 2009. Invigorating the content of social embeddedness: an ethnography of life insurance transactions in China. American Journal of Sociology 115 (3): 712–754.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Cheris Shun-ching. 2012. Marketing death: culture and the making of a life insurance market in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Cheris Shun-ching, and Zelin Yao. 2018. A market of distrust: Toward a cultural sociology of unofficial exchanges between patients and doctors in China. Theory and Society 47: 737–772.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Childress, Clayton C. 2017. Under the cover: the creation, production, and reception of a novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Childress, Clayton C., and Jean-François Nault. 2019. Encultured biases: the role of products in pathways to inequality. American Sociological Review 84 (1): 115–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clayman, Steven E., and Ann Reisner. 1998. Gatekeeping in action: Editorial conferences and assessments of newsworthiness. American Sociological Review 63: 178–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christin, Angele, and Caitlin Petre. 2020. Making peace with metrics: Relational work in online news production. Sociologica 14: 133–156.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darr, Asaf. 2006. Selling technology: the changing shape of sales in an information economy. Ithaca: Cornell Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darr, Asaf, and Ashley Mears. 2017. Locating local knowledge in global networks: Scouting in fashion and football. Poetics 62: 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darr, Asaf, and Trevor Pinch. 2013. Performing sales: material scripts and the social organization of obligation. Organization Studies 34 (11): 1601–1621.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Fred. 1959. The cabdriver and his fare: facets of a fleeting relationship. American Journal of Sociology 65: 158–165.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Degenshein, Anya. 2017. Strategies of valuation: repertoires of worth at the financial margins. Theory and Society 46: 387–409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Desmond, Matthew. 2014. Relational ethnography. Theory and Society 43: 547–579.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, John. 1939. Theory of valuation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DiMaggio, Paul, and Hugh Louch. 1998. Socially embedded consumer transactions: For what kinds of purchases do people most often use networks? American Sociological Review 63 (5): 619–637.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernandez, Roberto M., and Isabel Fernandez-Mateo. 2006. Networks, race, and hiring. American Sociological Review 71 (1): 42–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernandez, Roberto M., and M. Lourdes Sosa. 2005. Gendering the job: networks and recruitment at a call center. American Journal of Sociology 111 (3): 859–904.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernandez-Mateo, Isabel. 2007. Who pays the price of brokerage? Transferring constraint through price setting in the staffing sector. American Sociological Review 72 (2): 291–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fourcade, Marion. (2011) Cents and sensibility: economic valuation and the nature of “nature.” American Journal of Sociology, 116(6), 1721-1777.

  • Foster, Pacey, Stephen P. Borgatti, and Candace Jones. 2011. Gatekeeper search and selection strategies: Relational and network governance in a cultural market. Poetics 39: 247–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Furnari, Santi, and Marianna Rolbina. 2018. Brokerage styles and interaction rituals in creative projects: Toward an interactionist perspective on brokerage. Research in the Sociology of Organizations 55: 17–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1952. On cooling out the mark: some aspects of adaptation to failure. Psychiatry 15 (4): 451–463.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gould, Roger V., and Roberto M. Fernandez. 1989. Structures of mediation: a formal approach to brokerage in transaction networks. Sociological Methodology 19: 89–126.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Granovetter, Mark. 1973. The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1306–1380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Granovetter, Mark. 1985. Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology 91 (3): 481–510.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gross, Neil. 2009. A pragmatist theory of social mechanisms. American Sociological Review 74 (3): 358–379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanser, Amy. 2007. Is the customer always right? Class, service and the production of distinction in Chinese department stores. Theory and Society 36: 415–435.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, Adam, and Max Besbris. 2023. Earmarking space: relationality, economic judgments, and housing wealth. Socio-Economic Review 21: 1445–1472.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hochschild, Arlie. 1983. The managed heart. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • House, J.D. 1977. Contemporary entrepreneurs: the sociology of residential real estate agents. Westport: Greenwood Press Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutter, Michael, and David Stark. 2015. Pragmatist perspectives on valuation: an introduction. In Moments of valuation: Exploring sites of dissonance, ed. A. Berthoin, M. Hutter, and D. Stark, 1–14. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karpik, Lucien. 2010. Valuing the Unique. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kellogg, Katherine C. 2014. Brokerage professions and implementing reform in an age of experts. American Sociological Review 79: 912–941.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korver-Glenn, Elizabeth, Robin Bartram, and Max Besbris. 2023. Housing market intermediaries. In The sociology of housing, ed. B. McCabe and E. Rosen, 191–202. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krippner, Greta. 2001. The elusive market: embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology. Theory and Society 30: 775–810.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, Michele. 2012. Toward a comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation. Annual Review of Sociology 38: 201–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leidner, Robin. 1993. Fast food, fast talk. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marx, Karl. (1976) Capital volume I. New York: Penguin.

