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**5** 

**Economic Sociology:** 

Andrea Maurer

*Germany* 

**Bringing Back Social Factors** 

*University of the Federal Armed Forces, Institute of Sociology,* 

The spectacular revival of economic sociology in the US in the 1980s and in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century will be regarded as part of a paradigm shift in social sciences. Whereas classical sociology almost always dealt with normatively defined situations and value-based actions in which individual decisions, interests, and other situational aspects disappear from view, neo-classical economic theory focused on the rational autonomous individual trying to maximize private utility in market structures and therefore neglected

Because of this, New Institutionalism as well as New Economic Sociology claimed to improve sociological explanations and analyses of *main economic structures* by using wider sociological concepts and by focusing on social aspects in economic actions, especially social expectations. New Economic Sociology in particular focuses on social economic action and claims to show why and how personal interactions, networks, social norms and so on frame economic actions and therefore help to create market transactions as well as successful organizational behavior or entrepreneurship. In the 1960s and 1970s, Neil Smelser asked for, in a nod to Max Weber, an economic sociology which analyzes the causal relations between economic and social facts (Smelser, 1963). More precisely, Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg define in their influential *Handbook of Economic Sociology* that *economic sociology* should be "the application of the frames of reference, variables, and explanatory models of sociology to that complex of activities which is concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of scarce goods and services" (Smelser & Swedberg, 2005: 3).

Moreover, New Sociological Institutionalism tries to overcome the implications and imperfections of the sociological tradition by generally explaining institutions as a result of more or less rational individual action in social situations (Dimaggio, 1998; Maurer & Schmid, 2002). Therefore, the notion of uncertainty is widely used; only a few, more recent works reflect more precisely on social constellations like conflict, common interests, or divergent cultural patterns (Coleman, 1985; Elster, 1989; Nee, 2005; Maurer & Schmid, 2010). When economic sociology returned, many sociological concepts were, because of tradition, badly prepared for improving and systemizing analyses of the economic sphere by taking into account different interdependencies in economic life. Furthermore, these sociological theories are challenged by New Economic Institutionalism that has successfully started to

social institutions as an important aspect of economic life.

**1. Introduction** 

