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This review essay addresses Richard Swedberg’s recent attempt to redefine the field of economic sociology. Grounding his position in Max Weber’s work, Swedberg advocates a type of economic sociology that not only focuses on social relations but also considers culture and interests, arguing that it is interests that drive action but that they are shaped by culture and enacted through social relations. We conclude our analysis with a consideration of the practical and empirical implications of this new approach for the study of economic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of economic analogies by Bourdieu has often been the object of much criticism. For some scholars, it reveals an “economistic” vision of the social world too much inspired by neoclassical economics. For others, it is a kind of mechanical metaphor transposed to cultural phenomena in a determinist way, as in the holistic (Marxist) tradition. To understand this usage and to refute these contradictory criticisms, we return to and focus on the very first occurrences in the 1958–1966 period – the focus of our article – of what Bourdieu would call a “general economy of practices” in his book Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique . Two central aspects, often forgotten by critics, are presented here: first, the close but very particular link between his work and economics as a growing scientific discipline during these years; second, the criticisms Bourdieu makes of the economic model as a general scientific tool for the social sciences. If one insists only on one of the two sides of the coin, one risks misunderstanding Bourdieu’s original scientific habitus and intellectual project. By contrast, this “double” position opens the possibility of an “integrated” vision of social and economic factors of practices, thanks to the introduction of the “cultural” and above all the “symbolic” dimensions of social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some countries richer than others? We suggest in the line of political economy theory that traditional production factors cannot explain the observed differences. Rather, differences in the quality of formal institutions are crucial to economic wealth. However, this type of political economy theory accentuating the role of formal institutions cannot stand on its own. This implies a socio-economic approach in the study where we supplement the formal institutional thesis with Bourdieu’s idea of material and non-material forms of capital. Such new socio-economics – which might be termed a “Bourdieuconomics” – implies the usage of a capital theory that, methodologically, operates with material and non-material forms of capital at the same level. Here, we stress the particular importance of a non-material form of capital, namely social capital, which facilitates informal human exchange, thereby “lubricating” civic society and the voluntary provision of collective goods such as trust and predictable behavior. In this way, social capital reduces transaction costs in society, thereby enhancing economic growth and the creation of differences in the wealth of nations. Future research should therefore be directed towards analyses of a new and formerly disregarded production factor, social capital, within a new field of socio-economics, namely “Bourdieuconomics.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has been often defined as the study of civil society, identified since the \early nineteenth century with those areas of social life distinct and separate from the state. Sociology has also been described more invidiously as the science of leftovers consisting of areas that had not been preempted by economics, political science and law. Civil society includes in its scope the market economy, but by the end of the last century sociology had become identified with social life apart from both the economy and the state. Through the greater part of the twentieth century, the state/society distinction has been more than merely conceptual, for efforts to limit and even eliminate the dominance of the market by state intervention have been a major theme of the politics of democracies, the very source of the left/right division itself. At the opposite pole from anarchism as a doctrine and ideology but also projecting the nearly total dissolution of the division between state and society, has been the notion of totalitarianism, more important as a concept than as a political goal. let alone a fully achieved reality defined as the absorption of the traditional state and the penetration of the whole of social life by a hierarchically organized political-ideological movement claiming to represent the masses. Both major forms of totalitarianism called themselves socialist, but socialism in its original nineteenth-century form was conceived of as the subordination of the state and politics to the social question that is to the conflicts and sufferings arising out of the class inequalities produced by laissez-faire capitalism.

The article discusses the social importance of the emergence of Max Weber for post-classical sociology. Lawrence Scaff's Fleeing the Iron Cage is a stimulating and thoughtful contribution to this revisionist literature, not least because from the outset it steers clear of a favorite yet obfuscating orthodoxy of Weber-criticism: the construction of Weber as the champion of Verstehen. He describes Weber's scholarly work as from the beginning focused on the relations among changes in economic structure, social structure, political rule, and their consequences for the conduct of life in different strata. Weber's assessment of the realities of the modern situation identifies two phenomena whose emergence has been of faithful importance: capitalism and the destruction of all objective value-foundation. The individual's attempt to live a justifiable life is challenged by the existence of multiplicity of mutually incompatible and conflicting, yet equally valid values. Weber argued that the spiritual resilience required in the face of the modern life's vicissitudes can only be gained through a willingness to see the world as it is while taking it as a place for self-distanced, impersonal dedication to the service of the larger cause.