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Sociolog y, Economic
Germany’s problems, Jewish sociologists such as Ernst
Borinski (Tougaloo College), John Herz (Howard
University), Viktor Lowenfeld (Hampton Institute), Ernst
Manasse (North Carolina Central University), Fritz
Pappenheim (Talladega College), and Donald Rasmussen
(Talladega College) obtained positions at black colleges
where their experience as minorities was an educational
asset in their professional and personal interactions with
black college students, faculty, and the community
(Cunnigen 2003).
The history of sociology has traditionally minimized
the contributions of people of color, women, gays and
lesbians, and other minorities. Consequently, it is of manifest importance that contemporary and future sociologists utilize alternative theoretical frames to support the
recognition and canonization of marginalized scholars.
Repudiation and revision of the traditional means of canonizing sociologists will result in the overdue and deserved
recognition of the contributions of scholars who, by virtue
of their race, sex or gender, or sexual preference, existed as
“outsiders within” their own profession.
SEE ALSO
Chicago School; Du Bois, W. E. B.; Sociology
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bernard, L. L. 1948. Sociological Trends in the South. Social
Forces 27 (1): 12–19.
Cunnigen, Donald. 2003. The Legacy of Ernst Borinski: The
Production of an African-American Sociological Tradition.
Teaching Sociology 31: 397–411.
Henry, Charles P. 1995. Abram Harris, E. Franklin Frazier, and
Ralph Bunche: The Howard School of Thought on the
Problem of Race. National Political Science Review 5: 36–56.
Himes, Sandy J. 1949. Development and Status of Sociology in
Negro Colleges. Journal of Educational Sociology 23 (1):
17–32.
Wright, Earl, II. 2002. Using the Master’s Tools: Atlanta
University and American Sociology, 1896–1924. Sociological
Spectrum 22 (1): 15–39.
Earl Wright II
SOCIOLOGY,
ECONOMIC
Economic sociology (ES) forms a specific sociological subfield. As with sociology—its genus—itself a multiparadigm discipline, there is some disagreement about what
exactly falls under ES’s rubric. To counter this difficulty
ES has been defined broadly as “the sociological perspective applied to economic phenomena” (Smelser and
Swedberg 2005, p. 3).
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While both ES and economics study the economy in
its multiple expressions, they are at variance with each
other. At the risk of oversimplification, the starting point
for economics is the isolated rational economic actor;
whereas for ES, actors always operate in social, thus relational, contexts and do so reflexively.
EARLIER PERSPECTIVES
The sociological look upon economic phenomena has
marked sociology from its outset, so it is meaningful to
distinguish ES into old and new segments. Old ES refers
largely to the relevant parts in the work of sociology’s
founding fathers, for example, Karl Marx, Émile
Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel. Indeed, Marx
was concerned with the social designation of the commodity and with commodity fetishism. He also analyzed
capitalism’s origins as well as capital as a social relation.
Durkheim was directly interested in this field, which he—
along with Weber—named as such. He was particularly
concerned with the development of the division of labor
while he criticized economists for their tendency to construct an exclusive economic world, which was arbitrary
and one-sided because the social dimensions were
excluded or neglected, whereas he linked anomie to modern economic activity. For his part, Weber delved at length
in the sociological study of economic institutions and of
processes pointing out that economic action is a special
form of social action. Weber advocated considering both
the meaning with which actors imbue their economic
action (e.g., in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism [1904–1905]) as well as the social dimension
of economic phenomena. By contrast Simmel’s work is
not systematically concerned with ES and is only dotted
with references of an ES concern, such as analyses of interest, competition, and interlinkages between money and
modernity.
Sociological interest in the economy subsided during
the 1920s, although authors such as Joseph A.
Schumpeter, Talcott Parsons, Neil Smelser, and Karl
Polanyi offered contributions to the discussion. Since
the 1960s, the attempts of some economists to extend
economic interpretations into social phenomena—an
approach called economic imperialism—challenged the
established division of labor between economics and sociology. This provoked sociologists’ response, which culminated in the reemergence of ES. The wider frames of the
new ES, as Jens Beckert (1996) pointed out, are delineated by two parameters: It aims towards a sociological
understanding of economic processes and structures, and
critiques established economic types of analysis. In the
meantime, increasingly, mainstream economics has come
to accept a role for the social dimension, although conceptualized quite differently than it is in ES.
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Sociolog y, Economic
CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES
Mark Granovetter first discussed the new ES in
“Economic Action and Social Structure” (1985).
Granovetter, a key figure in ES, has pointed out that all
economic action and phenomena are embedded in concrete networks of social relations, social structures, normative arrangements, and institutions that constrain and
channel them in particular ways. Unlike the view of Karl
Polanyi, for Granovetter these actions and phenomena are
more thoroughly embedded in modern societies than in
premodern ones. The concept of social embeddedness,
which is identified with ES, despite some attempts to
define it narrowly, remains a general concept.
Granovetter’s own work on how people obtain a job
at the local level was an early application of the social
embeddedness idea. He argues that getting a job, or
accessing the labor market, is intrinsically a social process
linked to the job seeker’s social ties in specific social
milieus, which are formulated and distributed under the
overdetermining impact of social class. This thesis, known
as the strength-of-weak-ties thesis, has found corroboration
in a wide range of social contexts in the United States and
elsewhere, for instance in Greece and Russia. Recent U.S.
research with respect to other social divisions, such as gender, race, and ethnicity, on matters pertaining to employment and work have identified the prevalence of
continuities in the transmittance of social inequalities
rather than of discontinuities, which highlights the multifaceted social dimension in labor markets.
Another key concept in ES is that of the social construction of economic phenomena, which draws from the theory
of constructivism advanced by Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann in 1966. Social construction refers to the fact
that economic arrangements, institutions, and regulations
do not have an a priori independent existence. Instead, they
are formulated as a result of human social interaction and
purposeful intervention that take place in a specific social
context. Once, however, an economic structure comes into
being it may assume an objectivity that constrains and
impacts upon economic action and practices.
Thematically, research in ES has expanded to include
analyses at the micro-, mezzo-, and macro-levels of firms,
markets, consumption, entrepreneurship, business
groups, money, migration, networks, trust, development,
formal/informal work, varieties of capitalism, forms of
capital, other economic institutions, the role of culture,
and other areas, with most interesting results. Such
research has contributed to the deciphering of aspects of
the economy, and some of the most attractive examples of
ES’s fruition are to be found in the work of, among others, Viviana Zelizer on the shifting meaning of money
(1994), Richard Swedberg on Weber’s ES (1998), and
Neil Fligstein on contemporary market societies (2001).
While the expansion of empirical research continues,
ES’s theoretical production is currently not keeping up
with expectations and needs to advance. Accordingly,
researchers such as Swedberg suggest that elaborations on
the sociological concept of interest and on an interest-based
concept of institutions may provide new vistas for ES.
SEE ALSO
Sociology
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beckert, Jens. 1996. What is Sociological about Economic
Sociology? Uncertainty and the Embeddedness of Economic
Action. Theory and Society 25: 803–840.
Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social
Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of
Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Biggart, Nicole Woolsey, ed. 2002. Readings in Economic
Sociology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Fligstein, Neil. 2001. The Architecture of Markets: An Economic
Sociology of Twenty-First Century Capitalist Societies.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Granovetter, Mark. 1973. The Strength of Weak Ties. American
Journal of Sociology 78: 1360–1380.
Granovetter, Mark. 1983. The Strength of Weak Ties: A
Network Theory Revisited. Sociological Theory 1: 201–233.
Granovetter, Mark. 1985. Economic Action and Social
Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. American Journal
of Sociology 91 (3): 481–510.
Granovetter, Mark, and Richard Swedberg, eds. 2001. The
Sociology of Economic Life. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Guillén, Mauro F., Randall Collins, Paula England, and Marshall
Meyer, eds. 2002. The New Economic Sociology: Developments
in an Emerging Field. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Koniordos, Sokratis M. 2005. Informal Support Networks in the
Making of Small Independent Businesses: Beyond “Strong”
and “Weak” Ties? In Networks, Trust and Social Capital:
Theoretical and Empirical Investigations from Europe, ed.
Sokratis M. Koniordos, 167–185. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Mouw, Ted. 2000. Job Relocation and the Racial Gap in
Unemployment in Detroit and Chicago, 1980 to 1990.
American Sociological Review 65 (5): 730–53.
Mouw, Ted. 2003. Social Capital and Finding a Job: Do
Contacts Matter? American Sociological Review 68 (6):
868–898.
Pager, Devah, and Lincoln Quillian. 2005. Walking the Talk?
What Employers Say Versus What They Do. American
Sociological Review 70 (3): 355–380.
Parsons, Talcott, and Neil J. Smelser. 1956. Economy and Society:
A Study in the Integration of Economic and Social Theory.
Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Polanyi, Karl. 1957. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1994. Capitalism, Socialism, and
Democracy. London: Routledge.
