Beyond profit-motivated exchange - Some lessons from the study of paid informal work

The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically whether under a market syst em, monetary exchange is always and everywhere based on profit-seeking beha viour. To do this. the paper examines paid informal work, a form of work co nventionally conceptualized as low-paid employment heavily imbued with prof it motivations on the part of both the consumer and supplier. Using structu red interviews with 400 households in UK lower-income urban neighbourhoods, however, this paper shows that most paid informal exchange is seldom under taken by either purchasers or suppliers to achieve maximum money gains. Ins tead, it is mostly conducted for and by close social relations for reasons associated with redistribution and sociality. In line with recent developme nts in economic geography associated with the 'cultural turn/s', therefore. this paper points not only to the social-embeddedness of paid informal exc hange but also to how, at least in these UK lower-income neighbourhoods, th e increasing penetration of monetary exchange has not marched hand-in-hand with marker, relations. In this extensive and growing sphere of monetary ex change, the profit motive is largely absent. Consequently, rather than cons truing paid informal work as the ultimate manifestation of unbridled profit -motivated capitalism, this paper instead shows such work to be a large alt ernative economic space within contemporary capitalism where monetary excha nge is embedded in alternative social relations, motivations and pricing me chanisms.