What is a market? A Wittgensteinian exercise
从维特根斯坦视角出发，通过美国国防工业的极端案例，分析不同语言游戏如何赋予市场不同含义，并借助“家族相似性”概念揭示市场并非单一概念，而是存在具有相似与差异的市场家族。
Abstract What is a market? The question is both practical (for firms elaborating their strategy) and theoretical, and various answers have been given by different disciplines, especially economics and sociology. In this paper, we will address the question from a Wittgensteinian perspective: — making use of an extreme case, to unfamiliarize the familiar, or what we think we know on markets; — considering how different language‐games are played, and how they give different meanings to the notion of market; and — using the notion of ‘family resemblance’ to highlight the fact there is no such thing as ‘the’ market, but families of markets, with resemblances and dissimilarities. The extreme case we have selected is that of the American defense industry. We study three language‐games that constitute this industry as a market: the regulation, the financial investment and the strategic games. We suggest that although there is no single concept of the market, there can be families of markets that can be identified through sets of resemblances and dissimilarities. Finally, we show how the language‐game perspective contributes to understand innovation.