The Current Revival of Economic Sociology (1980s-)

The Current Revival of Economic Sociology (1980s-)

Despite the efforts of Parsons and Smelser in the mid-1950s and the 1960s to revive economic soci­ology', it attracted little attention, and by the 1970s the field was somewhat stagnant. A number of

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works inspired in one way or another by the Marx­ist tradition—and its general revival in the late 1960s and the early 1970s—made their appear­ance in this period. Among these were Marxist analyses themselves (e. g., Gorz 1977), dependen­cy theory (Frank 1969; Cardoso and Faletto 1969), world systems theory (Wallerstein 1974), and neo-Marxist analyses of the workplace (Braver- man 1974; Burawoy 1979).

In the early 1980s, a few studies suggested a new stirring of interest (e. g., White 1981; Stinchcombe 1983; Baker 1984; Coleman 1985). And with the publication in 1985 of a theoretical essay by Mark Granovetter—" Economic Action and So­cial Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness" — the new ideas came into focus. The same year Granovetter spoke of " new economic sociology" — yielding a tangible name.

Why economic sociology, after decades of neg­lect, suddenly would come alive again in the mid- 1980s is not clear. Several factors may have played a role, inside and outside sociology. By the early 1980s, with the coming to power of Reagan and Thatcher, a new neoliberal ideology had become popular, which set the economy—and the econo­mists—at the very center of tilings. By the mid- 1980s economists had also started to redraw the traditional boundary separating economics and so­ciology, and to make forays into areas that sociolo­gists by tradition saw as their own territory. It is also during this period that Gary Becker, Oliver Williamson, and others came to the attention of sociologists. Likewise, sociologists began to recip­rocate by taking on economic topics.

To some extent this version of what happened resembles Granovetter's version in 1985. He asso­ciated " old economic sociology" with the econo­my and society perspective of Parsons, Smelser, and Wilbcrt E. Moore, and with industrial sociol­ogy—two approaches, he said, that had been hill oflife in the 1960s but then " suddenly died out" (Granovetter 1985b, 3). Parsons's attempt to ne­gotiate a truce between economics and sociology had also been replaced by a more militant tone. According to Granovetter, new economic sociolo­gy " attacks neoclassical arguments in fundamental ways, " and it wants to take on key economic top­ics, rather than focus on peripheral ones.

Since the mid-1980s new economic sociology- has carved out a position for itself in U. S. sociolo­gy. It is well represented at a number of universi­ties. Courses are routinely offered in sociology de­partments. A section in the American Sociological Association has been formed. A number of high-

quality monographs have been produced, such as The Transformation of Corporate Control (1990) by Neil Fligstein, Structural Holes (1992) by Ronald Burt, and The Social Meaning of Money (1994) by Viviana Zelizer. These three works draw on the in­sights of organization theory, networks theory, and cultural sociology, respectively. The subfield has also seen the appearance of several anthologies, readers, a huge handbook, a textbook, and a gen­eral introduction to the field (Zukin and DiMaggio 1990; Guillen et al. 2002; Dobbin 2003; Granovetter and Swedberg 1992, 2001; Biggart 2002; Smelser and Swedberg 1994; Carruthers and Babb 2000; Swedberg 2003).

Granovetter on Embeddedness

While several attempts have been made to pres­ent general theories and paradigms in new eco­nomic sociology, the perspective that continues to command most conspicuous attention is Granovetter's theory of embeddedness. Since the mid- 1980s Granovetter has added to his argument and refined it in various writings that are related to his two major projects since the mid-1980s: a general theoretical work in economic sociology entitled Society and Economy: The Social Construction of Economic Institutions, and a study (together with Patrick McGuire [1998]) of the emergence of the electrical utility industry in the United States.

The most important place in Granovetter's work where embeddedness is discussed is his 1985 arti­cle, which operated as a catalyst in the emergence of new economic sociology and which is probably the most cited article in economic sociology since the 1980s. His own definition of embeddedness is quite general and states that economic actions are " embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations" (Granovetter 1985a, 487). Networks are central to this concept of embeddedness (491). An important distinction needs also to be drawn, according to Granovetter, between an actor's im­mediate connections and the more distant ones— what Granovetter elsewhere calls " relational em­beddedness" and " structural embeddedness" (1990, 98-100; 1992, 34-37).

The most important addition to the 1985 article has been connecting the concept of embeddedness to a theory of institutions. Drawing on Berger and Luckmann (1967) Granovetter argues that institu­tions are " congealed networks" (1992, 7). Inter­action between people acquires, after some time, an objective quality that makes people take it for granted. Economic institutions are characterized