logo

Economic Sociology

Economic Sociology

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Economic sociology breaks down financial ponders, for case, markets, organizations, property rights, and work utilizing the gadgets of sociology.

It offers monetary hypothesis' thought with respect to the portion of interface and soundness, however moreover emphasizes the centrality of social relations and social foundations.

Economic Sociology

A

Associação Portuguesa de Profissionais em Sociologia Industrial, das Organizações e do Trabalho (APSIOT) - Portuguese Association for Sociology of Industry, Organizations and Work

B

Bibliography on Economic Sociology - Albert Benschop (Amsterdam, Netherlands).

E

  • Economic History Server (EHS)
    A mega site on economic history, offering directories, list archives, book reviews, data files, links and abstracts in Economic History. It also harbors the Economic History Association (EHA) and the Journal of Economic History (JEH).
  • Economic History Society (EHS)
    EHS supports research and teaching in economic and social history. It publishes Economic History Review (EHR)
  • Economic Sociology_The Eurupean website 
    Provides relevant and updated informatoin for scholars interested in economic sociology, with an emphasis on developments in Europe. The newsletter’s contributions are peer-reviewed and driven by the idea of free access to information and open communication. The website is maintained by researchers and staff of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany.
  • Economic Sociology Program (ESP) - MITSloan Management
  • Economic Sociology & Political Economy (ES-PE) 
    A global academic community that brings together researchers, practitioners and activists interested in these fields of study and life. Our primary purpose is to disseminate the insights of socio-political research of the economy to the public and academics. Run by Oleg Komlik.
  • Economic Sociology Section of the ASA (American Sociological Assiciation 
    Home page for economic sociologist, presenting the newsletter of the section: Accounts.
  • Economic Sociology & Organizational Studies - University of Pennsylvania, USA
  • Economics Degree
    A Guide to 110+ Accredited Economics Degrees. Includes a list of Top 100 sistes for enlightened economists.
  • EconPapers
    EconPapers provides access to the largest collection of online eoconomics working papers and journal articles. The majority of the full text files are freely available, but some require that you subscribe to the service providing the full text file. Editor: Sune Karlsson.
  • EconWPA - Economics Working Paper Archive
    One of the largest archives of electronic working papers untill 2006. Washington University of St Louis.
  • Entrepreneuwship Seminar
    A list of links to entrepeneurship web sites edited by Howard E. Aldrich (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.).
  • European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) 
    The main purpose is to promote evolutionary, dynamic and realistic approaches to economic theory and policy. Instead of the over-formalistic and often empty theorising of orthodox economics, the aim is to bring together the ideas of a number of theorists and theoretical traditions, and to help to develop a more realistic and adequate approach to theory and policy.
  • European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS)
    A scholarly association which aims to further the theoretical and/or empirical advancement of knowledge about organizations, organizing and the contexts in which organizations operate. One of its main aims is to maintain and provide a voice for the critical and analytical approaches of its members to the study of organization worldwide.

I

  • IDEAS - Internet Documents in Economics Access Service 
    Information about working papers to the economic profession. Editor: Christian Zimmerman (Center for Research on Economic Fluctuations and Emploiyment, University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada). Claim to be the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and available freely on the internet. Over 1,900,000 items of research can be browsed or searched, and over 1,700,000 can be downloaded in full text.
  • Information Rules 
    A strategic guid to the nework economy, by Carl Shapiro and by Hal R. Varian.
  • International Survey of Economic Attitudes (ISEA) 
    A collaborative international project which conducts tri-annual surveys in half a dozen nations, each bases on large, representative national sampels. The ISEA is an off-shoot of the International Social Survey Programme's long established ‘Ideology of Inequality’ project.

J

JEL Classification System / EconLit Subject Descriptors
The JEL classification system was developed for use in the Journal of Economic Literature(JEL), and is a standard method of classifying scholarly literature in the field of economics. The system is used to classify articles, dissertations, books, book reviews, and working papers in EconLit, and in many other applications.

M

  • MovingIdeas - Economic Policy 
    Robert Reich's old outfit. Includes regular collums from Galbraith, Kuttner, and Robert B. Reich. These pages are part of the the Policy Action Network, a project of The American Prospect magazine.
  • Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA) 
    A repository that disseminates research papers of economists who want to make their work freely available through the RePEc network but are not affiliated with any institution that provides that furtherance.

N

New Economic Papers (NEP)  - UK 
NEP is an announcement service which filters information on new releases of working papers into edited reports. These reports are generated by subject-specific editors and are circulated via email. The goal of the NEP project and the associated announcement lists is to provide subscribers with up-to-date information on new additions to the research literature.

O

  • Organizations and Markets (O&M;)
    A blog created in April 2006 by Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein, professors with research interests spanning organizational economics, strategic management, entrepreneurship, innovation, the economics of institutions, and the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. The authors are influenced by mainstream approaches in economics and management, by the emerging disciplines of transaction cost economics and capabilities theory, and by the alternative traditions of Austrian and evolutionary economics.
  • OrgTheory
    A blog on organizational theory. In line with the maxim of Alexis de Tocqueville: “The science of association is the mother science; the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one.”

S

  • Sheffield Political Economy Research Centre (SPERI) - Sheffield University, UK
    A centre of excellence in multi-disciplinary research on the current transformation of industrial societies and of the global economic and political order. Its objectives: contribute to the search for a new intellectual framework and policy approach, capable of addressing the problems of a new era; play an energetic part in international, national and regional policy debates; establish links with commentators, research institutes and think-tanks both in Britain and abroad; establish a dialogue with the local and regional communities, ensuring that their needs and concerns are properly reflected in its research; involve policy-makers & opinion-formers from the public and private sectors in its work.
  • Socializing Finance
    A blog on the social studies of finance
  • Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE)
    An international, inter-disciplinary academic organization that brings together specialist on the domains of economics, sociology, political science, organization studies, management, psychology, law and history.

T

Tinbergen Institute 
Research institute and graduate school of economics. The Institute is founded in 1987 and named after Professor Jan Tinbergen, Dutch Nobel Prize laureate in economics in 1969. The Tinbergen Institute is located in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

W

Journals & Magazines

  • Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales (ARSS) 
    Publishes articles, research notes and field reports in sociology and other kindred disciplines.
  • American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) 
    A peer-reviewed academic journal that encourages the development of transdisciplinary solutions to social problems. AJES is publishing thematic issues on institutional responses to contemporary disruptions of social harmony and environmental sustainability.
  • Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (CJRES)
    An international multi-disciplinary journal publishing refereed papers on the spatial dimensions of contemporary socio-economic-political change. CJRES aims to be policy-relevant, and each issue is devoted to a specific topic.
  • Capitalism & Society
    An ppen access journal published by the Center on Capitalism and Society in close collaboration with the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). The journal publishes scholarly work and provides a forum for discourse around ideas that may not yet be proven.
  • Contributions to Political Economy (CPE)
    A forum for the academic discussion of original ideas and arguments drawn from important critical traditions in economic analysis. Articles fall broadly within the lines of thought associated with the work of the classical political economists, Marx, Keynes, and Sraffa. While the majority of articles are theoretical and historical in emphasis, the journal welcomes articles of a more applied character.
  • Economic History Review (ECHR) 
    A peer-reviewd history journal published on behalf of the Economic History Society (EHS). Many issues contain an essay under the heading «Surveys and Speculations» which discusses a particular problem in economic and social history in an adventurous way. The extensive «Book review» section in each issue provides a guide to the latest literature on economic and social history in the British Isles and throughout the rest of the world. Each volume also contains «Essays in Bibliography and Criticism» which are designed to bring readers up to date with the latest writings on a particular country and topical themes in economic and social history.
  • Economics & Sociology
    A quarterly international academic journal published by Centre of Sociological Research(Ukraine) in co-operation with Mykolas Romeris University (Lithuania), Academy of Economic Sciences in Bucharest (Romania) and University of Szczecin (Poland). The topical framework of the journal includes (but is not limited to): advancing socio-economic analysis of societies and economies, institutions and organizations, social groups, networks and relationships.
  • Economic Sociology_The European Website
    Provides relevant and updated information for scholars interested in economic sociology, with an emphasis on developments in Europe.
  • Economist, The 
    The international weekly journal of news, ideas, opinion and analysis. The online Library lets you browse the two most recent past issues of The Economist each week, plus all of the surveys since March 1997 and a Special Collection of dozens of key articles from past issues.
  • Economy and Society
    An interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal of theory and politics. It covers questions ranging from economic governance to developments in the life sciences and beyond, and publishes major new work on current issues confronting progressive politics throughout Europe and the Americas, Africa, Australasia and the Pacific Rim.
  • International Journal of Social Economics (IJSE) 
    A forum for the exchange and sharing of information in social economics. The focus of the journal is the impact of economic activity on individuals in community, and its wider social meanings and consequences. IJSE explores the nature and ethical implications of social-economic problems, as these are analysed by geographers, historians, philosophers, political economists, political scientists, social and political theorists, sociologists, and theologians interested in social problems, as well as business academics.
  • Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly the Journal of Socio-Economics)
    An academic peer-reviewd journal that publishes contributions in behavioral economics, experimental economics, economic psychology, and judgment and decision making.
  • Journal of Consumer Culture
    A peer reviewed journal which promotes multidisciplinary research focused on consumption and consumer culture. Publishing three times a year, it adopts a global perspective critically drawing on both theory and empirical research within history, anthropology, media studies, sociology, marketing, geography, and beyond.
  • Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE)
  • Journal of Institutional Economics (JIE)
    An interdisciplinary journal that is of interest to all academics working in the social sciences, particularly in economics and business studies. It is devoted to the study of the nature, role and evolution of institutions in the economy, ncluding firms, states, markets, money, households and other vital institutions and organizations. It welcomes contributions by all schools of thought that can contribute to our understanding of the features, development and functions of real world economic institutions and organizations.
  • Journal of Economic History (JEH)
    Promotes the scholarly study of economic aspects of the human past from a diversity of perspectives, notably those of economists and historians, and to stimulate discourse among scholars with varied interests and modes of inquiry. The journal is published on behalf of the Economic History Association (EHA).
  • Journal of Economic Literature (JEL)
    JEL is designed to help economists keep abreast of the vast flow of literature. JEL issues contain commissioned, peer-reviewed survey and review articles, book reviews, an annotated bibliography of new books classified by subject matter, and an annual index of dissertations in North American universities.
  • Monthly Review 
    An independent socialist magazine published monthly in New York City. Topics of concern have included poverty, unequal distribution of incomes and wealth, racism, imperialism in relations between economically developed and less developed nations, and inefficiencies in production and distribution seen as endemic to the capitalist system.
  • New Political Economy (NPE)
    A forum for work which combines the breadth of vision which characterised the classical political economy of the nineteenth century with the analytical advances of twentieth century social science. It seeks to represent the terrain of political economy scholarship across different disciplines, emphasising original and innovative work which explores new approaches and methodologies, and addresses core debates and issues of historical and contemporary relevance.
  • Rationality, Markets and Morals (RMM) 
    RMM offers a forum to all scholars interested in problems at the intersection of philosophy and economics, whether they are looking at economic problems from a philosophical point of view, are applying economic methods in investigating philosophical problems, or are engaging issues concerning the common foundations of both disciplines as, for instance, in the theory of rational decision making.
  • Rethinking Marxism 
    A peer-reviewed journal produced by the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA). The journal stimulates interest in and debate over the explanatory power and social consequences of Marxian economic, cultural, and social analysis. To that end, it publishes studies that seek to discuss, elaborate, and/or extend Marxian theory. One distinguishing aim of this journal is to ensure that class is an important part, but not the exclusive focus, of Marxism. It is therefore interested in the complex intersection of class with economic, political, psychological, and all other social processes.
  • Review of Austrian Economy (RAE)
    Promotes the development and extension of Austrian economics and the analysis of contempory issues in the mainstream of economics from an Austrian perspective.
  • Review of Political Economy (RPE)
    A peer-reviewed journal publishes constructive and critical contributions in all areas of political economy, including the Austrian, Behavioral Economics, Feminist Economics, Institutionalist, Marxian, Post Keynesian, and Sraffian traditions. The Review publishes both theoretical and empirical research, and is also open to submissions in methodology, economic history and the history of economic thought that cast light on issues of contemporary relevance in political economy.
  • Review of Radical Political Economics (RRPE) 
    A peer-reviewed quarterly for innovative research in non-orthodox economics. RRPE promotes critical inquiry into all areas of economic, social, and political reality with articles covering all areas of political economy including, but not confined to, Marxian economics, post-Keynesian economics, Sraffian economics, feminist economics, and radical institutional economics.
  • Review of Social Economy (RSE)
    A peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles on the relationships between social values and economics. Papers published range from conceptual work on aligning economic institutions and policies with given ethical principles, to theoretical representations of individual behaviour that allow for both self-interested and pro-social motives, and to original empirical work on persistent social issues such as poverty, inequality, and discrimination. Published on behalf of the Association for Social Economics (ASE).
  • Revue Française de Socio-Économie (RFSE)
    A multi-disciplinary journal that publishes articles that contribute to a better understanding of actual economic practices. It provides a forum for debating the essential characteristics of socio-economics and is open to all the various empirical approaches adopted in the social sciences. 
  • Socio-Economic Review (SER)
    Encourages work on the relationship between society, economy, institutions and markets, moral commitments and the rational pursuit of self-interest. SER seeks articles that focus on economic action in its social and historical context. Papers are drawn from sociology, political science, economics and the management and policy sciences. The journal encourages papers that seek to recombine disciplinary domains in response to practically relevant issues, while at the same time encouraging the development of new theory.
  • Stato e Mercato 
    An Italian journal that publishes comparative and inter-disciplinary analyses focused on the relationship between the economy and institutions. The journal aims to study transformations in contemporary societies, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of different models of socio-economic organization. It explores both the European integration process and the transformation of the economy internationally and globally. Specific attention is devoted to the institutional changes taking place in Italy, in Western countries and in emerging economies.
  • Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (SCED)
    A articles about theoretical, applied and methodological aspects of structural change in economic systems. An important aim is to facilitate communication among research institutes and individual researchers who are actively engaged in the study of structural change.

