Die zwei Soziologien des Marktes

Abstract

The international debate on the sociology of markets currently includes two contrary perspectives on the picture of ‘the market’ painted by economics and its reference in reality: on the one hand the market model of economics, based on the assumptions of general equilibrium and rational action, is being criticized as unrealistic or at least as a rarely found exceptional phenomenon in reality. This view is represented by the proponents of the new economic sociology and related approaches. On the other hand the advocates of performativity theory stress the impact of economic knowledge in the process of the social construction of socioeconomic reality. They assume that real markets are designed according to the market model in economics. The thesis of this paper is that both types of market sociology are perpetuating the categorical deficits of neoclassical economics. This will be shown using the examples of Harrison White’s theory of production markets and Michel Callon’s deliberations on the performativity of economic knowledge.