  • Mears, Ashley. 2011. Pricing beauty: the making of a fashion model. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mears, Ashley. 2015. Working for free in the VIP: relational work and the production of consent. American Sociological Review 80 (6): 1099–1122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mears, Ashley. 2020. Very important people: status and beauty in the global party circuit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mennicken, Andrea, and Michael Power. 2015. Accounting and the plasticity of valuation. In Moments of valuation: Exploring sites of dissonance, ed. A. Berthoin, M. Hutter, and D. Stark, 205–228. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Obstfeld, David. 2005. Social networks, the tertius iungens orientation, and involvement in innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly 50 (1): 100–130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Obstfeld, David, Stephen P. Borgatti, and Jason Davis. 2014. Brokerage as a process: decoupling third party action from social network structure. In Contemporary Perspectives on Organizational Social Networks, ed. D.J. Brass, G. Labianca, A. Mehra, D.S. Halgin, and S.P. Borgatti, 135–159. Research in the Sociology of Organizations 40. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Patrick, Mary. 2018. Gift exchange or quid pro quo? Temporality, ambiguity, and stigma in interactions between pedestrians and service-providing panhandlers. Theory and Society 47: 487–509.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pruss, Robert C. 1989. Making sales: influence as an interpersonal accomplishment. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawlings, Craig M., and Clayton C. Childress. 2019. Emergent meanings: reconciling dispositional and situational accounts of meaning-making from cultural objects. American Journal of Sociology 124 (6): 1736–1809.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rivera, Lauren A. 2012. Hiring as cultural matching: the case of elite professional service firms. American Sociological Review 77 (6): 999–1022.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rossman, Gabriel. 2014. Obfuscatory relational work and disreputable exchange. Sociological Theory 32 (1): 43–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roth, Julius A. 1972. Some contingencies of the moral evaluation and control of clientele: the case of hospital emergency service. American Journal of Sociology 77 (5): 839–856.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Royster, Deirdre A. 2003. Race and the invisible hand: how white networks exclude black men from blue-collar jobs. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seim, Josh. 2020. Bandage, sort, and hustle. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shamir, Boas. 1980. Between service and servility: role conflict in subordinate service rolls. Human Relations 33 (10): 741–756.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simmel, Georg. 1950. The triad. In The sociology of Georg Simmel, transl, ed. K.H. Wolff, 145–169. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmel, Georg. 1971. Exchange. In On individuality and social forms, ed. D.N. Levine, 43–69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmel, Georg. 2004. In The philosophy of money, ed. D. Frisby. New York: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Small, Mario L. 2009. Unanticipated gains: origins of network inequality in everyday life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Charles W. 1989. Auctions. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Sandra S. 2007. Lone pursuit. New York: Russell Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sherman, Rachel. 2007. Class acts: Service and inequality in luxury hotels. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sherman, Rachel. 2011. The production of distinctions: class, gender, and taste work in the lifestyle management industry. Qualitative Sociology 34 (1): 201–219.

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Stivers, Abby, and Elizabeth Popp Berman. 2020. Parents, partners, plans, and promises: The relational work of student loan borrowing. Socius 6. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023120915003.

  • Stovel, Katherine, Benjamin Golub, Eva M. Meyersson, and Milgrom. 2011. Stabilizing brokerage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (4): 21326–21333.

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Stovel, Katherine, and Lynette Shaw. 2012. Brokerage. Annual Review of Sociology 38: 139–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tavory, Iddo, and Gary Alan Fine. 2020. Disruption and the theory of the interaction order. Theory and Society 49: 365–385.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tavory, Iddo, and Daniel Winchester. 2012. Experiential careers: the routinization and de-routinization of religious life. Theory and Society 41: 351–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • TEFAF. 2015. TAFAF art market report. http://www.tefaf.com/artmarketreport. Accessed on March 1st, 2016.

  • Vallas, Steven P., and Angèle Christin. 2018. Work and identity in an era of precarious employment: How workers respond to “personal branding” discourse. Work and Occupations 45 (1): 3–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Velthuis, Olav. 2005. Talking prices. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Max. 1964. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wherry, Frederick F., Kristin S. Seefeldt, S. Anthony, and Alvarez. 2019. To lend or not to lend to friends and kin: awkwardness, obfuscation, and negative reciprocity. Social Forces 98: 753–793.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wohl, Hannah. 2019. Creative visions: Presenting aesthetic trajectories in artistic careers. Poetics 76: 101358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wohl, Hannah. 2020. Performing aesthetic confidence: how contemporary art collectors maintain status. Socio-Economic Review 18 (1): 215–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wohl, Hannah. 2021. Bound by creativity: how contemporary art is created and judged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zafirau, Stephen. 2008. Reputation work in selling film and television: Life in the Hollywood talent industry. Qualitative Sociology 31: 99–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, Viviana A. 2000. The purchase of intimacy. Law and Social Inquiry 25: 817–848.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, Viviana A. 2005. The purchase of intimacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, Viviana A. 2011. Economic lives. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, Viviana A. 2012. How I became a relational economic sociologist and what does that mean? Politics and Society 40: 145–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerman, Ezra W. 2012. Construction, concentration, and (dis) continuities in social valuations. Annual Review of Sociology 38: 223–245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Hannah Wohl

  2. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Max Besbris

Authors
  1. Hannah Wohl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Max Besbris
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hannah Wohl.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wohl, H., Besbris, M. Relational Brokerage: Interaction and Valuation in Two Markets. Qual Sociol 47, 1–21 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-023-09553-7

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-023-09553-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation