ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY

Sociology 920:512

Paul McLean

 

Department of Sociology

Rutgers University

Fall 2000

 

 

Office Hours: Tuesdays 1:00-3:00, LSH A336

Phone: 445-3705 (w) / 514-0435 (h)

E-mail: pmclean@rci.rutgers.edu

 

 

A basic feature of any society is that it produces and/or distributes goods and services necessary for survival.  Yet this production and distribution is not only economic in character, but also profoundly social, in that production and distribution originate in a social context, are guided by and in turn affect social structures, involve organized institutional and symbolic practices, and have a variety of important social outcomes.

 

Economic sociology purports to study this feature of social life.  It is one of the most burgeoning and heterogeneous fields in the discipline of sociology today, encompassing a huge variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical foci.  Although “World Systems Theory” and “Organizations, Occupations, and Work” have had long-standing status as sections of the ASA, “Economic Sociology” has only achieved such provisional status this year.  And yet a glance at recent volumes of the AJS or ASR reveals plenty of material on economy and society, and more specifically on the social structural and/or cultural (symbolic or institutional) underpinnings of much activity traditionally assumed to be motivated chiefly by the self-interest of autonomous actors.

 

There remains a great deal of contention over just what economic sociology is and how broadly it should be construed.  This class is designed as an overview of some of the disparate perspectives comprising the field, although necessarily an imperfect one, in order to begin and/or increase your acquaintance with an important set of literatures, classical and contemporary.  An effort has therefore been made to include not only classics of economic sociology with which I feel you should be acquainted, but also some of the most recent books and the most recent articles in the most prominent journals in the discipline. 

 

The class will be run as a discussion seminar, with brief weekly student presentations of material and considerable amounts of discussion.  It is unavoidable that I will speak often and occasionally even lecture on the readings, but I would like not to turn the class simply into a lecture.  Furthermore, I have organized the readings largely according to theoretical perspectives, rather than key concepts or major levels of analysis (such as individual, firm/group/network, interorganizational field, nation, and global levels).  This may hinder our efforts to draw contrasts between perspectives on particular topics, but that is something I hope we will accomplish in discussion.

 

A number of texts are available for purchase from the Livingston Campus Bookstore.  These are:

 

1)     Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg, editors, The Handbook of Economic Sociology (Princeton, 1994)

2)     Neil Fligstein, The Transformation of Corporate Control (California, 1990)

3)     Viviana Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money (Princeton, 1997)

4)     Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Chicago, 1976)

5)     Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Liberty Classics, 1982)

6)     Karl Marx, The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition (Norton, 1978)

7)     Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon Press, 1980)

8)     Doug Guthrie, Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China  (Princeton, 1999)

9)     Katherine Newman, No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City

 

Readings from these works are indicated by a single asterisk in the syllabus.  I have also ordered the book, Economy/Society: Markets, Meanings, and Social Structure (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000) by Bruce Carruthers and Sarah Babb.  This is a readable, fairly simple (read: upper-level undergraduate) treatment of many of the themes we will treat in the course.  I think it’s better to read the original research first, or something approaching the original research, but this book could help guide you in your mental organization of material.

 

I have tried to make most of the required readings come from one of these books.  However, many come from one of the three major journals in the field: American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Administrative Science Quarterly.  Required readings from these latter sources are available at Alexander Library or Kilmer Library (in print or in microform, depending on the year), or on-line for free download (try http://www.umi.com/pqdauto, or http://www.jstor.org/cgi-bin/jstor/gensearch).  I will expect you to obtain these materials for yourself.  These readings are indicated by a double asterisk in the syllabus. 

 

Thirdly, a small number of required readings are in books that I think you need not purchase.  These are available through the Reserve Desk at Kilmer Library here on campus (and hopefully also a copy of them will be available in the department’s library here in LSH), and are indicated by a triple asterisk (***) in the syllabus.  Finally, I have provided you with citations for lots of other reading material for each unit of the syllabus.  Some of these I have read, many I have not.  I have listed them for two reasons.  First they may help you pursue matters of greater concern to you on your own.  The bibliographies provided in the articles in Smelser and Swedberg’s Handbook should also be an invaluable reference resource for you.  Second, the long lists of other materials are pools of material for satisfying one of the two written requirements of the course, which I outline in the next section.

Requirements and Evaluation

 

            The requirements for this course are twofold:

 

1)     a 15-20 page research paper, due at the end of the semester.  This may be original research (preferable, but most difficult), or research based on secondary sources, or an application of theoretical ideas from one segment of our course to material read in another segment, or if necessary, a detailed critical review of a body of literature selected from one or two particular weeks of the course.

 

2)      Three one-page briefs based on supplemental readings, to be completed at the discretion of the student during the semester.  For each brief, pick one supplemental reading listed on the syllabus, write up a précis of its content and some criticisms or questions concerning it, make enough copies of the brief for everyone in the class to get a copy by Tuesday morning, and come to class prepared to present your summary and opinions of the piece in class.  You have to do three of these during the semester; when you do them is up to you.

