The Market for "Lemons": A Sociological Study of Authenticity in the Chinese Market of Counterfeit Luxury Goods

详细信息   

• 作者：Deng ; Yingying
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2013
• 关键词：Social sciences ; China ; Asymmetric information ; Co
• 导师：Carruthers, Bruce G.
• 毕业院校：Northwestern University
• Department：Sociology
• 专业：Asian Studies;Social structure
• ISBN：9781303121982
• CBH：3563708
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：1954909
• Pages：225

文摘

People buying and selling in the online auction markets are acutely aware of the risk and uncertainty about the wisdom of trusting others. The study is oriented towards investigating the emergence and growth of a Chinese market for "lemons"--a market that has seemingly been plagued with serious information asymmetries and yet found a way to escape failure and sustain prosperity. As a theory in action, this market present compelling empirical evidence complementing and enriching economic and sociological understanding of asymmetric information and its application to a developing context. I explain how the meanings of authenticity are multi-faceted and deeply embedded in the cultural, economic and historical experience of the Chinese. I also argue that, because of its socially embedded meanings, authenticity is central to the history of both the Old and the New world and has exerted an important role in various international arenas. The case of Chinese online auction market as well as other physical markets bring to the fore how globalization requires a re-assessment of the local dynamics and of the initial as well as the emergent understandings that create and reproduce authenticity. The objective qualities of the product and the meanings contained therein are not sufficient conditions for the product or the producer to gain the designation of authenticity. This framework of fluid, multiple authenticities with no clearly delineated boundary calls for a circumspect investigation of how other non-market values and extra-economic logics accompany and modify the so-called international model of authenticity. The unfolding of such struggles causes authenticity to break away from its taken-for-granted singular meaning and encourages multiple meanings to proliferate and contend with the simplistic, over-limited and limiting notion of authenticity.