Introduction to A Modern Guide to Economic Sociology

Abstract

This volume provides a modern guide to the fundamental concepts, premises and findings of economic sociology within sociological theory and research and its elements and implications in theoretical and empirical economics. Accordingly, it invites and includes contributions from both modern economic sociologists and contemporary sociologically minded – especially institutional, social, political, behavioral and cognitive – economists doing theoretical or empirical work in this and closely related fields. In general, the concepts, premises and stages of economic sociology within sociological theory and research tend to correspond and converge with its elements and implications in theoretical and empirical economics. Thus, the fundamentals and main developments of economic sociology within sociological analysis appear to be generally compatible with the variations and tendencies in economics. Almost every major concept, premise and stage of economic sociology corresponds, converges and is essentially compatible in various degrees and ways with an element, implication and phase of it in economics, primarily social, institutional, political, behavioral and related economics. This can be considered and formulated as a high degree of correspondence, convergence and compatibility between economic sociology within sociological theory and research and its elements and approximations in theoretical and empirical economics with respect to a shared set of core concepts and premises, as well as a common sequence of phases of development. And this shared set of core principles or a common sequence of phases primarily makes sociology and economics ‘sister disciplines’ or ‘allied’ social sciences, probably more than any other ideas or methods do (including ‘rational choice theory’ or the universal ‘economic approach to human behavior’ extending from the second to the first discipline). For illustration, the original, classical idea, premise and phase of economic sociology in sociological theory since Auguste Comte and perhaps even earlier