Sociology Discovers the Market: Economic Sociology

Abstract

This study aims at clarifying the relationship between economics and sociology since their emergence as a science. The boundaries between the two sciences have merged with one another due to the rise of economic sociology in the mid-1980s. Although sociology has shown close attention to economic phenomena since its birth, the relationship between economics and sociology had not advanced until the late 1970s. The main reason why economics and sociology had had their own territory for a long time can be explained by referring neoclassical economics. The neoclassical approach has alienated economics from the other social sciences due to economics being imbued with mathematics. Furthermore, economics’ prestige at American universities allowed it to dominate over the social sciences. Though this domination over the social sciences has peaked in the 1970s, sociology launched a counter attack on neoclassical economics. All these sociological critiques forced economics to open its borders to the social sciences. These critiques provided sociology with the opportunity to revive economic sociology, also known as new economic sociology, by importing economic phenomena such as market mechanism, rationality, institutions, and organizational analyses onto the sociological agenda.

Keywords

• neoclassical economics
• new institutionalism
• economic sociology
• new economic sociology
• new institutionalism in economics
• organizational analysis