 

 

Class Schedule

 

Week 1            Introduction to the course

 

Module I: Classics of ‘Economic Sociology’

 

Week 2            Adam Smith and Classical Political Economy

 

Readings:

 

1) *The Wealth of Nations, pp. 1-23, 291-293, 351-364; 26-35, 62-82, 88-97, 275-278; 450-455, 472-480, 513-515, 519-524

 

2) *The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 9-26, 43-45, 50-57, 61-64, 77-78 (par. 10 only), 109-117, 179-187 (including par. 1 of ch. 2)

 

Some other materials, mostly background: 

 

R. T. Gill, Evolution of Modern Economics  (Prentice Hall, 1967) esp. chs. 2 and 4

Randall Bartlett, Economics and Power  (Cambridge, 1989)

Albert O. Hirschman, Rival Views of Market Society and Other Essays  (New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books, 1986)

Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph.  (Princeton, 1977)

John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman, editors, The New Palgrave (Macmillan, 1987)

Max Weber, “Sociological Categories of Economic Action,” in Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, pp. 63-206.  (California, 1978) [perhaps especially sections 1-4, 8, 9, 13-15, 20-23, 41) (hardly simply ‘classical political economy,’ but no time to deal with on its own]

 

Week 3            Marxian Analysis, Classical and Contemporary

 

            Readings:

 

1)     *Karl Marx, The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 203-219 [For a longer and more detailed version, see pp. 329-361, 376-388, 397-415, 419-431)] 

 

2)     *The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 67, 70-81, 93-105, 319-328

 

3)     ***Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory, pp. 3-42, 144-166 (plus pp. 216-221, 385-399 if you’re really into it) (Cambridge, 1993)

 

4)     **Erik O. Wright, “Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise,” American Journal of Sociology 105,4 (2000):957-1002

 

We’d do all right perhaps just to read Marx and work through it, but Postone and Wright offer two of the most ambitious, fascinating and/or thoughtful appropriations of Marx in the last decade; and Wright in particular is at or near the center of the subdiscipline of economic sociology.

 

Some other materials on Marxism, workplace domination, and class analysis:

 

Erik Olin Wright, Classes (London: Verso, 1985)

Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis, pp. 1-37,  203-222 (plus pp. 407-458 if you’re really into it) (Cambridge, 1997)

G. A. Cohen, History, Labor and Freedom (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1988)

Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge, 1986)

Michael Burawoy, The Politics of Production  (London: Verso, 1985)

Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism (Chicago, 1979)

David Harvey, The Limits to Capital  (Chicago, 1982)

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, “Contested Exchange: New Microfoundations for the Political Economy of Capitalism,” Politics & Society 18,2 (1990):165-222.

Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (Basic Books, 1979)

P. Baran and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capitalism (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1968)

G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Power and Politics in the Year 2000 (Mayfield, 1998)

Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk, Uneven Tides: Rising Inequality in America (Russell Sage, 1993)

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (NY: Harper & Row, 1976)

 

 

Week 4            Understanding the Economy as Contingent Social Process, plus some Postindustrialism Theorizing

 

Readings:

 

1) *Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg, “The Sociological Perspective on the Economy,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 3-26

 

2) *Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, chs. 3-6, 11-18

 

Some other materials:

 

Karl Polanyi, “The Economy as Instituted Process,” in The Sociology of Economic Life, pp. 29-51.  Edited by Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg.  (Westview, 1992)  OR: in Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi, pp. 139-174.  Edited by G. Dalton.  (Beacon, 1968)

Jozsef Borocz, “Simulating the Great Transformation: Property Change Under Prolonged Informality in Hungary,” Archives europeenes de sociologie 34 (1993):81-107.

Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Economic Sociology.  (Academic Press, 1983)

Fred Block, Postindustrial Possibilities (California, 1990), esp. chs. 2-4, 6

Larry Hirschhorn, Beyond Mechanization: Work and Technology in a Postindustrial Age.  (MIT, 1984)

Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide (1984)

Arthur L. Stinchcombe, “Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production,” Administrative Science Quarterly 4:168-187

Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis, ch. 3

Wolfgang Streeck, “On the Institutional Conditions of Diversified Quality Production,” in E. Matzner and Wofgang Streeck, eds., Beyond Keynesianism: The Socio-Economics of Production and Employment (London: Edward Elgar, 1991)

Bennett Harrison, Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility.  (Basic Books, 1994)

Michael Best, The New Competition  (Harvard, 1990)

Richard Swedberg, “Major Traditions of Economic Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991):251-276.