Courses in Economic Sociology

  • Peter J. Boettke - George Mason University, USA
    A survey in the developments in the field of economic sociology. Special emphasis is placed on the analytical puzzles that emerge from the issue of embeddedness at the individual actor, firm, market structure, and political economy levels. All action is within a context, and we will explore the nature in which the institutional context of decision affects individual action and social interaction.
  • Mark Granovetter - Stanford University, USA
    This course reviews changes in how various social science disciplines have explained the economy over the last several hundred years, and then zeroes in on the sociological approach. That approach is sometimes complementary, sometimes supplementary, and sometimes contrary to the explanations offered by standard contemporary economics, depending on the particular subject. The fundamental premise is that a deep understanding of the economy requires attention to how social structure and institutions shape information flow, trust, cooperation, norms, morality, power and domination, in economic action and interaction.
  • Economic & Political Sociology - Dept. of Sociology, New York University, USA 
    A workshop that strives to build a community of graduate students and faculty who share an interest in political economy, development, the state and state policies, economic sociology, labor and social movements, and related topics.
  • Video Lectures, Talks & Discussions
    • [05.04.2005] Reich: How Unequal Can America Get Before We Snap? [59:45]
      Robert Reich, a visiting professor at the UC, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and former U.S. Secretary of Labor talks about the inequality of income, wealth and opportunity in the United States and asks his audience to speculate on what will happen if these trends continue. Presented by University of California Television (UCTV).
    • [21.03.2008] Robert Reich: Supercapitalism [1:17:05]
    • [12.10.2009] Oliver Williamson — Organizational Economics [2:09]
      Oliver Williamson, co-winner of the Nobel Economics Prize, talks with Bloomberg’s Matt Miller and Carol Massar about his research. Williamson is a founder of organizational economics, the study of how institutions are created and developed and how they affect growth.
    • [30.11.2010] Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future [49:14]
      Robert Reich examines the aftermath of the economic meltdown arguing that there is a structural problem with an increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top, and a middle class that has had to go deeply into debt to maintain a decent standard of living. He argues that history shows that such a disparity leads to ever greater booms followed by ever deeper busts. Recorded and presented by the University of California Television (UCTV)
    • [03.10.2011] Mark Granovetter: The Concept of Embeddednes [4:17] 
      “Once you take people’s social relationships into account, you have got a different picture of the economy, because a lot of what happens in the economy happens through social relationships: people carry out a lot of their economic activities through social relationships.”
    • [28.02.2013] The Strength of Weak Ties: New animation from Dalton Conley [1:58]
      An animation of Mark Granovetter’ Strength of Weak Ties theses by Dalton Conle: “It is the people with whom we are the least connected who offer us the most opportunities.”
    • [26.03.2013] Neil Fligstein: The spread of the worldwide financial crisis [1:34:37]
    • [17.10.2013] Viktor Nee — Economy & Sociaty Interview [34:44]
      Victor Nee discusses his educational background, research trajectory, recent book and empirical findings, insights into sociology and economics, and future trends. He is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University and the Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society. The Economy & Society Interview Series is a casual yet intellectually engaging conversation with leading scholars throughout the social sciences. The interview series is produced by the Center for the Study of Economy and Society (CSES) at Cornell University.
    • [19.11.2013] Howard Aldrich — Economy & Society Interview [39:16]
      In this interview Howard Aldrich discusses his educational background, research trajectory, recent book and empirical findings, insights into sociology and economics, and future trends. Aldrich is a Professor & Department Chair of Sociology, and Adjunct Professor of Management in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Economy & Society Interview Series is a casual yet intellectually engaging conversation with leading scholars throughout the social sciences. The interview series is produced by the Center for the Study of Economy and Society (CSES) at Cornell University.
    • [18.03.2014] Geoffrey M. Hodgson — Inequality: Sources and Solutions [1:46:01]
    • [12.12.2014] Geoffrey M. Hodgson — The Future of Work in the Twenty-First Century[43:49]
    • [06.03.2015] Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz: The Genius of Economics [1:15:38]
      Krugman and his fellow Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz (author of The Great Divide) join Piketty to discuss the genius of economics.
    • [24.03.2015] The Future of Global Capitalism [1:40:25]
    • [29.04.2015] The Great Divide with Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich [57:24]
      Economist Joseph Stiglitz and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich reminisce about opposing ‘corporate welfare’ during their days in the Clinton Administration and talk here about problematic trade deals, income inequality and Stiglitz’s book, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them. Reich and Stiglitz are presented by the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Recorded on 04/29/2015 University of California Television (UCTV).

