The narrative economy of Western Australian truffle markets

This thesis contributes to the emerging discipline of business anthropology as it relates to ritual symbolism in capitalist market culture. It advances the notion of ‘the narrative economy’ to explain how capital values are subtly negotiated in Western Australian truffle markets. Producers compete for social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital through staging elaborate ritualised trade narratives. These narratives are not merely textual, verbal and pictorial, but performative and embodied. The narrative economy of Western Australian truffle markets is a high risk field in which producers, consumers, and other market actors all contribute to the development of the narrative whole.