Paul Hirsch, Stuart Michaels, and Ray Friedman, “Clean Models vs. Dirty Hands: Why Economics is Different from Sociology,” in Structures of Capital, pp. 39-56.  Edited by Sharon Zukin and Paul DiMaggio. (Cambridge, 1990)

Paul Hirst and Jonathan Zeitlin, “Flexible Specialization: Theory and Evidence in the Analysis of Industrial Change,” in Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions, pp. 220-239.  Edited by J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Robert Boyer (Cambridge, 1997)

 

 

Module II: Economistic Approaches and Concepts in Sociological Research

 

 

Week 5            Transaction Cost Economics, Principal-Agent Problems, Social Capital, and Market Inefficiencies

 

            Readings:

 

1)     *Oliver E. Williamson, “Transaction Cost Economics and Organization Theory,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 77-107

 

2)     *James Coleman, “A Rational Choice Perspective on Economic Sociology,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 166-180.

 

3)     ***George A. Akerlof, “The Market for ‘Lemons:’ Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,” in An Economic Theorist’s Book of Tales, pp. 7-22

 

 

Some other materials on insights from economics:

 

Oliver E. Williamson, “The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 87:548-577.

Oliver E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (Free Press, 1975)

Avner Greif, “Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies.”  Unpublished ms.

David M. Kreps, “Corporate Culture and Economic Theory,” in Perspectives in Positive Political Economy, pp. 90-143.  Edited by James Alt and Kenneth Shepsle.  (Cambridge, 1990)

Armen A. Alchian and Harold Demsetz, “Production, Information Cost, and Economic Organization,” American Economic Review (1972):777-795

Terry Moe, “The New Economics of Organization,” American Journal of Political Science 28,4 (1984):739-777.

Charles Perrow, “Economic Theories of Organization,” Theory and Society 15:11-45.

Ronald Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica 4:386-405

Anthony Oberschall and Eric M. Leifer, “Efficiency and Social Institutions: Uses and Misuses of Economic Reasoning in Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 12:233-253.

Robin Dawes and R. Thaler, “Anomalies: Cooperation,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 2:187-197.

Gary Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior  (Chicago, 1976)

Amartya Sen, “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Assumptions of Economic Theory,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4:318-344.

Mark Lazerson, “Organizational Growth of Small Firms: An Outcome of Markets and Hierarchies?”  American Sociological Review 53:330-342.

James Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94 (Supplement):S95-S120.

James Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Belknap, 1990) esp. pp. 241-299.

Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital.”  In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education.  Edited by John G. Richardson.

Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.”  Journal of Democracy 6,1:65-78.

Shin-Kap Han and Ronald L. Breiger, “Dimensions of Corporate Social Capital: Toward Models and Measures,” Working Paper 97-2, Working Papers in Networks and Interpretation, Cornell University Dept of Sociology, July 1997

Jozsef Borocz and Caleb Southworth, “Decomposing the Intellectuals' Class Power: Conversion of Cultural Capital to Income, Hungary, 1986,” Social Forces 74,3(March 1996):797-821.

 

 

Module III:  Current Sociological Approaches to the Economy, or, the ‘New Economic Sociology’

 

 

Week 6            The New Institutionalism in Economic Sociology

 

Part 1: Institutions

 

            Readings:

 

1)     *Geoffrey M. Hodgson, “The Return of Institutional Economics,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 58-76

 

2)     *Charles F. Sabel, “Learning by Monitoring: The Institutions of Economic Development,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 137-165


Part 2: Business History: Emergence, Transformation, and Environment of the Firm

 

            Readings:

 

3)     *Neil Fligstein, The Transformation of Corporate Control, chs. 1, 4, 6, 7

 

Some other materials on the New Institutionalism:

 

Paul David, “Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: The Necessity of History,” in W. N. Parker, Economic History and the Modern Economist  (Basil Blackwell, 1986)

Patrick McGuire, Mark Granovetter, and Michael Schwartz, “Thomas Edison and the Social Construction of the Early Electricity Industry in America,” in Explorations in Economic Sociology, pp. 213-248.  Edited by Richard Swedberg (Russell Sage Foundation, 1993)

Walter W. Powell and Paul J. Dimaggio, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago, 1991)

Richard Swedberg, “Markets as Social Structures,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 255-282.

Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History  (Norton, 1973)

Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990)

Max Weber, Essays in Economic Sociology, edited by Richard Swedberg (Princeton, 1999)

Max Weber, General Economic History (New York: Collier, 1961)

Randall Collins, “Weber’s Last Theory of Capitalism,” in The Sociology of Economic Life, pp. 85-110.  Edited by Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg (Westview, 1992) OR: American Sociological Review 45 (1980):925-942.

Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (Free Press, 1985)

John R. Commons, Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy (Transaction, 1934)

 

Some other materials on political economy, governance structures, industrial districts and regional development:

 

Leon Lindberg, John Campbell, and Rogers Hollingsworth, “Economic Governance and the Analysis of Structural Change in the American Economy,” in Governance of the American Economy, (1991), pp. 3-34

John Campbell and Leon Lindberg, “Property Rights and the Organization of Economic Activity by the State,” American Sociological Review 55,5:634-647.

Frank Dobbin and Timothy J. Dowd, “How Policy Shapes Competition: Early Railroad Foundings in Massachusetts,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (1997):501-529.