Articles & Book

  • Aspers, Patrik
  • Aspers, Patrik / Kohl, Sebastian / Roine, Jesper / Wichardt, Philipp 
    [2008] An Economic Sociological Look at Economics
    In: Economic Sociology - the European electronic newsletter, 9(2), March 2008
  • Baloglu, Filiz - Istanbul University, Turkey
    [2004] Economic Sociology in Turkey: A Historical Overview
    In: Economic Sociology 5(1):17-27.
  • Barbera, Filippo - University of Turin, Italy
    [2000] Economic Sociology in Italy
    In: Economic Sociology 1(2):13-18.
  • Beckert, Jens - Free University of Berlin, Germany
    • [2000] Economic Action and Embeddedness - The Problem of the Structure of Action
      A contribution to the development of foundations for a sociological theory of economic action. This implies a substantial break with the teleological structure that informs both rational actor theory and normative theories of action. The understanding of action in economic contexts is based on a non-teleological interpretation of intentionality. Such a theoretical conceptualization brings the interpretative acts of intentionally rational actors to the center.
    • [2000] Ecoonomic Sociology in Germany
      In: Economic Sociology 1(2): 2-8.
  • Benschop, Albert - University of Amsterdam, Netherland
  • Chattoe, Edmund - Univ. of Surrey, U.K.
    [1995] Can Sociologists and Economists Communicate? - The problem of grounding and the theory of consumer theory
    A paper on the difficulties in using economic and sociological theories of consumer decision-making as the basis for a computational model. Chattoe discusses three difficulties: (a) the non-operational nature of many of the theories, and so their explanatory power cannot be assessed using data that can actually be obtained. (b) the difficulty of grounding: what a given theory rests upon by way of lower level constructs and explanations, and (c) the difficulty of reconsiling both the aims and methods of economic and sociological theory.
  • Cross, John
    • [1988] The Informal Sector 
      In: Philip OˆHara (ed) [1988] Encyclopedia of Political Economy. Routledge: London & New York.
      A definition and brief overview of the literature and issues involved in research dealing with the informal economy.
    • [1997] Formalizing the Informal Economy: The Case of Street Vendors in Mexico City
      The government of Mexico City tries to formalize street vending in that city by relocating street vendors in part of the downtown area known as the “Historical Center” into enclosed market buildings. The forces behind the changes in policy towards street vending are analyzed and the weaknesses of the policies are discussed with reference to the powerful street vendor organizations active in the city.
    • [1997] Entrepreneurship & Exploitation: Measuring Independence and Dependence in the Informal Economy
      In: The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 17(1), 1997. 
      A model for measuring exploitation and entrepreneurship within the informal economy. It focuses on their degree of independence from suppliers and clients.
    • [1998] Co-optation, Competition and Resistance: State and Street Vendors in Mexico City 
      It challenges the current “common knowledge” about cooptation theory in Mexico using a case study approach that compares research carried out over a period of three years with four different struggles between street vendors and the city government in Mexico City. Published in Latin American Perspectives, 99(25): 41-61.
    • [1998] Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City
      Stanford University Press.
      As economic crises struck the Third World in the 1970s and 1980s, large segments of the population turned to the informal economy to survive. Though this phenomenon has previously been analyzed from a strictly economic point of view, this book looks at street vending in the largest city in the world, Mexico City, as a political process. Employing a street-level analysis based on intensive participant observation, with interviews, archival research, and surveys, the author presents a view of political processes that provides new theoretical insights into social movements, state institutions, and politics at the fringe of society, where legality blurs into illegality and the informal economy intersects with its political counterpoint—informal politics. By studying political processes at the street level and then tracing them up the political structure, the author also reveals the basic processes by which the Mexican state operates.
    • [2000] Street Vendors, Modernity and Postmodernity - Conflict and Compromise in the Global Economy 
      In: International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 21(1/2). 
      Exploration of street vending and the informal sector within the context of the shift from modernism to postmodernism. Although postmodernism is more open to the informal sector as the economy disaggregates, this also creates new dilemmas for the informal sector, as it is expected to solve the problems of the formal sector by becoming formal.
  • Davies, Glyn  
    History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day
    Monetary history in context from the dawn of civilization to the beginning of the twenty first century, A chronology and a collection of essays.
  • Dodd, Nigel - London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
    [2000] Economic Sociology in the UK 
    In: Economic Sociology 2(1):3-12.
  • Elliot, Rebecca - University of California, Berkeley, USA
    [2015] New Frontiers in Economic Sociology: Socio-Economic Approaches to Sustainability
    In: Economic Sociology 16(2):34-6.
  • Fligstein, Neil 
    • [1996] Markets as politics: a political-cultural approach to market institutions
      In: American Sociological Review, 61: 656-673.
      The metaphor «markets as politics» is used to create a sociological view of action in markets. Fligstein develops a conceptual view of the social institutions that comprise markets, discusses a sociological model of action in which market participants try to create stable worlds and find social solutions to competition, and discusses how markets and states are intimately linked. From these foundations he generates propositions about how politics in market work during various stages of market development. At the formation of markets, when actors in firms are trying to create a status hierarchy that enforces noncompetitive forms of competition, political action resembles social movements. In stable markets, incumbent firms defend their positions against challengers and invaders. During periods of market transformation, invaders can reinstroduce more fluid social-movements-like conditions.
    • [1997] Is Globalization the Cause of the Crises of Welfare States?
      A paper prepared for the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Toronto, Canada in August 1997.
      Economic globalization refers to three related processes: 1) the growth in the world economy, 2) the change in the relations between first and third world countries that has resulted from the use of information technologies to reorganize production nationally and globally, and 3) the integration of world financial markets. These processes are often held responsible for deindustrialization in advanced industrial societies, increases in income inequality, and pressures on welfare states to transform worker protection and benefits. Fligstein demonstrates that the changes in the world economy are much smaller, more gradual, and unevenly spread across societies than the globalization thesis suggests. More important, the links between globalization and its alleged negative outcomes are tenuous at best. The rhetoric of globalization has more to do with the U.S. and changes in its political economy than changes in world trade. A brief concluding discussion considers how this is playing out in western Europe.
    • [1998] Fields, Power, and Social Skill: A Critical Analysis of The New Institutionalisms
      In: International Public Management Review
      “New Institutional” Theories have proliferated across the social sciences. While they have substantial disagreements, they agree that institutions are created to produce local social orders, are social constructions, fundamentally about how powerful groups create rules of interaction and maintain unequal resource distributions, and yet, once in existence, both constrain and enable actors in subsequent institution building. Fligstein presents a critique of these theories that focuses on their inadequate attention to the role of social power and actors in the creation of institutions. An alternative view of the dynamics of institutions is sketched out based on a more sociological conception of rules, resources, and social skill.
    • [2000] The Institutionalization of the Treaty of Rome (with: Alec Stone-Sweet)
    • [2000] Globalization or Europeanization: Evidence on the European Economy Since 1980
      At the core of the European Union (EU), has been the gradual creation of the «single market» across western Europe. The EU began as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and expanded to become the European Economic Community (EEC). The original intent of the ECSC was to stabilize the production of steel across Europe in order to prevent ruinous competition and expanded the activities of the alliance to cooperation in agricultural policies and various industrial policies. To promote free trade and economic growth tariffs and other trade barriers were reduced. The idea was that if the European societies had economies that were more integrated, governments would be less tempted to engage in military activities that would end up in war. Fligstein analyses how Europe became economically integrated. The EU has provided a common set of rules that make it difficult for governments to raise barriers to entry to foreign firms and markets, at least formally, are open. The trade between European countries accounts for a large percentage of GDP and a great deal of the exports from the countries that make up the EU are to other countries in the EU. Globalization in Europe is about «Europeanization».; In spite of this Europeanization national capitalisms across western Europe persist.
    • [2001] Social Skill and the Theory of Fields
      In: Sociological Theory 19: 105-25.
      The problem of the relationship between actors and the social structures in which they are embedded is central to sociological theory. Fligstein suggests that the “new institutionalist” focus on fields, domains, or games provides an alternative view of how to think about this problem by focusing on the construction of local orders. He criticizes the conception of actors in both rational choice and sociological versions of these theories. A more sociological view of action, what is called “social skill” is developed. The idea of social skill originates in symbolic interactionism and is defined as the ability to induce cooperation in others. The idea is elaborated to suggesthow actors are important to the construction and reproduction of local orders. Fligstein shows how its elements already inform existing work.
    • [2001] Organizations: Theoretical Debates and the Scope of Organizational Theory
      Fligstein tries to make sense of the various strands of organizational theory. Organizational theories have three origins: (a) Max Weber’s original work on bureaucracies which came to define the theory for sociologists, (b) a line of theory based in business schools that focusses on the improvement of management control over the work process, and (b) the industrial organization literature in economics. These three original lines of scholarship began to intertwine during the 1960s. There was a broad consensus around the theoretical perspective that could be called either the strategic contingencies or rational adaptation approach. The 1970s until the mid 1980s witnessed a critique of the rational adaptation perspective and the proliferation of alternative theories. Fligstein reviews many of these theories including institutional theory, Marxist, population ecology, power and the political-cultural approach, network approaches, agency theory, transaction cost analysis, network analysis, the idea of path dependence, and economic evolutionary theory. Since the mid 1980s, these theories have come to define the terrain of our studies of firms, governments, and the nonprofit sector.
    • [2003] Myths of the Market
      In: Economic Sociology 4(3)
    • [2004] The shareholder value society: Changes in working conditions and inequality in the U.S., 1975-2000 (with Taek-jin Shin)
      In: K. Neckerman [2004] Social Inequality, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
      During the 1980s shareholder value strategies spread across publicly held corporations in the United States. Corporations were financially reorganized and used the tactics of selling off unrelated product lines, engaging in mergers with firms in similar industries, various financial ploys such as stock buybacks, and downsizing their labor forces. This paper explores the connections between mergers, layoffs, de-unionization, computer technology, and subsequent industry profitability. Mergers occurred in sectors where economic conditions were not good in line with shareholder value arguments. Mergers led to layoffs, consistent with the shareholder value perspective that emphasizes that firms needed to deploy their resources more efficiently as they reorganized. Managers who engaged in mergers invested in computer technology. This technology directly displaced workers through layoffs and was focused on reducing unionized work forces. There is no evidence that mergers or layoffs returned industries to profitability. Only industry growth and computer investment led to increased profits.
    • [2005] Law and Corporate Governance (with: Jennifer Choo)
      In: Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2005, 1:61-84.
      Corporate governance concerns three sets of issues: property rights, relationships between firms and financial markets, and labor relations. The system of corporate governance that emerges within a particular country reflects the outcome of political, social, and economic struggles in that country and that it does not reflect efficiency considerations focused on managing agency relations between owners and managers. The question is whether it is a superior matrix of institutional arrangements or a set of best practices of corporate governance that produces greater economic growth. Hodgson shows that there does not appear to be single set of best practices. What is important are stable institutions that are legitimate and prevent extreme rent seeking on the part of governments and capitalists.
