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This paper attempts to clarify the concept of relational work for understanding economic life as proposed by Viviana Zelizer. To do so, it first compares the concept to similar notions used in other disciplinary fields. Second, it reinterprets some exemplary economic sociology studies by using the relational work lens to clarify the concept's utility for empirical analysis. Third, it speculates about the place of relational work in the theoretical toolkit of economic sociologists, in particular its relation to embeddedness. The paper concludes by arguing for the utility of the concept to integrate structural, cultural, and power-focused analyses of economic life, to highlight the often-overlooked role of emotions in economic exchange, and to ground an alternative to rational action theory in economic sociology.

Economic sociology needs more ideas, and in this article the author suggests that economic sociologists may want to explore what a rigorous interpretive economic sociology along Weberian lines would look like. One way to proceed in an enterprise of this type would be to apply the model of analysis that can be found in chapter 1 of Economy and Society to economic sociology and its problems. This means that one has to graft onto economic sociology such key ideas and key concepts in Weber's interpretive sociology as adequate causation, the need to always explore the meaning of actors, and what consequences these meanings have for the resulting action. What a concrete Weberian type of interpretive economic sociology will be like cannot, however, be determined this way. It needs instead to be worked out through concrete, empirical analysis.

The second edition, while being as all-embracing in its coverage as the first edition, represents a wholesale revamping. Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg have kept the main overall framework intact, but nearly two-thirds of the chapters are new or have new authors. As in the first edition, they bring together leading sociologists as well as representatives of other social sciences. But the chapters of this work incorporate many substantial thematic changes and new lines of research--for example, more focus on international and global concerns, chapters on institutional analysis, the transition from socialist economies, organization and networks, and the economic sociology of the ancient world

The sociological study of economic activity has witnessed a significant resurgence. Recent texts have chronicled economic sociology's nineteenth-century origins while pointing to the importance of context and power in economic life, yet the field lacks a clear understanding of the role that concepts at different levels of abstraction play in its organization. Economic Sociology fills this critical gap by surveying the current state of the field while advancing a framework for further theoretical development. Alejandro Portes examines economic sociology's principal assumptions, key explanatory concepts, and selected research sites. He argues that economic activity is embedded in social and cultural relations, but also that power and the unintended consequences of rational purposive action must be factored in when seeking to explain or predict economic behavior

Abstract:Economic sociology was a core concern of early political economists like Smith, Marx, Pareto, and Marshall. The new economic sociology has sought to revive the neglected subdiscipline using the construct of interpersonal networks. Richard Swedberg has assembled 42 substantial papers in this collection. This article, reviewing his selection, proceeds in three stages. First, it provides a general framework for the debate. Second, it discusses the papers specifically linked to networks. Third, it analyses the contributions that go beyond the concept of social processes as personal relationships.

Cover Page -- Half-title Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication Page -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: The New Study of Capitalism -- The Economic Sociology of Capitalism: An Introduction and Agenda -- Capitalism and Economic Growth -- Organizational Dynamics of Institutional Change:Politicized Capitalism in China -- Still Disenchanted? The Modernity of Postindustrial Capitalism -- The Challenges of the "Institutional Turn": New Interdisciplinary Opportunities in Development Theory -- Part II: Institutions of American Capitalism -- States, Markets, and Economic Growth -- Venture Capital and Modern Capitalism -- The Economic Sociology of Organizational Entrepreneurship: Lessons from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies -- Making Sense of Recession: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Economic Action -- Information Inequality and Network Externalities: A Comparative Study of the Diffusion of Television and the Internet -- Affective Attachment in Electronic Markets: A Sociological Study of eBay -- Circuits within Capitalism -- Part III: Global Transformation and Institutional Change -- Brain Circulation and Capitalist Dynamics: Chinese Chipmaking and the Silicon Valley-Hsinchu-Shanghai Triangle -- The Globalization of Stock Markets and Convergence in Corporate Governance -- Fiscal Sociology in an Age of Globalization: Comparing Tax Regimes in Advanced Capitalist Countries -- Trouble in Paradise: Institutions in the Japanese Economy and the Youth Labor Market -- List of Contributors -- Index.

The book offers an in-depth analysis of sociology, e.g. such classics as Weber, Parsons and Homans and its adjacent social sciences Other special reference to economics, including public choice theory, property rights theory, the Austrian school and others. This discussion submits many fresh observations; giving the theories under consideration their due, it at the same time exposes their flaws. In addition, the book contains a constructive programme of the research field in question termed ...

Not only sociologists but also economists have made important contributions to economic sociology. Which particular works by economists are relevant in this context is indicated with the help of Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, a work unique in that it traces not only the history of economic theory but also that of economic sociology. Three main traditions appear in economic sociology, which are still fairly unexplored: the German tradition of Wirtschajissoziologie (1890-1930), the French tradition of sociologie economique (1890-1930), and the US tradition of "economy and society" (1950s). Since the 1970s a revival of interest in economic institutions has occurred especially in the United States, and a new economic sociology has come into being. Both economists and sociologists helped to create this new economic sociology. Economists have developed an approach known as New Institutional Economics. The main idea here is to explain the emergence and functioning of economic institutions with the help of microeconomics. Sociologists have developed an approach to economic sociology, sometimes referred to as the "new sociology of economic life." This approach attempts to analyze core economic problems, as opposed to the problems traditionally left over by the economists for the sociologists to solve. Today's sociologists have done important work, particularly on the role of networks in the economy, on the structure of economic organizations, and on the role of culture in economic life. Though some weaknesses hamper both new institutional economics and the new sociology of economic life, they have breathed new life and vigor into economic sociology.

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