What Can New Economic Sociology Learn from the Historical School, especially Max Weber?

Abstract

Since the early 1980s economic sociology has come alive, especially in the United States, but recently also in Europe, and it has chosen to present itself as “new economic sociology”. The term “new economic sociology” was coined in 1985 by Mark Granovetter, who argued that as opposed to “old economic sociology” (by which he meant industrial sociology and works such as Economy and Society (1956) by Parsons and Smelser) new economic sociology should be more aggressive and attempt to explain major economic phenomena, not just peripheral ones (cf. Swedberg 1997). The same year Granovetter also published a programmatic article on economic sociology in American Journal of Sociology, entitled “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness”, which set off a development which during the next fifteen years would result in a huge number of books, readers and articles (Granovetter 1985). Today economic sociology — typically in the form of this “new economic sociology” — represents one of the most dynamic subfields in modern sociology.KeywordsLegal AuthorityEconomic SociologyRational CapitalismEconomic PhenomenonPolitical CapitalismThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.