    • [2007] Meanings of methodological individualism
      In: Journal of Economic Methodology, 14(2): 214-226.
      Advocacy of «methodological individualism» is widespread, especially among economists. Hodgson states that the term is rarely defined with adequate precision and explores some crucial ambiguities. Among these is the commonplace ambivalence over whether explanations should be in terms of individuals alone, or in terms of individuals plus relations between them. A great deal hinges on this distinction in explanantia. Explanations in terms of individuals alone have never been achieved. Explanations in terms of individuals plus relations between them introduces social structure alongside individuals in the explanantia. Serious questions remain whether this version warrants the one-sided emphasis on individuals in the term ‘methodological individualism’.
    • [2007] The Sociology of Markets (with: Luke Dauter) 
      In: Annual Review of Sociology, 33(6)
      The sociology of markets has been one of the most vibrant fields in sociology in the past 25 years. There is a great deal of agreement that markets are social structures characterized by extensive social relationships between firms, workers, suppliers, customers, and governments. But, like in many sociological literatures, the theory camps that have formed often seem to speak by each other. Fligstein & Dauter show that some of the disagreement between theory camps is due to differencesin conceptual language, and other disagreements stem from the fact that theory camps ignore the concepts in other theory camps, thereby making their theories less complete.We end by considering deeper controversies in the literature that seem open both to new conceptualization and further empirical research.
    • [2007] Shareholder Value and the Transformation of the American Economy, 1984-2001(with: Taek-jin Shin)
      In: Sociological Forum, 22(4), December 2007.
      Using data from 62 U.S. industries for 1984–2000, Fligstein & Shin explore the connections between shareholder value strategies, such as mergers and layoffs, and related industry-level changes, such as de-unionization, computer technology, and profitability. In line with shareholder value arguments, mergers occurred in industries with low profits, and industries where mergers were active subsequently saw an increase in layoffs. Industries with a high level of mergers increased investment in computer technology. This technology displaced workers through layoffs and was focused on reducing unionized workforces. Contrary to shareholder value arguments, there is no evidence that mergers or layoffs returned industries to profitability.
    • [2008] Euroclash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe
      Oxford University Press
      The European Union’s market integration project has dramatically altered economic activity around Europe. Fligstein presents extensive evidence on how trade has increased, jobs have been created, and European business has been reorganized. The changes in the economy have been accompanied by dramatic changes in how people from different societies interact. Fligstein argues that these changes have produced a truly transnational-European-society.
    • [2011] Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields (with Doug McAdam)
      In: Sociological Theory 29: 1-26
      In recent years there has been an outpouring of work at the intersection of social movement studies and organizational theory. The authors think it implies a far more radical rethinking of structure and agency in modern society than has been realized to date. They offer a brief sketch of a general theory of strategic action fields (SAFs). They discuss the main elements of the theory, describe the broader environment in which any SAF is embedded, consider the dynamics of stability and change in SAFs, and end with a respectful critique of other contemporary perspectives on social structure and agency.
    • [2012] A Theory of Fields (with Doug McAdam)
      Oxford University Press
      One of the enduring problems of social science is finding ways to understand the nature of social change and social order-from political movements to market meltdowns. This book draws together far-ranging insights from social movement theory, organizational theory, and economic and political sociology to construct a general theory of social organization and strategic action. The authors propose that social change and social order can be understood through strategic action fields (SAFs). These fields are the general building blocks of political and economic life, civil society, and the state, and the fundamental form of order in our world today. They are nested and connected in a broader environment of almost countless proximate and overlapping fields. Fields are mutually dependent; change in one often triggers change in another. At the core of the theory is an account of how social actors fashion and maintain order in a given field. To demonstrate the breadth of the theory, case studies are presented of the Civil Rights Movement and the rise and fall of the market for mortgages in the U.S. since the 1960s.
    • [2013] Understanding stability and change in fields
      In: Barry Staw (ed.) [2013] Research on the Sociology of Organizations. Emerald Press, 33: 39–51
      In the literature on organizations, there are two very different views of social change. One emphasizes piecemeal change and actor learning. The other views change as more revolutionary resulting in entirely novel forms of organizations. On the surface, these two conceptions of social change seem incompatible. But, Fligstein argues that by situating organizations in field analysis, we can make sense about the conditions under which both can occur. He offers a framework for understanding strategic action in organizational fields.
    • [2014] The Frenzy of Fields - An interview with Neil Fligstein of field theory and social skill
      Originally published in Dutch by the journal Sociologos (Vandebroeck, D. (2014). De Verdienste van Velden. Een interview met Neil Fligstein over veldtheorie en sociale competentie. Sociologos, 35(3): 79-105. 
      English version: Fligstein, N. & D. Vandebroeck [2014] The Frenzy of Fields. An Interview with Neil Fligstein on Field Theory and Social Skill, in: Irish Journal of Sociology, 22(1): 107-129
    • [2015] The Architecture of Markets (with: Ryan Calder)
      In: Robert Scott / Stephan Kosslyn (eds.)n [2015] Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. John Wiley & Sons
      Markets are socially constructed arenas where repeated exchanges occur between buyers and sellers under a set of formal and informal rules governing relations among competitors, suppliers, and customers. These arenas operate according to local understandings and rules that guide interaction, facilitate trade, define what products are produced, constitute the products themselves, and provide stability for buyers, sellers, and producers. Marketplaces are also dependent on governments, laws, and cultural understandings supporting market activity. This essay provides a brief exposition of this perspective and considers cutting-edge work on three topics: (i) the formation of markets and prices, (ii) the organization of capitalism in different societies, and (iii) financialization and globalization.
    • [2015] The Emergence of a Finance Culture in American Households (with: Adam Goldstein)
      In: Socio-Economic Review, 13: 575-601.
      As the financial economy has expanded beginning in the mid-1980s, it has done so in part by selling more products to individuals and households. Households have had more access to new forms of assets and debts and new ways to fund their lifestyles. This occurred at the same time that income inequality and job insecurity increased dramatically in the USA. A more risk-taking culture engages in more active financial management amongst the middle and upper middle classes. These households are feeling the effects of growing inequality at the top more acutely and they respond by changing how they think about their financial lives. For those lower on the socio-economic status distribution, financial strategies are more of a defensive strategy to get by. Those at the top embrace finance as an opportunity to preserve and extend their lifestyles.
    • [2015] Economic Sociology (with: Cyrus Dioun)
      In: James D. Wright (ed.), [2015] International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 7. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 67–72.
      Economic sociology studies how the material conditions of life are produced and reproduced through social processes. The sociology of markets views markets as socially constructed arenas where repeated exchanges occur between buyers and sellers under a set of formal and informal rules governing relations between competitors, suppliers, and customers. Markets are dependent on governments, laws, and cultural understandings that support market activity. There are four bodies of work that provide different views on the mechanisms by which markets are organized: networks, institutions, political economy, and the study of market devices and the performativity of economic ideas. The sociology of consumption situates consumption in the problem of what consuming things means to people. Consumption is about how people constitute their lifestyles. Lifestyles can be constructed in emulation of other groups or instead by competition between social groups for status. Morals and meanings affects what goods can be bought and sold. Some products can be commoditized and some products cannot.
    • [2015] Is European Integration causing Europe to become more nationalist? Evidence from the recent financial crisis (with: Alina Polyakova)
      In: Journal of European Public Policy
      The European Union’s political and economic integration project has grown dramatically since its inception in 1952. While the ultimate goal of the EU is unclear, one of its aspirations has been to attempt to create European citizens. The idea is that over time, citizens would look towards Europe as their main national identity. While the political and economic integration projects are quite far along, the national identity project has lagged far behind. The number of people who have primarily a European identity is quite small and has not increased much in the past 20 years. There is a far larger number of citizens for whom their national identity is paramount, but a European identity also exists. Since 2005, this group has grown smaller and the number of citizens with only a national identity has grown larger. Fligstein argues that the EU integration project has pushed citizens to value their national identities more and to look to their national governments to protect them. He examines the evidence for this in the context of the 2007–9 financial crisis. He shows that in countries most seriously hit by the crisis, national identities have increased dramatically and citizens with some European identity have decreased.
  • Fligstein, Neil / McCall, Leslie / Western, Bruce 
    [2014] Inequality and Economic Sociology
    In: Accounts, 41(1): 3-8.
  • Ford, Laura / Swedberg, Richard
    [2009] Law in Economy and Society: Introductory
    In: Economic Sociology 10(3):3-7. Comments
  • Forstater, Mathew 
    [2002] Adolph Lowe’s plea for cooperation and constructive synthesis in the social sciences
    In: American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 61(4): 779-786.
    Adolph Lowe and his mentor Franz Oppenheimer were founding members of the Editorial Board of the The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) in 1941. Both this journal’s name and its mission were inspired by Lowe’s greatly underappreciated 1935 book, Economics and Sociology. Lowe issued his “plea for cooperation” and “constructive synthesis” in the social sciences. Lowe was committed to interdisciplinary teaching and research for the entirety of his long and interesting career. Iit is worthwhile to recall Lowe’s enduring contributions. His expression “constructive synthesis” still remains part of the mission of the AJES as inscribed on the back cover of the journal itself.
  • Gervais, Pierre - University Paris 3, Sorbonne Nouvelle, France
    [2014] Early Modern Merchant Strategies and the Historicization of Market Practices
    In: Economic Sociology 15(3):19-29.
    Gervais shows how modern history could provide a more historicized understanding of market mechanisms and economic institutions. He focuses specifically on the logics of profit calculatios practices performed by early modern merchants. He analyses how merchants dealt with the lack of information in economic exchanges at the time, by relying on a combination price/quality evaluation, a technique not so different from what occurs today with some multi-dimensional goods for which no generalized commensurability systems exists.
  • Granovetter, Mark |  - Stanford University, USA
    • [1973] The Strength of Weak Ties
      In: American Journal of Sociology, 78: 1360-1380.
      The most cited and highly influential article of Mark Granovetter. His basis thesis = weak ties enable reaching populations and audiences that are not accessible via strong ties. Granovetter uses the analysis of social networks as a tool for linking micro and macro levels of sociolgical theory. This is illustrated by elaboration of the macro implications of one aspect of small-scale interaction: the strength of dyadic ties. Granovetter argues that the degree of overlap of tho individuals’s friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one anonter. The impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and informatie, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored. Stress is laid on the cohesive power of weak ties, thus confirming their applicability to small, well-defined groups. Emphasis on weak ties lends itself to discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups.
      Listen to his own explanation of the concept of embeddedness
    • [1984] Small is Bountiful: Labor Markets and Establishment Size
      In: American Sociological Review, 49: 323-334.
      Although there exist no detailed published studies on trends in workplace size, most research in stratification and industrial sociology has operated with the implicit assumption that, in the course of the twentieth century, workers have found themselves in increasingly larger establishments. This assumption has focused considerable attention on such concomitants of the assumed increase as growth in bureaucratic control and internal labor markets. Granovetter gives the first systematic empirical account of the evolution of workplace size, and presents results that call into question the appropriateness of the current allocation of research energy.