Frank Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age (Cambridge, 1994)

Bruce G. Carruthers, City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution (Princeton, 1996)

Frank Dobbin, “The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy During the 1930s in the United States, Britain, and France,” Theory and Society 22:1-56.

Frank Dobbin, John R. Sutton, John W. Meyer, and W. Richard Scott, “Equal Opportunity Law and the Construction of Internal Labor Markets,” American Journal of Sociology 99 (1993):396-427.

Fred Block, “The Roles of the State in the Economy,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 691-710.

Gosta Esping-Andersen, “Welfare States and the Economy,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 711-732.

Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism  (Princeton, 1990)

Peter B. Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Tranformation.  (Princeton, 1995)

Dietrich Rueschmeyer, Evelyn Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy.  (Chicago, 1992)

John Urry and S. Lash, The End of Organized Capitalism.  (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987)

J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Robert Boyer, editors, Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions (Cambridge, 1997) especially ch. 1

Frank P. Romo and Michael Schwartz, “The Structural Embeddedness of Business Decisions: The Migration of Manufacturing Plants in New York State, 1960 to 1985.” American Sociological Review 60:874-907

Gregory Hooks, “Regional Processes in the Hegemonic Nation: Political, Economic and Military Influences on the Use of Geographic Space.”  American Sociological Review 59:746-772.

F. Pyke, G. Beccattini, and W. Sengenberger, editors, Industrial Districts and Inter-Firm Cooperation in Italy  (Geneva: International Institute for Labor Studies, 1990)

J. R. Bowman, Capitalist Collective Action: Competitions, Cooperation and Conflict in the Coal Industry.  (Cambridge, 1989)

Wolfgang Streeck and Philippe C. Schmitter, Private Interest Government: Beyond Market and State (London: Sage, 1985)

J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Wolfgang Streeck, eds., Comparing Capitalist Economies: Variations in the Governance of Sectors (1994)

Ward Winslow, editor, The Making of Silicon Valley (Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, 1995)

 

Some other materials on labor markets, internal or otherwise:

 

Mark Granovetter, “The Sociological and Economic Approaches to Labor Market Analysis: A Social Structural View,” in Industries, Firms, and Jobs: Sociological and Economic Approaches, pp.187-216(?).  Edited by Paula England and G. Farkas.  (New York: Plenum Press, 19??)

Chris Tilly and Charles Tilly, “Capitalist Work and Labor Markets,” in Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 282-312.

James N. Baron and Willliam T. Bielby, “Bringing the Firm Back In: Stratification and the Organization of Work,” American Sociological Review 45:737-765.

Aage B. Sorensen, “Firms, Wages, and Incentives,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 504-520.

David Stark, “Rethinking Internal Labor Markets: New Insights from a Comparative Perspective,” American Sociological Review 51 (1986):492-504.

 

Some other materials on American business history:

 

Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Harvard, 1977)

Alfred Chandler, Strategy and Structure (MIT, 1962, 1990) especially intro and ch. 3

Oliver E. Williamson and William G. Ouchi, “The Markets and Hierarchies and Visible Hand Perspectives,” in Perspectives on Organization Design and Behavior, pp. 347-370.  Edited by A. H. van Ven and W. F. Joyce  (Wiley, 1981)

Robert G. Eccles and Harrison C. White, "Firm and Market Interfaces of Profit Center Control," in Siegwart Lindenberg et al. (eds.), Approaches to Social Theory, pp. 203-227  (Russell Sage, 1986)

Gerald Berk, Alternative Tracks: the Constitution of American Industrial Order, 1865-1917 (Johns Hopkins, 1994)

William G. Roy, Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America (Princeton, 1997)

 

 

Week 7            Networks, Embeddedness, and Power Dynamics in Economic Organizations

 

            Readings:

 

1)     **Joel M. Podolny, “A Status-Based Model of Market Competition,” American Journal of Sociology 98 (1993):829-872.

 

2)     *Walter W. Powell and Laurel Smith-Doerr, “Networks and Economic Life,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 368-402

 

3)     **Brian Uzzi, “The Sources and Consequences of Embeddedness for the Economic Performance of Organizations: The Network Effect,” American Sociological Review 61,4 (1996):674-698.

 

4)     **Roberto M. Fernandez, Emilio J. Castilla, and Paul Moore, “Social Capital At Work: Networks and Employment at a Phone Center.”  American Journal of Sociology 105,5(2000):1288-1356.

 

Some other materials on networks of power:

 

Karen S. Cook, “Exchange and Power in Networks of Interorganizational Relations,” The Sociological Quarterly 18 (1977):62-82

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik, The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective (Harper and Row, 1978)

Ronald S. Burt, Kenneth P. Christman, and Harold C. Kilburn, Jr.  1980.  “Testing a Structural Theory of Corporate Cooptation: Interorganizational Directorate Ties as a Strategy for Avoiding Market Constraints on Profits,” American Sociological Review 45:821-841.

