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The objective of this volume is to apply the economic sociology perspective to issues of work broadly defined. Economic sociology is a vibrant area of research investigating how social structures, power allocations and cultural understandings shape the production, consumption, distribution and exchange of goods and services. The volume consists of three parts. Contributors of this title include prominent senior scholars and promising junior researchers from some of the most eminent academic institutions like Princeton University, Duke University, Brown University, the University of California-Berkeley, and Ecole Normale Superieur, Paris, France.

Talcott Parsons' important legacy in the field of economic sociology still remains underestimated. The paper pays Parsons his due, without avoiding criticism. The paper focuses on his most mature work in this field, i.e. "Economy and Society", co-authored with Neil Smelser. Many weaknesses in Parsonian approach are rooted in his methodological outlook, in particular his anti-empricism that leads him to prefer conceptual methods over the facts, which preference, in turn, is responsible for many substantive omissions and errors Parsons commits. Nevertheless, some of his ideas, such as an input-output paradigm, or even his famous AGIl scheme have proved to be mor fruitful. Many critical points made by Parsons' opponents are, therefore, found to be irrelevant or misplaced. This refers in particular to an interesting and innovative in a number of respects theory of money.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Tables and Figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- I The Classics in Economic Sociology -- II Contemporary Economic Sociology -- III Economic Organization -- IV Firms -- V Economic and Sociological Approaches to Markets -- VI Markets in History -- VII Politics and the Economy -- VIII Law and the Economy -- IX Culture and Economic Development -- X Culture, Trust, and Consumption -- XI Gender and the Economy -- XII The Cat's Dilemma and Other Questions from Economic Sociologists -- References -- Index

The purpose of this book is to explore new developments in the field of economic sociology. It contains cutting-edge theoretical discussions by some of the world's leading economic sociologists, with chapters on topics such as the economic convention, relational sociology, economic identity, economy and law, economic networks and institutions.

The purpose of this book is to explore new developments in the field of economic sociology. It contains cutting-edge theoretical discussions by some of the world's leading economic sociologists, with chapters on topics such as the economic convention, relational sociology, economic identity, economy and law, economic networks, and institutions.

In this brief paper I will argue that economic sociology would do well to follow the example of political economy in this respect and pay more attention to analytical economics and its ideas. Contemporary economic sociology, I argue, focuses far too much on social relations and views the impact of these as the explanation to most of what happens in the economy. What is wrong with this approach is that it disregards the importance of interests or the forces that drive human behavior, not least in the economy. What needs to be done – and this will be the red thread throughout this paper – is to combine social relations and interests in one and the same analysis. If we do this, I argue, we may be able to unite some of the basic insights from economics, with some of the basic insights from sociology (e.g. Swedberg 2003). As opposed to modern economics, economic sociology does not have a core of basic concepts and ideas, welded together over a long period of time. Instead economic sociology, mirroring sociology itself, consists of a number of competing perspectives, some more coherent than others. Many economic sociologists, for example, draw on social constructivist perspective, others on a Weberian perspective; some follow Mark Granovetter in emphasizing embeddedness, others Pierre Bourdieu in approaching the analysis of the economy with the concepts of field, habitus and different types of capital. The reader who is interested in an introduction to these different perspectives is referred to The Handbook of Economc Sociology (Smelser and Swedberg 1994; second edition forthcoming in 2005). In what follows I shall first discuss two of the most important concepts in modern economic sociology – embeddedness (including networks) and field. I will then proceed to a discussion of two concepts that I argue should be at the center of contemporary economic sociology: a sociological concept of interest and an interest-based concept of institutions.

enth.