    • [1985] Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness
      In: American Journal of Sociology, 91(3): 481-510.
      One of the classic questions of social theory is how behavior and institutions are affected by sociale relations. To which extent economic action is embedded in structures of social relations? The usual neoclassical accounts provide an «undersocialized» or atomaized-actor explanation of such action. The reformist economics who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the «oversocialized» way. Under- and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations. A sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. Granovetter illustrates his argument by a critique of Oliver Williamson’s ‘markets and hierarchies’ research program.
    • [2005] The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes
      In: Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1): 33-50.
      Social structure, especially in the form of social networks, affects economic outcomes for three main reasons. (1) Social networks affect the flow and the quality of information: much information is subtle, nuanced and difficult to verify, so actors do not believe impersonal sources and instead rely on people they know. (2) Social networks are an important source of reward and punishment, since these are often magnified in their impact when coming from others personally known. (3) Trust —the confidence that others will do the ‘right’ thing despite a clear balance of incentives to the contrary— emerges, if it does, in the context of a social network. Granovetter first reviews some of the core principles about the interactions of social structure, information, ability to punish or reward, and trust that frequently recur in analyses of political, economic and other institutions. Building on these, he discusses how sociale structures and social networks can affect economic outcomes like hiring, price, productivity and innovation.
  • Heilbron, Johan
    [1999] Economic Sociology in France
    In: Economic Sociology 1(1):4-9.
  • Hodgson, Geoffrey M.  - Business School, University of Herfordshire, USA
    • [1998] The Approach of Institutional Economics
      In: Journal of Economic Literature, 36(1): 166-92.
      The term ‘new institutional economics’ is in widespread use and is associated with a vast literature. The temporal adjective in the adopted title of this broad set of postwar theories and approaches has been intended to demarcate the ‘new institutional economics’ from the ‘old’ institutional economics of Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, and Wesley Mitchell. This earlier institutionalism had actually been dominant in economics departments in American universities just after the First World War. Despite this, little detailed reference has been made by leading exponents of the ‘new’ institutional economics to this predecessor.
    • [2002] The Legal Nature of the Firm and the Myth of the Firm-Market Hybrid
      In: International Journal of the Economics of Business, 9(1): 37-60.
      A sharp conceptual distinction used to be drawn between the firm and the market. However, since the 1970s, many economists and sociologists have argued that the boundaries of the firm are indistinct. Ideas emerged of ‘internal markets’ within firms, of the ‘quasifirm’, of ‘hybrid firms’ and of firms as `quasi-markets’. Hudgson re-examines the formal, legal conception of the firm. It is argued that there is no good reason to abandon this conception, even in the light of relational contracting, networking, subcontracting and other developments. To avoid confusion, additional terms such as ‘supplier network’ or ‘conglomerate’ should be used to describe these phenomena, rather than abandoning a legally-based definition of the firm. With this clarified definition, `internal markets’ and ‘hybrid firms’ disappear from view.
    • [2003] The Evolution of Institutions: An Agenda for Future Theoretical Research
      In: Constitutional Political Economy, 13(2): 111-27.
    • [2003] Capitalism, Complexity, and Inequality
      In: Journal of Economic Issues, 37(2): 471-478.
    • [2003] John R. Commons and the Foundations of Institutional Economics
      In: Journal of Economic Issues, 37(3): 547-76.
      An evaluation of the attempts of John Rogers Commons (1862–1945) to provide the “old” tradition of American institutional economics with a systematic theoretical foundation. Although there are several other evaluations of Commons’ work, this essay reaches some novel conclusions. And although some of the other evaluations have also been largely methodological in content, the present essay chooses some themes that have not been developed to the same extent elsewhere. The main issues involved in the present appraisal are (a) Commons’ neglect of the instinct-habit psychology of William James and others; (b) his failure to appreciate the philosophical and other insights of Darwinism; and (c) his failure to give sufficient emphasis to extra-legal institutions, extra-legal self-organization, or spontaneous orders that do not involve legal rules. In at least some of these respects, the work of Commons contrasts significantly with that of Thorstein Veblen and others.
    • [2006] Institutions, Recessions and Recovery in the Transitional Economies
      In: Journal of Economic Issues, 40(4): 875-94.
    • [2007] Institutions and Individuals: Interaction and Evolution
      In: Organization Studies, 28(1): 95-116.
      The conceptualization of the relation between individual and structure is central to social science. After making some key definitions, Hodgson overviews some recent developments in the social theory of structure and agency, and makes a novel addition, based on a concept of habit derived from pragmatism and Veblenian institutional economics. Processes of habituation provide a mechanism of “reconstitutive downward causation” where institutional circumstances may affect individual preferences. Finally, special characteristics of organizations are discussed, endorsing an evolutionary analytical approach that combines insights from both evolutionary economics and organization science.
    • [2007] Meanings of Methodological Individualism
      In: Journal of Economic Methodology, 14(2): 211-26.
      Advocacy of ‘methodological individualism‘ is a widespread, especially among economists. However, the term is rarely defined with adequate precision and some crucial ambiguities are explored in this article. Among these is the commonplace ambivalence over whether explanations should be in terms of individuals alone, or in terms of individuals plus relations between them. It is shown that a great deal hinges on this subtle and often overlooked distinction in explanantia. In particular, explanations in terms of individuals alone have never, as yet, been achieved. Furthermore, the more feasible version of explanations in terms of individuals plus relations between them amount to the introduction of social structure alongside individuals in the explanantia. Serious questions remain whether this version warrants the one-sided emphasis on individuals in the term ‘methodological individualism’.
    • [2007] Evolutionary and Institutional Economics as the New Mainstream?
      In: Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 4(1): 7-25.
      Mainstream economics has changed radically since the 1980s, offering greatly enhanced opportunities for intervention by evolutionary and institutional economics. Hodgson surveys the extent of this transformation and the extent that mainstream economics has moved in an evolutionary and institutional direction. There are also signs of a possible gestalt shift in the social sciences, where rules are seen as constitutive of social relations and social reality. This contrasts with the former emphasis in mainstream economics on incremental change and equilibria. On the other hand, mainstream economics has a preoccupation with technique over substance, and the barriers between disciplines impair appropriate conceptual developments.
    • [2007] The Economics of Corruption and the Corruption of Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective (with: Shuxia Jiang)
      In: Journal of Economic Issues (JEI), 41(4): 1043-1061.
      The central argument is that the concept of corruption itself has been corrupted by the utilitarian underpinnings of mainstream economics and the ideological prejudices of many mainstream economists against state activity. The commonplace definition of corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain, itself reflects this conceptual corruption. There is no good reason why organizational corruption should be definitionally confined to the public sector, especially given the corporate scandals experienced in modern corporations. In exceptional cases, organizational corruption can be motivated other than by private gain. An alternative approach, drawing from the institutionalist literature, highlights the issues that are missing from the commonplace definition of corruption.
    • [2008] An institutional and evolutionary perspective on health economics
      In: Cambridge Journal of Economics, 32(2): 235-256.
      Neoclassical theoretical approaches dominate modern health economics. However, the peculiarities of healthcare provision are so unusual that neoclassical theory is especially unsuited to the area. Even mainstream health economists often abandon Paretian welfare considerations to focus on needs instead. Problems relating to uncertainty and externalities are also widely acknowledged. Hodgson shows that there are additional important pecularities of healthcare that are relatively neglected in the literature. Some of these concern healthcare needs: while health itself is a universal need, needs for healthcare provision are largely involuntary, varied and idiosyncratic. These issues have important consequences for the planning of healthcare systems and the extent of transaction costs in any market-based system. These factors, combined with the inherent dynamism of modern healthcare needs and capabilities, make institutional and evolutionary approaches especially suitable for healthcare economics.
    • [2008] How Veblen Generalized Darwin
      In: Journal of Economic Issues (JEI), 42(2): 399-405.
      The inspiration of Darwin on Veblen is well known. However, the manner in which Veblen incorporated Darwinian ideas is inadequately appreciated. Veblen not only adopted Darwinian strictures on the causal explanation of the individual agent but also upheld that Darwinian principles of inheritance and selection applied to individual habits and social institutions. This amounts to the generalization of Darwinian principles to socio-economic evolution.
    • [2008-2014] What is Wrong with Mainstream Economics? And How Could Economics be Improved?
    • [2009] On the Institutional Foundations of Law: The Insufficiency of Custom and Private Ordering
      In: Journal of Economic Issues, 43(1): 143-66.
      Some theorists propose that systems of law largely arise spontaneously, as an extension of customary rules. At most, the role of the state is to endorse customary laws and add some minimal general rules. Some see no essential difference between custom and law. This paper argues that law has properties that cannot be reduced to custom or private ordering alone. Customary mechanisms are insufficient to explain adherence to complex systems of law. Furthermore, law proper arose when customs were violated and some higher adjudication was required. We need an explanation of how a system of complex legal rules may be enforced, and why people often obey laws in the absence of obvious incentives or disincentives. Laws and their enforcement depend on stratified social structures within the framework of the state.
    • [2013] From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities: An Evolutionary Economics without Homo Economicus
      University of Chicago Press.
      Hodgson argues that humans are generally morally motivated as well as self-interested and demonstrates that morality is not only part of people’s behavior, but also necessary for building a sound and humane economy and society. Morality is much more than convenience or convention. Given the nature of morality, moral motivation is essentially incompatible with utilitarianism, preference functions and much of mainstream economics. He does not suggest to simply add a ‘moral dimension’ to the individualistic and utilitariam assumptions upon which mainstream economics continues to operate, because we have to understand the evolutionary origins and foundations of moral sentiments. He believes that we cannot understand institutions properly unless we appreciate moral motivation.
    • [2014] Piketty has redefined capital, after 200 years of confusion
      In: The Conversation, 22.4.2014
      Capitalism is a historically specific system where capital plays a dominant role. But the term capital has been much abused by economists and sociologists. After Nobel Laureate Gary Becker popularised the term “human capital” in the 1960s, the word “capital” became promiscuous. Sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman promoted the term “social capital”. Now we also have “environmental capital”, “health capital”, “symbolic capital”, “cultural capital”, “political capital” and even “erotic capital”. Economists and sociologists have stretched the meaning of the term to cover any asset. Piketty has redefined the central concept of capial as a saleable asset that can receive a monetary return. Capital as defined Piketty is much more historically specific than its purported relatives, and hence is much more useful in identifying the highly dynamic system of capitalism that first emerged a few hundred years ago.
    • [2015] Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future
      University of Chicago Press.
      In standard economics, capitalism has become an ill-defined concept, its analysis flawed from the very initial definition. Hodgson tries to clarify the basic concepts of capitalism. He shows the interconnections of such vital concepts as capital, money, exchange, property, and law, and how they work together to determine the essential character of capitalism. Hodgson takes a position that is different from both Marxism and pro-market libertarianism. His book is not an ideological tract, either for or against capitalism. His main purpose is “to understand the nature of the beast, and establish some conceptual tools needed to reveal its inner structure and dynamics.” But along the way he argues that some mix of market competition and state power is unavoidable in any complex modern economy, thus disappointing advocates of both pure markets and wholesale planning.