Ronald S. Burt, Towards a Structural Theory of Action: Network Models of Social Structure (Academic Press, 1982)

Ronald S. Burt and Debbie Carlton, “Another Look at the Network Boundaries of American Markets,” American Journal of Sociology 95,3:723-753.

Beth Mintz and Michael Schwartz, The Power Structure of American Business (Chicago, 1985)

Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Harvard, 1992)

Mark S. Mizruchi and Linda Brewster Stearns, “Money, Banking, and Financial Markets,” in Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 313-341.

Mark Mizruchi, The Structure of Corporate Political Action: Interfirm Relations and Their Consequences (Harvard, 1992)

Gerald F. Davis and Henrich R. Greve, “Corporate Elite Networks and Governance Changes in the 1980s,” American Journal of Sociology 103 (1997):1-37.

 

Some other materials on networks per se:

 

Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78,6(1973):1360-1380.

W. W. Powell, “Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization,” in Research in Organizational Behavior, volume 12, pp. 295-336.  Edited by L. L. Cummings and B. Shaw.  (JAI, 1990) Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, 2nd edition (Chicago, 1995)

Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: the Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91 (1985):481-510.

Mark Granovetter, “Business Groups,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 453-475.

Roberto M. Fernandez and Nancy Weinberg, “Sifting and Sorting: Personal Contacts and Hiring in a Retail Bank,” American Sociological Review 62,6(1997):883-902.

Yanjie Bian, “Bringing Strong Ties Back In: Indirect Ties, Network Bridges, and Job Searches in China,” American Sociological Review 62,3(1997):366-385.

Joel M. Podolny and James N. Baron, “Resources and Relationships: Social Networks and Mobility in the Workplace,” American Sociological Review 62,5(1997):673-693.

Carruthers and Babb, Economy/Society, ch. 3

Robert R. Faulkner, Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film Industry (Transaction, 1982)

William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby, “Organizational Mediation of Project-Based Labor Markets: Talent Agencies and the Careers of Screenwriters,” American Sociological Review 64,1 (1999):64-85.

Wayne Baker, “The Structure of a National Securities Market,” American Journal of Sociology 89 (1984):775-811.

Wayne E. Baker, “Market Networks and Corporate Behavior,” American Journal of Sociology 96 (1990):589-625.

Wayne E. Baker, Robert R. Faulkner, and Gene A. Fisher, “Hazards of the Market: The Continuity and Dissolution of Interorganizational Market Relationships,” American Sociological Review 63,2:147-177

Paul Dimaggio and Hugh Louch, “Socially Embedded Consumer Transactions: For What Kinds of Purchases Do People Most Often Use Networks?” American Sociological Review 63,5 (1998):619-637.

Robert G. Eccles and Dwight B. Crane, Doing Deals: Investment Banks at Work (Harvard, 1988)

Gordon B. Baty, William M. Evans and Terry W. Rothermel, “Personnel Flows as Interorganizational Relations,” Administrative Science Quarterly 16 (1971):430-443.

J. Miller McPherson, “An Ecology of Affiliation,” American Sociological Review 48 (1983):519-535.

J. Miller McPherson, Pamela Popielarz, and Sonja Drobnic, “Social Networks and Organizational Dynamics,” American Sociological Review 57 (1992):153-170.

Mark Mizruchi and Michael Schwartz, editors, Intercorporate Relations: The Structural Analysis of Business.  (Cambridge, 1987)

Nitin Nohria and Robert G. Eccles, Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, and Action. (Harvard, 1992)

W. W. Powell, K. W. Koput, and L. Smith-Doerr, “Interorganizational Collaboration and the Locus of Innovation: Networks of Learning in Biotechnology,” Administrative Science Quarterly 41: 116-145.

Judith Blau, Social Contracts and Economic Markets  (New York: Plenum Press, 1993)

Gerald F. Davis, Kristina A. Diekmann, and Catherine H. Tinsley, “The Decline and Fall of the Conglomerate Firm in the 1980s: The Deinstitutionalization of an Organizational Form,” American Sociological Review 59 (1994): 547-570.

Charles Kadushin, “Friendship Among the French Financial Elite, American Sociological Review 60:202-221.

Charles F. Sabel, “Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy,”  Human Relations 46,9:1133-1170.

Susan Helper, John Paul MacDuffie, and Charles Sabel, “Pragmatic Collaborations: Advancing Knowledge While Controlling Opportunism.” Unpublished ms.

Stewart Macaulay, “Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study,” American Sociological Review 28(1963):55-67.

Brian Uzzi, “Embeddedness and its Paradoxes,” unpublished ms.

Alison Davis-Blake and Brian Uzzi, “Determinants of Employment Externalization: A Study of Temporary Workers and Independent Contractors,”  Administrative Science Quarterly 38:195-223.

James R. Lincoln and Michael L. Gerlach, “Keiretsu Networks and Corporate Performance in Japan,” American Sociological Review 61:67-88.

Harrison C. White, “Where Do Markets Come From?”  American Journal of Sociology 87(1981):517-547.

