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This paper makes a case for sociological institutionalism, particularly its Veblenian variant or connection. This is attempted against a background of the surge of renewed interest in analyzing institutions within modern social science, especially economics and sociology. This is indicated by the emergence of the new institutional economics as the (modified) neoclassical approach to institutions and the revival of economic sociology with its conception of the institutional embeddedness of the economy, respectively. Still, many pertinent differences between economic and sociological institutionalism are overlooked or minimized in the current literature. By exploring such differences, the paper helps span a gap in the literature in which comparative analyses of economic and sociological approaches to institutions are rare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kari Polanyi Levitt has commented that her father's writing was met with a 'deafening silence' in England, a silence which she suggests is 'yet to be explained'. Given The Great Transformation was purposefully, situated in England Polanyi Levitt's point is an interesting one, and one which still deserves attention. But the last two decades have witnessed an intensification of interest in Karl Polanyi's methodological approach and theoretical insights, from England as well as elsewhere, and representing a range of disciplines. This raises a string of associated questions: interest from who? Why now? And how? Further we could ask: Does this new interest have the potential to redress the Polanyi Levitt charge without falling prey to an opposite one of misusing or abusing the Polanyi legacy? This paper contributes to the much larger agenda of examining in a serious way the usefulness and applicability of Polanyi's key ideas and methods, particularly as they apply to the burgeoning interest in markets and exchange within New Economic Sociology (NES). A sub-set of this agenda is to explore whether Polanyian insights provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of competitive processes and innovation than is currently available within Economics, Sociology or indeed Economic Sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to demonstrate to what extent an academic approach that borrows from economics and sociology is heuristic in terms of fully understanding monetary issues. Contrary to authors that consider money to be neutral, this article emphasizes that money is a ‘total social fact’. Hence, it focuses on three meanings of money through the theoretical framework of Schumpeter and various French institutionalists. It also focuses on the Swiss case, which is particularly relevant because money plays a significant role in order for such a country to foster prosperity and create social links. Finally, there is clearly a high usefulness of a pluralistic approach on the monetary issue for heterodox economists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There have been comparative discussions about Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber before, but not quite from the most appropriate viewpoint. The present paper treats them as theorists of action, in social and economic analysis, and this perspective yields some interesting new findings. Both theorists are to be taken as participants in the great Methodenstreit in economics, 100 years ago, and it is Veblen who suggests a more radical solution to this dispute, he suggests its final abolishment. The main difference between Veblen and Weber is in their respective appreciations of the role of psychology in social analysis. Weber does not think it important, but in so thinking he misses the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology that Veblen endorses. Accordingly, both of these classical thinkers are to be considered as theorists of action, but so that it is Veblen who proffers a more general theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]