Market system curation: Placing care at the heart of markets

Amid growing imperatives for markets to advance equity, inclusion, and sustainability, we ask: how can market systems be reconfigured toward more socially and environmentally sustainable agendas? We develop an integrated account of care as a market capability. Through a longitudinal ethnographic study, we conceptualize market system curation as a mode of intervention enabling gentle market transformation. We show how care is enacted through the interrelated mechanisms of infusion , consolidation , and scaling out , and is sustained through their ongoing constituent practices. Infusion activates care through attunement, responsibilization and mutualization; consolidation stabilizes care through inscription, maintenance, and governance; and scaling out extends care through translation, extension, and codification, therefore influencing adjacent markets and field-level norms. In contrast to disruptive or oppositional approaches, market system curation demonstrates how markets can evolve from within. We offer guidance for organizations seeking to build inclusive and sustainable market systems supporting non-extractive, socially responsive markets.