Ranjay Gulati and Martin Gargiulo, “Where Do Interorganizational Networks Come From?  American Journal of Sociology 104,5:1439-141493.

 

Week 8            Population Ecology and Emergent Organization Models

 

Readings:

 

1)     **Joel M. Podolny, Toby E. Stuart, and Michael T. Hannan, “Networks, Knowledge, and Niches: Competition in the Worldwide Semiconductor Industry, 1984-1991,” American Journal of Sociology 102 (1996):659-689.

 

2)     **Michael T. Hannan, Glenn R. Carroll, Elizabeth A. Dundon and John Charles Torres, “Organizational Evolution in a Multinational Context,” American Sociological Review 60 (1995):509-528. (plus follow-up Comment and Reply, pp. 529-544)

 

3)     ***W. Brian Arthur, “Positive Feedbacks in the Economy,” Scientific American February 1990:92-99.  OR: In Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, pp. 1-12

 

4)     **Neil Fligstein, “Markets as Politics: A Political-Cultural Approach to Market Institutions,” American Sociological Review 61,4 (1996):656-673.

 

Some other materials on population ecology:

 

Michael T. Hannan and John Freeman, Organizational Ecology (Harvard, 1989)  (esp. chs. 1-6)

Joel A. C. Baum and Jitendra V. Singh, “Organizational Niches and the Dynamics of Organizational Mortality,” American Journal of Sociology 100,2 (1994):346-380.

Nitin Nohria and Ranjay Gulati, “Firms and Their Environments,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 529-555.

Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Harvard, 1982)

Glenn R. Carroll, “Concentration and Specialization: Dynamics of Niche Width in Populations of Organizations,” American Journal of Sociology 90 (1985):1262-1283.

Paul D. Lopes, “Innovation and Diversity in the Popular Music Industry, 1969-1990,” American Sociological Review 57 (1992):56-71.

Joel A. C. Baum and Christine Oliver, “Institutional Embeddedness and the Dynamics of Organizational Populations,” American Sociological Review 57 (1992):540-560.

Michael T. Hannan, G. R. Carroll, S. Dobrev, and J. Han, “Organizational Mortality in European and American Automobile Industries, Part 1: Revisiting the Effects of Age and Size,” European Sociological Review 14 (1998): 279-302.

James Ranger-Moore, “Bigger May Be Better, But Is Older Wiser? Organizational Age and Size in the New York Life Insurance Industry,” American Sociological Review 62,6 (1997):903-921.

Jesper B. Sorensen and Toby E. Stuart, “Aging, Obsolescence, and Organizational Innovation,” Administrative Science Quarterly 45,1 (March 2000):81-112.

 

 

Module IV: Social Influences on the Economic Beyond the ‘Economy’

 

 

Week 9             Gender and Economy

 

Readings:

1)     *Ruth Milkman and Eleanor Townsley, “Gender and the Economy,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 600-619.

 

2)     **Leslie McCall, “Gender and the New Inequality: Explaining the College/Non-College Wage Gap,” American Sociological Review 65,2 (2000):234-255

 

Some other readings on gender and economy:

 

Mary Blair-Loy, “Career Patterns of Executive Women in Finance: An Optimal Matching Analysis.”  American Journal of Sociology 104,5:1346-1397

Marianne A. Ferber and Julie Nelson, editors, Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics.  (Chicago, 1993)

Julie A. Nelson, Feminism, Objectivity and Economics (Economics as Social Theory) (Routledge, 1996)

Lourdes Beneria and Shelly Feldman, editors, Unequal Burden, Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty, and Women’s Work  (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992)

Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis, chs. 9, 11, 12

Tak Wing Chan, “Revolving Doors Reexamined: Occupational Sex Segregation over the Life Course,” American Sociological Review 64,1 (1999):86-96.

Dorinne Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago, 1990)

Lisa E. Cohen, Joseph P. Broschak, and Heather A. Haveman, “And Then There Were More? The Effect of Organizational Sex Composition on the Hiring and Promotion of Managers,” American Sociological Review 63,5 (1998):711-727.

Fiona M. Kay and John Hagan, “Raising the Bar: The Gender Stratification of Law-Firm Capital,” American Sociological Review 63,5 (1998):728-743.

David A. Cotter et al., “All Women Benefit: The Macro-Level Effect of Occupational Integration on Gender Earnings Equality,” American Sociological Review 62,5(1997):714-734.

Margaret Mooney Marini and Pi-Ling Fan, “The Gender Gap in Earnings at Career Entry,” American Sociological Review 62,4(1997):588-604.

