Economic Sociology: Social Ties, Culture, and Economic Processes

In compressed form, this six-week course provides an introduction to economic sociology seen not as a subordination of sociology to economics but as the sociological explanation of economic phenomena. As it has developed over the past twenty years, economic sociology has concentrated on two activities: first, the extension of economic models to social phenomena rarely examined by economists, and second, the study of contexts that constrain the operation of economic processes as usually understood by economists. In line with these two preoccupations, economic sociologists have focused on firms and markets. This course emphasizes a third activity, the search for alternative accounts of phenomena that most specialists have explained in terms of economics. In particular, it seeks sociological explanations of production, consumption, and distribution. After a general orientation to economic sociology as a whole, the course explores economic activities in an unconventionally wide range of settings including households, informal sectors, gift economies, and consumption. The course culminates with the analysis of compensation systems as a point of confrontation between conventional and alternative accounts of economic phenomena.