Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: How to Study a Global Market -- A Review of Literature on the Market -- Social Studies of the Market -- New Directions in the Social Study of Markets -- Commodity Chains, Systems of Provision, and the Social Lives of Things -- Why Cotton? -- How to Follow Cotton? -- Where to Follow Cotton? -- Summary of Arguments -- Chapter 1 What Is a World Price? The Prosthetic and Actual Worth of Cotton -- How Much Does an Actual Bale of Cotton Really Cost? -- The Price Disappears Again -- Making Sense of the Price -- Market Reports -- Optional Prices of Cotton -- Conclusion -- Chapter 2 Market Maintenance in the Worlds of Commodity Circulation -- The World of Cotton -- We Have on This Day Sold to You as Follows -- The Shipment Is Brought Together -- Two Thousand Bales to Go -- We Hereby Con.rm the Arrival of . . . -- The Market Platform: Capital, Knowledge, and Network -- Conclusion -- Chapter 3 Markets' Multiple Boundaries in Izmir, Turkey -- Pit Trading in the Izmir Mercantile Exchange -- The Rehearsal Price of the Pit -- The Transaction Price of Postpit Trading -- Making the Market Price of Turkish Cotton -- Another Market Place: The Permanent Working Group on Cotton -- Conclusion -- Chapter 4 A Market without Exchange: Cotton Trade in Egypt -- The World's First Cotton Futures Market and Its Historical Setting -- Alcotexa and Cotton's Associate Price -- We Spend All Our Time in Search of the Price -- Three Traits of Trade -- Cotton Comes to the Market -- Conclusion -- Chapter 5 Growing Cotton and Its Global Market in a Turkish Village -- Field Preparation and Sowing in Pamukköy -- Mechanical and Manual Sowing -- Irrigation -- The Harvest -- The Market: Exchanging Cotton in Pamukköy -- The Traders' Price -- The Farmers' Price.

Conclusion -- Chapter 6 Cotton Fields of Power in Rural Egypt -- Cotton Is Disappearing in Egypt -- An Illegal Alien in the Egyptian Countryside -- Growing Cotton in the Fields of Kafr Gaffar and 'Izbet Sabri -- So Your Egyptians Are Kurds, No? -- The Struggle to Survive: Farmers, Animals, and Stock -- Financing the Plant Stock with Livestock -- The Gamoosa Dies, the Cotton Grows -- Research in the Wild Countryside -- The Harvesting and Marketing of Cotton -- Conclusion -- Conclusion: What Is a Global Market? -- Bridging the Global and the Regional -- The Rural Fields of Global Markets -- The Production and Exchange of Cotton -- The Market Fields of Power -- What Is to Be Done with the Market -- Glossary -- References -- Index.