Francine D. Blau, Marianne A. Ferber and Anne E. Winkler, The Economics of Women, Men and Work (Prentice Hall, 1997)

Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work (Russell Sage Foundation, 1997)

 

 

Week 10            Culture and Economy

 

Readings:

 

1) *Paul DiMaggio, “Culture and Economy,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 27-57

 

2) *Viviana Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money, chs. 1, 3, and 7

 

Some other materials on cultural factors and the economy:

 

Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (Norton, 1998)

Robert Wuthnow, “Religion and Economic Life,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 620-646

Nicole Woolsey Biggart, Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America (Chicago 1989)

Nicole Woolsey Biggart, “Labor and Leisure,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 672-690.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  (London: Unwin, 1930)

Reinhard Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization ( John Wiley, 1956; California, 1974 (reprint))

Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (California, 1983)

Deirdre Boden, The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action (Polity Press, 1994)

Carruthers and Babb, Economy/Society, chapter 2

Amitai Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics.  (Free Press, 1987), esp. chs. 5 and 14.

Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Insitutitonal Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48:147-160.

Tal Simons and Paul Ingram, “Organization and Ideology: Kibbutzim and Hired Labor, 1951-1965.  Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (1997):784-813.

James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (Yale, 1976)

 Joseph Galaskiewicz and Ronald S. Burt, “Interorganization Contagion in Corporate Philanthropy,” Administrative Science Quarterly 26 (1991):88-106.

Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (Macmillan, 1899; Prometheus, 1998)

Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago, 1976)  especially pp. 126-179

Gary Hamilton and Nicole Woolsey Biggart, “Market, Culture, and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East, in The Sociology of Economic Life, pp. 181-223.  Edited by Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg (Boulder: Westview, 1992)

Clifford Geertz, “The Bazaar Economy: Information and Search in Peasant Marketing,” in The Sociology of Economic Life, pp. 225-232. 

Randall Collins, “An Asian Route to Capitalism: Religious Economy and the Origins of Self-Transforming Growth in Japan,” American Sociological Review 62,6(1997):843-865

Mary Douglas, Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (New York: Routledge, 1992)

Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1991)

Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914 (London: Verso Books, 1991)

Rob Shields, editor, Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption  (London: Routledge, 1992)

Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. (St. Louis: Telos, 1981)

John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies.  (London: Sage, 1990)

Jozsef Borocz, Leisure Migration: A Sociological Study on Tourism (Pergamon, 1996)

 

 

Module V: Global Processes and World-Historical Changes

 

Week 11            Global Capitalism, Commodity Chains, and World Systems Theory

 

                        Readings:

 

1)     *Gary Gereffi, “The International Economy and Economic Development,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 206-233

 

2)     **Dennis O’Hearn, “Innovation and the World-System Hierarchy: British Subjugation of the Irish Cotton Industry, 1780-1830,” American Journal of Sociology 100,3(1994): 587-621

 

3)     ***Miguel Korzeniewicz, “Commodity Chains and Marketing Strategies: Nike and the Global Athletic Footwear Industry,” in Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, pp. 247-265

 

Some other materials on world systems theory and development:

 

Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, editors, Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism (Greenwood, 1994)

Gary Gereffi and Gary G. Hamilton, “Commodity Chains and Embedded Networks: The Economic Organization of Global Capitalism.”  Paper presented at ASA meetings, 1996.

Alexander Gerschenkron, “Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective,” in The Sociology of Economic Life, ed. M. Granovetter and R. Swedberg (1992) (among other places)

Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, I-III.  (Academic, 1974-1989), esp. I, ch.5; II, chs.4,5

Carruthers and Babb, Economy/Society, chs. 6,7

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large (Minnesota, 1996)

 

 

Week 12            Transitions to Capitalism, and Out of Socialism

 

Readings:

 

1)     Doug Guthrie, Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China (Princeton, 1999), chs. 1, 2, 6, and 8

 

2)     ***David Stark, “Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology 101:993-1027

 

Some other materials on various transitions:

 

i) Early Modern Europe

 

Richard Lachmann, Capitalists in Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe.  (Oxford, 2000)

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book III

Gary Hamilton, “Civilizations and the Organization of Economies,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 183-205.

A. Field, “The Problem with Neoclassical Economics: A Critique with Special Reference to the North/Thomas Model of Pre-1500 Europe,” Explorations in Economic History 18:174-198.

Paul D. McLean and John F. Padgett, “Was Florence a Perfectly Competitive Market? Transactional Evidence from the Renaissance,” Theory and Society 26 (1997):209-244.

 

ii) East Asia

 

Victor Nee, “A Theory of Market Transition: From Redistribution to Markets in State Socialism,”  American Sociological Review 54 (1989):663-681.

Victor Nee, “Organizational Dynamics of Market Transition: Hybrid Forms, Property Rights, and Mixed Economy in China,” Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (1992):1-27

Anthony Oberschall, “The Great Transition: China, Hungary, and Sociology Exit Socialism into the Market,” American Journal of Sociology 101,4 (1996):1028-1041 (plus other articles in AJS 101,4)

Yang Cao and Victor G. Nee, “Comment: Controversies and Evidence in the Market Transition Debate.”  American Journal of Sociology 105,4:1175-1189

“Reply: Beyond the Debate and Toward Substantive Institutional Analysis.” American Journal of Sociology 105,4:1190-1195.