    • [2015] A Trojan Horse for Sociology? Preferences versus Evolution and Morality
      In: Review of Behavioral Economics, 2(1-2): 93–112. 
      Herbert Gintis and Dirk Helbing have developed a highly impressive, over-arching theoretical framework, using rational choice theory, general equilibrium theory, and game theory. They extend this to cover “moral, social and other-regarding values,” plus social norms, culture, and institutions. Hodgson argues that there is a tension within their work between their depiction of the rational choice framework as a general “expression” of behavior and searching for explanations of, and detailed motivationsfor, particular phenomena such as punishment, altruism or moral sentiments. There is also a danger of over-generalization where a framework is stretched to cover every possible behavior. Rational choice theory with “otherregarding” preferences is strictly unfalsifiable. Because “other regarding” agents are also depicted as maximizing their own utility, this framework cannot encompass adequate notions of altruism or morality. Instead, we should explain the evolution of morality as a distinctly human motivation. Hodgson concludes with a discussion of the implications of the Gintis–Helbing arguments for the future of sociology as a separate discipline.
  • Hübschle, Annette - University of Cape Town, South Africa
    [2015] New Frontiers in Economic Sociology: Economic Sociology and Opportunities for Organized Crime Research
    In: Economic Sociology 16(3):36-41.
  • Ingham, Geoffrey
    • [1994] Some recent changes in the relationship between economics and sociology
      In: Cambridge Journal of Economics, 20(2):243-275. 
      In response to the imperialistic claims of the ‘new institutional economies’, a ‘new economic sociology’ has emerged that suggests the possibility of important changes in the relationship between the two disciplines. These sociological initiatives are placed in the context of, first, a discussion of the main methodological differences between sociology and economics and, second, a brief historical survey of some important aspects their substantive relationship and the emergence and consolidation of the traditional intellectual division of labour. Given the organisational structure of the two disciplines and, in particular, their professional separation, it seems unlikely that these interesting attempts to explore a redefinition of traditional boundaries will have any marked impact.
  • International Labor Organization (ILO)
    Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A statistical Picture
    Pprovides a statistical picture, using the available data, of the informal economy worldwide. The statistics and indicators presented are designed to give a wide audience of users a better understanding of the size, components and characteristics of the informal economy.
  • Izquierdo, A. Javier
    [2001] “Less is More”? Economic Sociology in Spain
    In: Economic Sociology 2(3):13-20.
  • Jessop, Bob |  - Dept. of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK
    • [1999] The Dynamics of Partnership and Governance Failures
      In: Stoker, G. (ed.) The New Politics of Local Governance in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
      The 1970s saw growing assertions that state intervention was failing and that the state itself was in crisis. In the 1980s the dominant neo-liberal response in Britain to this alleged crisis largely involved turning to the market and, to a lesser extent, community or family self-help. Successive Thatcher and Major governments promoted privatization, liberalization, deregulation, the use of market proxies in the residual state sector, cuts in direct taxes to enhance consumer choice, and internationalization to promote capital mobility and the transfer of technology and know-how. They also advocated an enterprise culture and popular capitalism to make civil society more market-friendly. This project was intended to re-equip Britain with a liberal, night-watchman state with progressively smaller and more balanced budgets and thereby boost this slimmed-down state's capacity to perform its remaining core functions. While this neo-liberal programme was still being pursued it also became apparent that the turn to the market had not delivered all that had been promised. Market failures and inadequacies had not been eliminated yet an explicit return to the state was ideologically and politically unacceptable.
    • [2000] The State and the Contradictions of the Knowledge-Driven Economy
      In: Bryson, J.R. / Daniels, P.W. / Henry, N.D. /Pollard, J. (eds.) Knowledge, Space, Economy. London: Routledge.
    • [2001] Capitalism, the Regulation Approach, and Critical Realism
      In: Brown, A. / Fleetwood, S. / Roberts, J. (eds.) Critical Realism and Marxism. London: Routledge.
    • [2001] On the spatio-temporal logics of capital’s globalization and their maniford implications for state power 
      Jessop defines globalization as a basis for his own interrogation of its nature, causes, and consequences. He argues that the spatial turn associated with the interest in the globalization of capital has been overdone and that a temporal (re)turn is overdue. Time and temporality are at least as important as, if not more important than, space and spatiality in the logic of economic globalization. And he explores the implications of this approach for some spatio-temporal contradictions of globalization and their implications for national states as they become more involved in promoting globalization and managing its repercussions.
    • [2002] Globalization and the National State
      In: Aaronowitz, Stanley / Bratsis, Peter (ed.) Rethinking the State. Miliband, Poulantzas and State Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 185-220.
    • [2003] Recent Societal and Urban Change: Principles of Periodization and Views on the Current Period
      In: Albertsen, N. / Hemmersam, P. / Nielsen, T. (eds.) Urban Mutations: Periodizations, Scales and Mibilities. Aarhus: Arkitektskolens Forlag.
    • [2004] The European Union and Recent Transformations in Statehood
      In: Sonja Puntscher Riekmann (ed) [2005] Transformations of Statehood from a European Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
      A state-theoretical but not state-centred approach to the emerging Europolity and its role in economic and political restructuring. Jessop argues that an adequate account of these topics must relate it to more general changes in the political economy of capitalism and the political economy of the modern state – in part because the European Union is itself an integral moment therein. He also argues that recent changes in the economic and political organization of the EU point to the development of a relatively novel form of political regime. The previously dominant but competing state-centred and governance-centred paradigms cannot grasp the distinctiveness of this emerging regime. Jessop therefore introduces an alternative approach based on the strategic-relational approach to the state.
    • [2007] The Future of the Capitalist State
      Cambridge: Polity.
      Jessop offers a radical new interpretation of capitalist states and their likely future development. He focuses on the changing forms, functions, scales and effectiveness of economic and social policy that have emerged since the 1950s in advanced western capitalist states. The postwar Keynesian welfare national state has long been regarded as being in crisis. Mounting tensions have been generated by technological change, globalization, and economic and political crises, and new social and political movements have also had a destabilizing impact. Jessop examines these factors in relation to the rise, consolidation and crisis of Atlantic Fordism and asks whether a new type of capitalist state that is currently emerging offers a solution.
    • [2014] Capitalist diversity and variety: Variegation, the world market, compossibility and ecological dominance
      In: Capital & Class, 38(1): 45-58.
      Jessop critiques the institutionalist literature on varieties of capitalism and the more regulationist comparative capitalisms approach. He elaborates the alternative concept of variegated capitalism and suggests that this can be studied fruitfully through a synthesis of materialist form analysis and historical institutionalism within a world-market perspective. He highlights the role of institutional and spatiotemporal fixes that produce temporary, partial, and unstable zones of stability (and corresponding zones of instability) within the limits of the crisisprone capital relation, and illustrates this from the crisis of crisis-management in the Eurozone crisis.
  • Kellerman, Paul
    (hrsg.) [2005] Geld und Gesellschaft: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven
    VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
  • Korver, Ton - University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
    [2001] A Dutch treat: Economic sociology in the Netherlands 
    In: Economic Sociology 2(2):3-8.
  • Kotelnikova, Zoya - National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
    [2012] New Economic Sociology and Relationship Marketing: Parallel Development 
    In: Economic Sociology 13(3):27-33.
    In spite of many substantive differences, the proponents of economic sociology and relationship marketing might have many reasons to pay closer attention to what is being done by their neighbors. The author describes many common research interests they have: their focus on relational aspects of the market exchange viewed as ongoing process accompanied by formation of long-lasting ties between exchange partners; active use of the network approach; studying motivation of the market participants; stressing the importance of communication and information exchange.
  • Kraemer, Klaus - University of Münster, Germany
    [2013] Der Markt der Gesellschaft: Zu einer soziologischen Theorie der Marktvergesellschaftung
    Springer Verlag.
    Kraemer’s book is largely influenced by Georg Simmel’s model of sociation (Vergesellschaftung) and the role which exchange plays in it. He analyses the social and cultural consequences which derive from the expansion of market-regulated exchange relations in modern societies. He investigates the consequences of the market for several sociologically relevant issues: power-relations in society, the use of natural resources, and the identity-constructions of market participants.
  • Müller, Robert / Beyer, Jürgen - University of Hamburg, Germany
    [2013] Market and Hierarchy – What the Structure of Stock Exchanges Can Tell Us about the Uncertainty in Early Financial Markets
    In: Economic Sociology 14(3):14-20.
    The authors criticize the neo-institutional model of Oliver Williamson arguing that stock exchanges are neither pure markets nor hierarchies (organizations). They emphasize the role of self-regulating procedures which had to be invented by organizers of stock exchanges in order to stabilize market exchanges and to control market uncertainty. Therefore, they focus on the organizational forms of membership, invented by stock exchanges in history to control opportunistic behavior of financial actors.
  • Ossandón, José - Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
    [2015] Insurance and the Sociologies of Markets
    In: Economic Sociolog 17(1):6-15.
  • Pardi, Tommaso - CNRS, Cachan, France
    [2014] From Markets as Politics to the Politics of Markets: Unpacking the Relationship Between State and Firms
    In: Economic Sociology 15(2):7-16.
  • Polanyi, Karl 
  • Portes, Alejandro / Landolt, Patricia
    [1996] The Downside of Social Capital
    In: The American Prospect, 26: 18-21.
    Many intellectuals and policymakers have become enchanted with the concept of social capital. The implicit concensus is that social capital is important because it allows people to work together by resolving the dilemmas of collective action. Why this is actually so, however, is obscure. Portes & Landolt try to figure out what has gone wrong with the idea of social capital and its use in recent public debate.
  • Rojas, Fabio - Indiana University, USA
    [2015] Economic Sociology and the Blogosphere - Reflections on Nine Years of Blogging at OrgTheory
    In: Account 14(3):11-13.
  • Roulleau-Berger, Laurence - Institute d’Asie Orientale, France
    [2010] Issues of Chinese Economic Sociology
    In: Economic Sociology 11(3):54-65.
  • Sayer, Adrew  - Lancaster University, UK
    • [1999] Valuing Culture and Economy
      We live in a highly economised culture, one that has accommodated to division of labour, class, commodification and instrumental rationality to a considerable degree. This economisation has detrimental effects on culture, including the moral fabric of societies.
    • [2000] Developing the Critical Standpoints of Radical Political Economy
      Paper presented to Marxism Today: A Renewed Left View, Havana, Cuba, 17-19th February 2000. 
      The moral economy embodies norms and sentiments regarding the responsibilities and rights of individuals and institutions with respect to others. These norms and sentiments go beyond matters of justice and equality, to conceptions of the good, for example regarding needs and the ends of economic activity. The term moral economy has usually been applied to societies in which there are few or no markets, hence no competition and law of value, and in which economic activity is governed by norms regarding what economic responsibilities of individuals and institutions are, what and how much they are allowed to consume, who they are responsible for, beholden to and dependent on. However, moral norms - generally different ones from those of pre-capitalist societies - are also present and influential in advanced capitalist societies, though they tend to be overlooked by political economy. They exist both within the formal, money economy and outside, particularly in the household economy. While the norms may be considered part of a moral order, both the norms themselves and the associated behaviour are invariably compromised and often overridden by power and considerations of cost and risk.
    • [2000] Markets, Embeddedness and Trust: Problems of Polysemy and Idealism
      Paper presented to the Research Symposium on Market Relations and Competition, May 4th- 5th 2000.
