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The Contribution by James Coleman and Interest-Based Sociology
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The Contribution by James Coleman and Interest-Based Sociology
The most radical attempt during the last few decades to develop a sociological interest analysis is that of James Coleman (1926-1995). His efforts were initiated in the early 1960s and found final expression in Foundations of Social Theory (1990). Coleman's intention was to use interest as the foundation for all of sociology, and initially he paid little attention to economic sociology (see, how-
Introduction 17
ever, Coleman 1994). It should be mentioned, however, that in the same year Granovetter's essay on embeddedness appeared, Coleman published a brief article in which he developed the parallel argument that economists have failed to introduce social relations into their analysis (1985, 85).
The key theoretical chapter in Foundations of Social Theory is entitled " Actors, Resources, Interest, and Control" (chap. 2); it attempts to reconceptualize interest theory and to make it sociological. Coleman's point of departure is that it is not sufficient to speak of actors and their interests; " resources" and " control" must be considered. Coleman argues that if an actor has something of interest to another, the two will interact and thereby create a social system. In Coleman's terminology, if actor A has control over a resource that is of interest to actor B, they will interact.
Foundations, as well as other works by Coleman, contains a number of analyses of much relevance to economic sociology. Three subjects of particular importance are trust, social capital, and the modern corporation. Trust is conceptualized by Coleman in a manner very different from Simmel. While the latter emphasized trust as unthinking belief, Coleman characterizes trust as a conscious bet: you calculate what you can win and lose by trusting someone. Social capital is any social relation that can be of help to an individual in realizing an interest. " The function identified by the concept 'social capital' is the value of those aspects of social structure to actors, as resources that can be used by the actors to realize their interests" (Coleman 1990, 305). A firm represents, for example, a form of social capital—even if social capital is usually the unintended result of some action, undertaken for a different purpose. Finally, Coleman emphasizes that once people have created a firm to realize their interests, the firm can develop interests of its own (see especially Coleman 1974). To Coleman, the firm is basically a social invention, and agency theory is particularly useful for analyzing it.
Bourdieu and Other European Contributions to Economic Sociology
New economic sociology is primarily a U. S. phenomenon and has only recently begun to spread to Europe. Many of the major European sociologists have, however, written on the economy as part of their general concern with society. This is not only true of Raymond Aron, Michel Crozier, and Ralf Dahrendorf, but also of major sociologists with notable contemporary influence, such as Niklas
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Luhmann, Jü rgen Habermas, and Pierre Bourdieu (cf. also Giddens 1973, 1987). Luhmann (1927- 1998), for example, has written a number of essays on the economy, which, however, have been somewhat neglected in the current debate. His consistent thesis is that " economic sociology can only develop if its approach is overhauled and it sets out. . . from the concept of the economy as a subsystem of society" (Luhmann [1970] 1982, 221- 22; cf. 1988; Beckert 2002, 201-40). Habermas has written much less on the economy than Luhmann and has not shown any interest in economic sociology. Nonetheless, his general thesis that in modern society the lifeworld of the individual has been uncoupled from the system world, including the economic subsystem, has been much discussed (e. g. Habermas 1984-87; cf. Sitton 1998; for* knowledge-constitutive interests, see Habermas [1968] 1971).
Of the major European sociologists Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) has shown the most interest in the economy, from his studies of Algeria in the 1950s to a recent work on the housing market in Les structures societies de Vйconomie (2000b). Bourdieu has also devoted issues of his journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales to economic topics, such as " social capital" (no. 31, 1980), " the social construction of the economy" (no. 65, 1986), and " the economy and the economists" (no. 119, 1997). Most importantly, however, he has developed an important theoretical alternative to the model of embeddedness and its offshoots, namely die idea of the economy as a field, with all that this implies.
Bourdieu's foremost empirical study of interest to economic sociology—Travail et travailleurs en Algйrie ( Work and workers in Algeria-, 1963)—can be described as a rich ethnographic study (for a shortened version in English, see Bourdieu 1979). Some of its strength comes from the author's juxtaposition of the traditionalistic worldview of the Algerian peasants with the capitalist worldview of modern people. While the peasant in Algeria has an intensely emotional and nearly mystical relationship to the land, this is not the case in a society dominated by wage labor and capital. Work is not directly related to productivity in Algeria; one tries to keep busy all the time. Institutions such as money and credit are seen in a different light. Money and exchange are seen as inferior to barter; and credit—which, as opposed to assets, is tied to the person—is resorted to only in rare circumstances such as personal distress. In Algeria commercial ventures are preferred to industrial ones, since the risk involved is much smaller.