Ronald Dore, “Goodwill and the Spirit of Market Capitalism,” in The Sociology of Economic Life, pp. 159-180.  OR: British Journal of Sociology 34:459-482.  OR: in Taking Japan Seriously: A Confucian Perspective on Leading Economic Issues (Stanford, 1987)

Ronald Dore, Flexible Rigidities: Industrial Policy and Structural Adjustment in the Japanese Economy.  (London: Athlone Press, 1986)

Marco Orru, Nicole Woolsey Biggart, and Gary G. Hamilton, The Economic Organization of East Asian Capitalism (Sage, 1997)

Lisa Keister, “Engineering Growth: Business Growth Structure and Firm Performance in China’s Transition Economy,” American Journal of Sociology 104,2:404-440.

Yanjie Bian and John Logan, “Market Transition and the Persistence of Power: The Changing Stratification System in Urban China,” American Sociological Review 61 (1996):739-758.

Xueguang Zhou, Nancy Brandon Tuma and Phyllis Moen, “Institutional Change and Job-Shift Patters in Urban China, 1949 to 1994,” American Sociological Review 62,3(1997):339-365.

 


iii) Eastern Europe

 

David Stark and Laszlo Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in Eastern Europe (Cambridge, 1998)

Theodore Gerber and Michael Hout, “More Shock than Therapy: Market Transition, Employment, and Income in Russia, 1991-1995,” American Journal of Sociology 104,1 (1998):1-50.

Ivan Szelenyi, Katherine Beckett, and Lawrence p. King, “The Socialist Economic System,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 234-251.

Jozsef Borocz, “Dual Dependency and Property Vacuum: Social Change on the State Socialist Semiperiphery,” Theory and Society 21:77-104.

Jozsef Borocz and Akos Rona-Tas, “Small Leap Forward: Emergence of New Economic Elites,” Theory and Society 25:751-781.

Jozsef Borocz and Caleb Southworth, “`Who You Know . . .’: Earnings Effects of Formal and Informal Social Network Resources under Late State Socialism, Hungary, 1986-87” Journal of Socio-Economics 27,3(1998):403-27.

Akos Rona-Tas, “The First Shall Be Last? Entrepreneurship and Communist Cadres in the Transition from Socialism,” American Journal of Sociology, 100,1 (1994):40-69.

David Stark, “Bending the Bars of the Iron Cage: Bureaucratization and Informalization in Capitalism and Socialism,” Sociological Forum 4,4:637-664.

 

 

Week 13            Informal Economies, Black Market Economies

 

                        Readings:

 

1)     *Alejandro Portes, “The Informal Economy and Its Paradoxes,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 426-449

 

2)     ***Mitchell Duneier, Sidewalk (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), chs. 1-3

 

3)     *Ivan Light and Stavros Karageorgis, “The Ethnic Economy,” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 647-671.

 

Some other materials on informal economies and immigrant economies:

 

Ivan Light and Steven J. Gold, Ethnic Economies (San Diego: Academic Press, 2000)

Ivan Light, Race, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship in Urban America (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995)

Ivan Light and Parminder Bhachu, editors, Immigration and Entrepreneurship: Culture, Capital, and Ethnic Networks  (Transaction, 1993)

Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich, Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982 (California, 1988)

David L. Torres, “Dynamics Behind the Formation of a Business Class: Tucson’s Hispanic Business Elite,” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 12,1:25-49.

Alejandro Portes and Saskia Sassen-Koob, “Making It Underground: Comparative Material on the Informal Sector in Western Market Economies,” American Journal of Sociology 93,1 (1987):30-61.

Roger Waldinger, Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York (Harvard, 1999)

Roger Waldinger and M. Lapp, “Back to the Sweatshop or Ahead to the Informal Sector,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17,1:6-29 (1993)

Roger Waldinger, Through the Eye of the Needle: Immigrants and Enterprise in New York’s Garment Trade (New York University Press, 1986)

Saskia Sassen, “The Informal Economy,” in Dual City: Restructuring New York, edited by John Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells, pp. 79-10 (Russell Sage Foundation, 1991)

Saskia Sassen, “The Informal Economy: Between New Developments and Old Regulations,” in Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: The New Press, 1998)

Robert E. Parker, Flesh Peddlers and Warm Bodies: The Temporary Help Industry and Its Workers (Rutgers, 1994)

Victor Nee, Jimy M. Sanders, Scott Sernau, “Job Transitions in an Immigrant Metropolis: Ethnic Boundaries and the Mixed Economy,” American Sociological Review 59,6 (1994):849-872.

 

 

Module VI: Squeezed Out of Economic Sociology: Poverty, Inequality, Real People

 

Week 14

 

Readings:

 

1)     Katherine S. Newman, No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City, chs. 1, 3, 6, 8

 

Some other materials on this potpourri:

 

Richard P. Taub, Community Capitalism: The South Shore Bank’s Strategy for Neighborhood Revitalization.  (Harvard Business School, 1994)

Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work (Russell Sage Foundation, 1997)

Jill S. Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (Oxford, 1994)

Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth / White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1995)

Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class (London: Verso, 1986, 1999)