In the first edition of the Handbook, published in 1994, we as editors ventured the judgment that, in the previous 15 years, economic sociology had enjoyed a remarkable renaissance, following on a season of relative quiescence. This led us to believe that the time was ripe for a consolidating publication that told about the past, assessed the present, and looked toward the future. The decade following that volume's appearance seemed to validate those assessments, if the amount of critical attention given, sizable and sustained sales, and course adoptions are taken as measures. If anything, the book's fortunes surpassed our expectations. Furthermore, the momentum of economic sociology as an enterprise has accelerated in the meantime. The quality and quantity of research have remained high; new and young talent continues to flow into the field; sociology departments in half a dozen or more leading research universities have established centers of excellence in economic sociology; courses in economic sociology have become standard fare in the curricula of most colleges and universities; and a section on economic sociology has formed and now thrives in the American Sociological Association. All these circumstances have convinced us that a second, fully updated edition of the Handbook is needed, and we are more confident of this judgment than we were the first time around. While the first edition still contains much of value to scholars and students, the knowledge it contains has in some cases been superseded by advances in the meantime. To take these into account—and also to accelerate the development of economic sociology— we had to undertake a wholesale revamping of the first edition. Fully two-thirds of the chapters in this second edition are either new or have authors different from those in the first. Despite this transformation, we found that the general intellectual architecture of the first edition remained a good organizing framework for the second. Thus, part I (chapters 1–6) is a series of general considerations of the field from a variety of different perspectives; part II (chapters 7–21), which we call the economic core, deals with economic systems, economic institutions, and economic behavior behavior. Part III (chapters 22–30) concerns a number of intersections among the economy and various noneconomic sectors of the society. Within this general frame the reader will find the following substantial thematic changes: • Two chapters on international and global concerns (contrasted with the single chapter in the first edition), with international aspects covered in other chapters as well • A chapter on behavioral economics, which continues as a vibrant subfield of economics • A chapter by Pierre Bourdieu on economic anthropology; Bourdieu had agreed to write such a chapter but his untimely death in 2002 prevented this; still wishing to have him represented, we are printing the English translation of "Principes d'une anthropologie économique," which is published on pp. 233–70 in Les structures sociales de l'économie (Paris: Seuil, 2000) • A chapter on new lines of institutional analysis in economics and sociology • A chapter on the transitions from socialist economies (replacing the earlier chapter on socialist economies themselves) • A chapter on labor markets and trade unions • A chapter on the sociology of work and the professions • A chapter on culture and consumption • A chapter on the sociology of money and credit • A chapter on law and the economy • A chapter on technology and the economy • A chapter on emotions and the economy We regard these changes as reflecting recent shifts in emphasis and active lines of research in economic sociology. We now provide a brief supplement to the table of contents, intended as a guide to readers wishing to delve selectively into the volume according to their specific interests. For those interested in learning about the scope of sociology we recommend chapter 1 ("Introducing Economic Sociology"). The remainder of part I contains chapters on comparative and historical treatments of economy and society in chapter 2 ("Comparative and Historical Approaches to Economic Sociology," by Frank Dobbin), recent developments in institutional analysis of the economy in chapter 3 ("The New Institutionalisms in Economics and Sociology" by Victor Nee), Pierre Bourdieu's critical anthropological formulations in chapter 4 ("Principles of an Economic Anthropology"), developments in behavioral economics, which has made its main business the modification of the psychological assumptions of neoclassical economics and tracing the implications of these modifications (chapter 5, "Behavioral Economics," by Roberto Weber and Robyn Dawes), and an assessment of the scattered literature on the role that emotions play in economic life (chapter 6, "Emotions and the Economy," by Mabel Berezin). The first section of part II takes a look at sociological aspects of economies at the macroscopic— including the global—level. We introduce the section with the chapter by Ian Morris and J. G. Manning on the economic sociology of the classical civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome (chapter 7, "The Economic Sociology of the Ancient Mediterranean World"). Next comes a general chapter on the international economy (chapter 8, "The Global Economy: Organization Governance, and Development," by Gary Gereffi), and one on its governance (chapter 9, "The Political and Economic Sociology of International Economic Arrangements," by Neil Fligstein). Finally, Lawrence King and Iván Szelényi develop a distinctive perspective on the varieties of transition from socialist to post-socialist economies (chapter 10, "Post-Communist Economic Systems"). The second section of part II—"The Sociology of Economic Institutions and Economic Behavior"— reaches to the heart of economic activity itself. The section begins with three chapters on markets, the core economic institutions. Richard Swedberg (chapter 11, "Markets in Society") treats the subject from a sociological and historical point of view. Wolfgang Streeck (chapter 12, "The Sociology of Labor Markets and Trade Unions") concentrates on the market for labor services, and Linda Brewster Stearns and Mark Mizruchi (chapter 13, "Banking and Financial Markets") deal with a range of markets that have only recently commanded significant sociological attention. The sociology of the production side of the economic process is the topic of Andrew Abbott's contribution (chapter 14, "Sociology of Work and Occupations"). Viviana Zelizer explores the diversity of ways in which cultural factors infuse consumption (chapter 15, "Culture and Consumption"), and Bruce Carruthers synthesizes past and present literature on the social aspects of money and credit (chapter 16, "The Sociology of Money and Credit"). Two additional chapters deal with the less formal aspects of economic life. The important work on networks in the economy is covered in chapter 17 ("Networks and Economic Life," by Laurel Smith-Doerr and Walter Powell); and the complex and seemingly contradictory nature of the informal economy is analyzed in chapter 18 ("The Informal Economy," by Alejandro Portes and William Haller). The third secion of part II—"The Sociology of Firms, Organizations, and Industry"—draws mainly from organization theory and general economic sociology. Mark Granovetter updates and reassesses the character of business groups in a comparative context (chapter 19, "Business Groups and Social Organization"). Howard Aldrich examines the nature of entrepreneurial activity and entrepreneurs in chapter 20 ("Entrepreneurship"), and Gerald Davis examines a number of environments of business firms—especially other business firms—in chapter 21 ("Firms and Environments"). Part III—"Intersections of the Economy"— deals with the mutual penetration of economic activity and many "noneconomic" sectors of society. Three chapters address the most important aspects of the economy and the polity. The first is on the state in general (chapter 22, "The State and the Economy," by Fred Block and Peter Evans). Lauren Edelman and Robin Stryker focus on law as a special aspect of state activity (chapter 23, "A Sociological Approach to Law and the Economy"), while Evelyne Huber and John Stephens assess recent developments in the welfare state and a number of assessments of those developments (chapter 24, "Welfare States and the Economy"). Two additional chapters deal with economic intersections with the institutions of education (chapter 25, "Education and the Economy," by Mary Brinton) and religion (chapter 26, "New Directions in the Study of Religion and Economic Life," by Robert Wuthnow). Chapters 27 ("Gender and Economic Sociology," by Paula England and Nancy Folbre) and 28 ("The Ethnic Economy," by Ivan Light) deal with the embeddedness of the socially constructed dimensions of gender and ethnicity in economic life. The volume is rounded out by a chapter on technology (chapter 29, "Technology and the Economy," by Giovanni Dosi, Luigi Orsenigo, and Mauro Sylos Labini), and one on economic- environmental relations (chapter 30, "The Economy and the Environment," by Allan Schnaiviii berg). Both these final topics have significant international aspects. We conclude with the hope that the stocktaking of economic sociology contained in this Handbook, as well as its attempts to drive the field forward by selecting a few new important areas, will be successful. Economic sociology, we are convinced, currently represents one of the leading edges of sociology, as well as one of its most important interdisciplinary adventures.

