"The book is organized around the premise that economic theories of the market and modern social thought have always had more in common than either had realized (a point that is developed in a series of illuminating and well-organized disciplinary vignettes), and that contemporary scholarship on consumption, culture, and post-industrial society can benefit from a richer knowledge of the long dialogues between these two fields. Extrapolating Polanyi's thesis on the embeddedness of market forms in the social fabrics of modernity, the book's succinct and broadly inclusive chapters neatly summarize the respective and often unstated borrowings between economics and the social sciences, discussing with equal tenacity the works of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, as well as Smith, Ricardo, Pareto, and Hayek. In such disparate areas as anthropology, political science, history, sociology, and contemporary cultural analysis, the authors explore a variety of approaches to the question of market exchange, uncovering deep agreements between economists and social scientists on problems of order, agency, solidarity, rationality, and individuality."

"The aim of Market Society is [...] to remind sociologists that, historically at least, they have had rather a lot to say about the market, market society and to try and counter the tendency to cede ground to other disciplines. It is based on the premise that the market is neither good nor bad but it is inherently contextual, always embedded in its social and cultural surroundings. [...] Market Society will act as an excellent introduction to this area for a variety of students and their teachers. It is accessible without being simplistic, is well written and covers an impressive amount of ground. It deserves to find a place on many undergraduate and postgraduate courses on work, economic life, consumption as well as wider modules on political economy and social order. Perhaps the greatest service Slater and Tonkiss perform here is the way they re-embed discussion of the market within the discipline of sociology itself, skilfully drawing out classical concerns of social order, rationality and the relationship between individuals and society. At the same time they engage with issues of consumption and the cultural turn."