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Smelser, Neil J., and Richard Swedberg, eds. 2005. The
Handbook of Economic Sociology, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press and New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Swedberg, Richard. 1998. Max Weber and the Idea of Economic
Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Swedberg, Richard. 2003. Principles of Economic Sociology.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Swedberg, Richard. 2004. What Has Been Accomplished in
New Economic Sociology and Where Is It Heading?
European Journal of Sociology 45 (3): 317–330.
Swedberg, Richard. 2006. The Toolkit of Economic Sociology,
Working Paper No. 22. Center for the Study of Economy
and Society Working Papers Series, Cornell University.
http://www.economyandsociety.org/publications/wp22_swed
berg_toolkit04.pdf.
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, and Sheryl Skaggs. 2002. Sex
Segregation, Labor Process Organization, and Gender
Earnings Inequality. American Journal of Sociology 108:
102–128.
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, Catherine Zimmer, Kevin
Stainback, et al. 2006. Documenting Desegregation:
Segregation in American Workplaces by Race, Ethnicity, and
Sex, 1966–2003. American Sociological Review 71 (4):
565–588.
Trigilia, Carlo. 2002. Economic Sociology: State, Market and
Society in Modern Capitalism, trans. Nicola Owtram. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of
Interpretive Sociology, trans. Ephraim Fischoff et al. 2 vols.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Weber, Max. 1999. Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
intro. by Anthony Gidens; trans. Talcott Parsons. London:
Routledge. (Orig. pub. 1904–1905.)
Yakoubovitch, Valery. 2005. Weak Ties, Information, and
Influence: How Workers Find Jobs in a Local Russian Labor
Market. American Sociological Review 70 (3): 408–421.
Zelizer, Viviana A. 1994. The Social Meaning of Money. New
York: Basic Books.
Sokratis M. Koniordos
SOCIOLOGY,
EUROPEAN
European sociological thought can be traced to three
major sources: the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, of
the eighteenth century; the Industrial Revolution; and the
romantic period’s counterreaction to these ideological,
social, and political changes. Although there are important prefigurations of sociology (for example in the
thought of Montesquieu, Marquis de Condorcet, Adam
Smith, and others), the roots of modern sociology lie in
the work of Auguste Comte (1798–1857), who coined
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the term sociology, Karl Marx (1818–1883), Émile
Durkheim (1858–1917), and Max Weber (1864–1920).
The last three are conventionally represented as the
founding fathers of the discipline.
The great question posed by these thinkers is that
of understanding the history and consequences of the
seismic changes associated with the origins of modern
capitalism (Marx and Weber), industrialization and individualization (Comte and Durkheim), and the new social
order of modernity (Weber). For Marx the central focus is
upon the global effects of the capitalist mode of production with its new classes and class conflict, the alienating
impact of new forms of factory production, and the rise of
the working class movement. For Weber, the concern
shifts to understanding the ethical and religious roots of
rational conduct and institutions in Europe and North
America, comparative analysis of earlier European social
structures and non-European civilizations, and characteristic features of modern society (the modern state and
rational administration, modern capitalism, democratic
politics, bureaucracy, and so on). With Durkheim the
central problem is the changing basis of social solidarity
(from mechanical to organic solidarity) and the corrosive
impact of individualism upon traditional social orders.
Sociology adopted two related perspectives, one
focusing upon the structure and dialectics of social relations (the European paradigm) and the other emphasizing
the evolution of whole societies along social Darwinian
principles. The latter is best represented by early American
sociology, especially in the writings of William Graham
Sumner (1840–1910), Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913),
and Franklin H. Giddings (1855–1931). The guiding
source is not Marx or Durkheim but the English evolutionist and individualistic thinker Herbert Spencer
(1820–1903). Evolutionism informed by individualism
and native pragmatism provided the framework for speculations about social organization, institutional adaptation, and change. However, the European tradition was
not totally ignored. It entered into the texture of
American sociology through the work of Albion
Woodbury Small (1854–1926), the founder of the first
American department of sociology at the University of
Chicago in 1892 and influential editor of the American
Journal of Sociology (from 1895). Through Small’s teaching American students gained access to the conflict tradition of Georg Simmel (1858–1918). Small also helped
shape the Chicago School of W. I. Thomas (1863–1947),
Robert Ezra Park (1864–1944), and Ernest Burgess
(1886–1966). This is the context in which American sociology discovered its unique philosophical voice in the
symbolic interactionist philosophy of George Herbert
Mead (1863–1931).
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