AbstractThe discipline is at a crossroads. Will sociology answer ASA past president Aldon Morris' call for an emancipatory sociology? Or will sociology, as Morris puts it, "continue pretending to be an aloof, objective, detached science"? Recently, Hirschman and Garbes issued a call for an economic sociology of race, wherein they contend that race and racism are not central to economic sociology and that economic sociologists don't engage with contemporary race scholarship. In this paper, I assess and build upon their call. I argue that while the article importantly calls for understanding race and racism in economic sociology, in practice, it—used here as an example of a broader pattern within economic sociology—re‐centers whiteness and men, reifies elitism, and erases marginalized scholars and their contributions. I set forth an alternative perspective. To rise to the Du Boisian challenge, scholars need to critique racialized modernity as Itzigsohn and Brown importantly argue. We must also root our sociological consciousness, citation practices, and conversations in existing, yet marginalized, research. Failure to do so means future research risks reproducing inequities in the discipline and continuing to marginalize the very people, theories, and research that an emancipatory sociology is meant to address.

AbstractRace is central to economic life, but race is not central to economic sociology. We argue that economic sociologists should treat racism as a constitutive, structuring force, analytically co-equal with capitalism, patriarchy and nationalism. Our article has three aims. First, we document how canonical and award-winning works of economic sociology do not discuss race and racism, and do not engage with the contemporary sociology of race. Second, we identify six key insights from the sociology of race and suggest how they could influence economic sociology: the emergence of race out of racism, an understanding of racism as structural, the role of whiteness, the intersections between racism and other systems of oppression, the ideology of colorblind racism and the fundamental connections between racism and capitalism. Third, we conclude by discussing recent research that bridges the two subfields and lays the groundwork for an understanding of 'racialized markets' and 'racialized economies'.