In economic sociology Bourdieu has also developed a general approach; an application of his general sociology, which is centered around the concepts of the field, habitus, and different types of capital. In 1997 he published an article entitled " The Economic Field, " which was revised and given the new title of " Principles of an Economic Anthropology" a few years later (Bourdieu 1997, 2000a; see chap. 4 in this volume). Since Bourdieu is very critical of Granovetter's approach—for ignoring the structural dimension embodied in the notion of the field—one may well be justified in speaking about two different approaches in contemporary economic sociology: that of embeddedness and that of fields.
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According to Bourdieu, the economy can be conceptualized as a field (as can an industry and a firm), that is, as a structure of actual and potential relations (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 94-120; Bourdieu 1997; cf. Fligstein 2001). Each field has its own logic and its own social structure. The structure of a field can also be understood in terms of its distribution of capital. Besides financial capital, three other forms of capital arc especially important: social, cultural, and symbolic. Social capital is one's connections of relevance to economic affairs; cultural capital comes from one's education and family background; and symbolic capital has to do with various items with a cognitive basis, such as goodwill and brand loyalty (Bourdieu 1997; for a general account of the different types of capital, sec Bourdieu [1983] 1986). The individual actors in the economic field bring with them their " economic habitus" (or " economic predispositions" ), which relates their future actions to their past experience. Homo economicus, Bourdieu says, is " a kind of anthropological monster" (1997, 61). Bourdieu's economic actor does not act in a rational way but in a reasonable way.
In addition to the three concepts of field, capital, and habitus important in Bourdieu's general sociology, there exists a fourth concept that is equally important but often ignored: interest, or that which drives the actor to participate in a field. " Interest is to 'be there, ' to participate, to admit that the game is worth playing and that the stakes that are created in and through this fact are worth pursuing; it is to recognize the game and to recognize its stakes" (1998a, 77; cf. Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 115-17). The opposite of interest (or illusio) is indifference (or ataraxia). Each field has its own interest, even if it masquerades as disinterestedness. Bourdieu criticizes the economists' version of interest as ahistorical—" far from being an anthropo-
logical invariant, interest is a historical arbitrary” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 116). The economists are also wrong in thinking that " economic interest" drives everything; " anthropology and comparative history show that the properly social magic of institutions can constitute just about anything as an interest" (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 117). The error of assuming that the laws of the economic field are applicable to all other fields in society Bourdieu terms " economism" (1998a, 83).
Bourdieu's analysis has been discussed in only limited ways in contemporary economic sociology. Distinction (Bourdieu [1979] 1986), for example, has much to say on preference formation and also contains a new approach to consumption. Bourdieu's emphasis on economic suffering and his attempt to tie it to the problematic of theodicy is, also of much interest (e. g., Bourdieu et al. 1999). So is his related effort to discuss the normative aspect of economic sociology, for example, in his recent little book on " the tyranny of capital" (1998b; see also Bourdieu 2002).
It would, however, be incorrect to give the impression that Bourdieu is the only economic sociologist of interest in contemporary France. Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot's work ([1987] 1991) on the different ways that an action can be justified or legitimized is of potential relevance to economic sociology (e. g., Stark 2000). Their ideas about the way that people legitimize their actions by referring to different " worlds" of justification are hard to summarize, and one example will have to suffice. A person who works for a firm may justify his behavior by referring either to efficiency (" the world of the market" ) or to loyalty (" the domestic world" )—with very different results (Boltanski and Thevenot [1987] 1991). Boltanski has also criticized the network approach as ideological and procapitalistic (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999). In speaking of networks, it must also be mentioned that Michel Callon has added to network theory by arguing that not only individuals and organizations, but also objects, can be actors (e. g., Law and Hassard 1999; cf. Callon 1998). A machine, for example, can determine what kinds of actions a machine operator has to perform and also how she is connected to other people in the process of production. According to another important argument of Callon, economic theory often fits reality so well because it has helped to create this reality in the first place (so-called performivity).
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Outside of the United States, France has become something of a center for innovative economic sociology, and to the work just mentioned one should
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