      The first target of his critique are approaches to markets and the nature of firms in which market exchange is treated as the atomic structure of all economic processes, and as the default form of economic coordination, so that any other forms of organization are either marginalised or treated as problematic exceptions. The second target are approaches that underline the socially embedded character of economic processes, the nature of networks, and the role of trust. Sayer argues that their treatment has suffered frequently from being idealist, both in the sense of underestimating material aspects of economic life and in presenting an overly benign view which underestimates the instrumentality of economic relations.
    • [2000] Equality and Moral Economy
      Paper presented to the Equality Studies Centre 10th Anniversary Conference, University College Dublin, December 15th 2000.
      Moral economy refers to the norms which govern or should govern economic activity. They imply evaluations of economic behaviour, of responsibilities and rights, of fairness, and sometimes of the ends of economic activity too. Often these concerns go beyond issues of economic responsibilities to other matters of public morality, such as neighbourliness and civility. Economic activities are influenced or constrained to some degree by moral considerations, even though these sometimes get compromised or overridden by other considerations. Self-interest, power and expedience are not the only influences on economic life. Not only in the domestic sphere but in the formal economy, within organisations, in labour and product markets, moral sentiments and norms influence behaviour. mark
    • [2000] Moral Economy and Political Economy
      In: Studies in Political Economy, 61: 79-104.
      Economists need to restrain their utilitarianism and re-establish moral considerations as a proper part of their understanding and evaluation of economies. Sayer aims to contribute to the rejuvenation of radical political economy as a critical social science by reviving and developing the concept of moral economy as a way of thinking about the normative issues posed by contemporary advanced economies.
    • [2001] What are you Worth?: Recognition, Valuation and Moral Economy
      Paper presented to the British Sociological Association annual conference, Manchester, April 2001.
    • [2003] Restoring the moral dimension in social scientific accounts: a qualified ethical naturalist approach
      Paper presented to the International Association for Critical Realism Annual Conference, Amsterdam 15-17.8.03
      In much of recent social theory, action is assumed to be either merely interest-driven, or habitual, or a product of wider discourses and institutions. Often it adopts a sociologically-reductionist account of actors’ motives and actions. Actors’ rationales or normative dispositions are discounted - either altogether, or by reducing them to conventions or features of discourses. Even those social theorists who, like Durkheim, invoke morality a great deal, often concentrate on its effects in reproducing social order, reducing it to mere convention backed by sanctions. This gives no insight into its normative force, and hence why it should matter so much to us. The idea that ethics or morality is simply ‘what we do round here’ will always be unconvincing, producing an alienated view of actors as mere dupes that misses what they care about and why.
    • [2004] Restoring the Moral Dimension: Acknowledging Lay Normativity
      Contemporary sociological accounts of action tend to pay little attention to its moral or ethical dimension, emphasizing habit, discourse, convention and interest instead. Yet this dimension of social life is inescapable in practice, social relations being differentiated partly by the particular moral expectations that are associated with them. People are evaluative beings, continually monitoring or at least sensing their own and others’ behaviour as more or less good or bad. Moral sentiments or emotions are not mere subjective forms of ‘affect’ but have a rational, referential aspect; they are intelligent dispositions and susceptibilities. They are not wholly reducible to effects of social position.
    • [2004] Moral Economy
      It is now a commonplace to note the influence of rules, habits, norms, conventions and values on economic practices and institutions and to note how these vary across different societies. Economic processes, even capitalist ones, are seen as socially embedded in various ways. Thus there is no ‘normal capitalism’, only different varieties, distinguished partly according to their cultural legacies and forms of embedding. The rise of ‘cultural political economy’ has complemented this focus on embeddedness. If culture is taken to refer to signifying practices, then economic practices can be seen in terms of what they signify as well as materially, and as culturally embedded.
    • [2005] Class, moral worth and recognition
    • [2005] Reductionism in Social Science
      Paper for workshop on “Challenges to Dominant Modes of Knowledge: Reductionism,” Dec. 16-17, 2005, Paris, France. 
      ‘Reductionism’ refers to doctrines according to which one can explain some object by reducing it to a different, usually more simple, level – for example, the meaningful to the physical as in behaviourism, knowledge to sense data as in phenomenalism, the social to the biological as in sociobiology. The reductions are not made merely as a way of simplifying complexity, but of locating what their advocates believe to be the causes or sources of the explananda. Anti-reductionists argue that the explananda are irreducible, that even though they may depend on the things to which reductionists appeal they have emergent properties or powers which cannot be reduced to those of their constituents without residue. Anti-reductionists therefore argue for a stratified ontology, in which any higher stratum presupposes lower strata but not vice versa – as in the asymmetric relation of the biological to the physical. The plausibility of the idea that the world is stratified arguably provides a warrant for the existence of different disciplines. However, the subdivision of social science into disciplines has a much less clear relation to stratification.
    • [2008] Contributive justice and meaningful work
      The dominant focus of thinking about economic justice is overwhelmingly distributive, that is, concerned with what people get in terms of resources and opportunities. It views work mainly negatively, as a burden or cost, or else is neutral about it, rather than seeing it as a source of meaning and fulfilment – a good in its own right. However, what we do in life has at least as much, if not more, influence on who we become, as does what we get. Thus we have good reason also to be concerned with contributive justice, that is, justice as regards what people are expected and able to contribute in terms of work. Complex, interesting work allows workers not only to develop and exercise their capacities, and gain the satisfaction from achieving the internal goods of a practice, but to gain the external goods of recognition and esteem. As long as the more satisfying kinds of work are concentrated into a subset of jobs, rather than shared out among all jobs, then many workers will be denied the chance to have meaningful work and the recognition that goes with it.
    • [2011] Habitus, work and contributive justice
      In: Sociology, 45(1): 7-21.
      Explores the benefits of relating Bourdieu’s critical analysis of inequalities and domination to the theory of contributive justice.
  • Scharpf, Fritz, W.  - Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, Köln (Germany)
    • [1996] Economic Integration, Democracy and the Welfare State
      Plenary Lecture, 8th International Conference on Social Economics, University of Geneva, July 13, 1996. 
      Although the present difficulties of democratic welfare states in Europe are often ascribed to economic “globalization”, this globalization is, at the most, realized only for speculative capital transactions. In all other areas of economic activity the intensity of international competition has increased as well, but even under the liberal regimes of GATT and WTO, governments have not abdicated their capacity for boundary control, and the freedom of world trade is still constrained by a wide variety of tariffs, quotas, “voluntary” restrictions and non-tariff barriers. Scharp argues that all this is different within the European Union, “where national governments have delegated control over external trade relationships to the Union, and where they have in fact abdicated boundary control over economic transactions within the internal European market. As a consequence, the competitive pressure on European welfare states originates mainly from the "regulatory competition" within the Union, and the frustrations of democratic governance in Europe mainly result from the fact that the range of feasible policy choices has been reduced at the national level while policy making at the European level still lacks democratic legitimacy.”
    • [2010] Community and Autonomy: Institutions, Policies and Legitimacy in Multilevel Europe
      Frankfurt: Campus.
  • Sheth, Jagdish N. / Parvartiyar, Atul / Sinha, Mona - Atlanta, USA
    [2012] The Conceptual Foundations of Relationship Marketing: Review and Synthesis
    In: Economic Sociology 13(3):4-26.
    The authors introduce the main insights of relationship marketing for economic sociologists. They provide basic definitions and explain a fundamental shift in the dominant paradigm and orientation of marketing from manipulation the customers to long-lasting collaborative relationships. The authors trace the origins of the relationship marketing school of thought and relevant practice. A process model of relationship marketing is described and major research directions of relationship marketing are pointed out.
  • Swedberg, Richard |  - Dept. of Sociology, Cornell University, USA
  • Vedres, Balázs - Columbia University, USA
    Papers on interorganizational networks in the transforming Hungarian economy, discourse analysis based on network analysis and sequence analysis of enterprise life-stories in a transforming economy.
  • Yakubovich, Valery / Yaroshenko, Sveta
    [2000] Economic Sociology in Russia
    In: Economic Sociology 1(3):24-28.
  • Zelizer, Viviana A. - Dept. of Sociology, Princeton University (USA)
    • [2006] Circuits in economic life
      In: Economic Sociology 8(1):30-35.
    • [2007] Ethics in the Economy
      In: Journal for Business, Economics & Ethics (zfwu) 1, 2007: 8-23. 
      Economic sociologists lack coherent theories concerning how ethical disputes arise within economic life, and what effects their management has on organizational performance. Using formal codes of ethics within firms as its disciplined focus, we can develop a preliminary conceptualization of ethics in organizations, a series of hypotheses about how codes work, and a preliminary sketch of a research program that follows from these principles.
    • [2007] Reflections on intimicy
      In: Accounts, Economic Sociology Newsletter, Spring 2007.
    • [2007] Undeafening the Dialogue between Economics and Sociology
      Economics- Sociology Workshop, Princeton University, February 5, 2007. 
      In the 80s sociologists returned to the analysis of economic activity. The scholars of the “new economic sociology” clung closely to mainstream economics, either extending its main ideas to ostensibly more sociological subjects, or identifying social contexts that constrained economic activity — still mostly assumed to behave according to precepts of neo-classical economics. Economic sociologists dealt almost exclusively with firms and markets, those favorite subjects of economists. «Extension theorists» applied relatively standard economic models to apparently non-economic processes, like religious congregations, household behavior, or professional sports teams. «Context analysts» looked at standard economic phenomena, such as labor markets, commodity markets, or corporations, showing how social organization as context shaped the options of economic actors. Advocates of context spoke of the embeddedness of economic phenomena in social processes. Economic sociology has moved away increasingly from extension and context accounts towards the formulation of truly alternative, socially based description and explanation of economic activity. This alternative analysis attempts to identify social processes and social relations at the very heart of economic activity, including the previously sacred and unexplored territory of markets themselves. Markets are deeply social creations rather than autonomous arenas on which social processes merely impinge.
    • [2007] Pasts and Futures of Economic Sociology
      In: American Behavioral Scientist, 50: 1056-69.
      Over the past few decades, economic sociology has moved from tight symbiosis with mainstream economics toward the construction of alternative explanations for economic activities. That move has allied economic sociologists increasingly with both innovative work inside economics and new analytic enterprises outside. Cumulatively, these developments have created a much more social interpretation of money and markets.
    • [2010] Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy
      Princeton University Press.
      Economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. Zelizer shows how shared cultural understandings and interpersonal relations shape everyday economic activities. Far from being simple responses to narrow individual incentives and preferences, economic actions emerge, persist, and are transformed by our relations to others. She offers a distinctive vision of economic activity that brings out the hidden meanings and social actions behind the supposedly impersonal worlds of production, consumption, and asset transfer. The book ranges broadly from life insurance marketing, corporate ethics, household budgets, and migrant remittances to caring labor, workplace romance, baby markets, and payments for sex.
    • [2011] How I Became a Relational Economist Sociologist and what does that mean?
      Zelizer proposes the concept of relational work to explain economic activity. In all economic action people engage in the process of differentiating meaningful social relations. For each distinct category of social relations, people erect a boundary, mark the boundary by means of names and practices, establish a set of distinctive understandings that operate within that boundary, designate certain sorts of economic transactions as appropriate for the relation, bar other transactions as inappropriate, and adopt certain media for reckoning and facilitating economic transactions within the relation.
    • [2012] The Priceless Child Turns Twenty-seven
      In: The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 5(3): 449-456.

Classical Texts on Economic Sociology

Business and Business History

  • Academy of Accounting Historians
    A not-for-profit American corporation in Alabama, that encourages research, publication, teaching and personal interchanges in all phases of Accounting History and its interrelation with business and economic history.
  • BedrijfsArchieven Register Nederland (BARN) 
    A register of company archives in the Netherlands at the Netherlands Economic History Archive (NEHA).
  • Business History Review (BHR)
    BHR publishes articles based on rigorous primary research that address major topics of debate, offer comparative perspectives, and broaden consideration of the subject. It is interested in the history of entrepreneurs, firms, and business systems, and in the subjects of innovation, globalization, and regulation. It also explores the relation of businesses to political regimes and to the environment.
  • Business History at Harvard - USA
  • Business History in Europe
    From the Newsletter of the European Business History Association (EBHA). Business history in Italy, The Netherlands, and Russia.
  • Business, Guides - Richter Library, University of Miami, USA.
  • Center for Business History (CBH) - Norwegian School of Management (NSM)
    Norway’s largest educational institution within the fields of management, economics and business administration.
  • Centre for International Business History (CIBH) - Reading, UK
    CIBH promotes the study of the past development and future evolution of business in an international and comparative context.
  • Chambers of Commerce - Dutch (Kamer van Koophandel)
  • Clean Clothes Campaign
    A Dutch nonprofit organisation giving information on developments and activities in the entire subcontracting chain (from homeworker to consumer) of the clothing industry, worldwide. Their aim is to improve the labour conditions in the clothing industry.
  • Corporate Watch
    Dedicated to helping build greater democratic control over transnational corporations at the local, national and international levels. It is designed to provide you with an array of tools that you can use to investigate and analyze corporate activity. CW is committed to exposing corporate greed by documenting the social, political, economic and environmental impacts of these transnational giants. CW is a joint project of TRAC (The Transnational Resource and Action Center), and IGC (The Institute for Global Communications).
  • Doing Business on the Interet
    A resource collection from the Library of Congres. A guide designed to bring together a sampling, rather than a comprehensive list, of web resources offering free information that may be useful to those interested in conducting business on the internet.
  • Dow Jones Business Directory
    An annotated and searchable webliography of business sites. The sites are reviewed and rated on their quality in terms of content, speed, navigation and design. They cover business news, economics, companies, industries, and financial data according. The site includes links to career information, government data, and discussion groups.
  • ENTERweb
    An annotated meta-index and information clearinghouse on enterprise development, entrepreneurship, business, finance, international trade and the economy in this new age of cyberspace and globalization. The main focus is on micro, small and medium scale enterprises, cooperatives, community economic development, both in developed and developing countries. French and English version.
  • Essential Information (EI) 
    A non-profit organization, founded in 1982 by Ralph Nader. It is dedicated to rooting out the corruption that is so corrosive to American values. EI investigates and uncovers the buying and selling of politicians and of institutions entrusted with upholding the public interest. It exposes how big money distorts major policy decisions – harming our economy and our people. The site includes a «Multinational; Monitor» (MM), the «National Reserch Center» (MRC)
  • Ethics Connection
    Presented by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University (USA). Information about the center, publications, ethics in practice, and some ethics blogs. The section «Business Etchics» contains articles, cases and links on corporate governance, organizational ethis, creating an ethical culture, and global business ethics.
  • Europages
    2.600.000 European companies referenced in over 33 countries in 26 languages.
  • European Business History Association (EBHA)
    A professional body for individuals interested in the development of business and management in Europe from the earliest time to the present day. EBHA promotes research, teaching and general awareness of all aspects of European business and management history. It intends to create a network of information and to encourage collaboration through shared and comparative projects and scholarships as well as the exchange of graduate students.
  • Labour History - WWW Virtual Library 
    A very comprehensive, well organized collection of links. The Labour History section of the WWW Virtual Library is maintained by the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. See especially the category Economic & Business History.
  • Discussion and Mailing Lists
    • euro-business-history
      AAforum for scholarly discussion of business history in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe. Its purpose is threefold: to disseminate information across the Continent, to act as a forum for expressing opinion within the discipline, and to present useful ideas and methods from other fields.
    • management-history
      Supports critical and scholarly discussion, reflection and research in the area of management and administrative history; and the development of historically informed analyses and explorations of management practices and of management philosophy and thought.
  • MKB
    Middle- and Small Businesses in the Netherlands.
  • Multinational Monitor
    A comprehensive service devoted to the tracking of corporate activities, especially in the Third World, focusing on the export of hazardous substances, worker health and safety, labor union issues and the environment.
  • Società Italiana degli Storici Economici (SISE)
    Italian Business Historians Association.
  • Vereniging FME-CWM
    Information on the biggest Dutch industrial organization of employers.
  • VNO-NCW
    Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers. ‘The voice of Dutch business.’

Corporations

  • Bedrijven NET
    Information on Dutch businesses.
  • BizWeb
    Company and product information. Companies are categorized and listed by the goods or services they provide.
  • Forbes International 500
    List of the top ranking International companies. Companies can be searched by name, country, or industry type. Company listings contain contact information and Website addresses, and of course, the numbers: basic revenue, assets, market value, and stock price and earnings information.
  • Economie.Startpagina.nl
    Links to Dutch enterprises, commercial services and banks.
  • Fortune 500
    Information on the 500 companies in the latest Fortune 500. The list can be viewed by revenue, alphabetically for stock price information, or by industry for over fifty industries. There are also medians for nine earnings categories, and top performers for twelve. A CEO list is included and the site is searchable by company, industry, or CEO. Balance sheets and stock snapshots are provided for most companies listed, as are web links when available.
  • Industry Research Desk
    Provides tools for researching specific companies, industries, and manufacturing processes; a general guide on how to trace company information step by step. Also links to other internet sites focusing on specific industries (mainly USA in origin). Also provides information on the new NAICS (North American Industry Classification System that will soon replace the old SIC (Standard Industrial Classification system) in the US.
  • Internet Guide
    Enterprises on the Dutch Web.
  • SuperPages
    Yellow Pages that combines a complete list of U.S. businesses with street-level maps, customer voting, reviews and personal address books.
  • ZZN (Zaken Net Nederland)
    A business net where you can search and browse for companies in the Nederlands. Dutch and English version.

Google Scholar - Stand on the shoulders of giants

Start a Blog 123

A comprehensive, step-by-step guide on creating a successful blog..

If you think your blog, home page or social media representation should be included on this listing, please don’t hesitate to inform us.