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İktisat Sosyolojisinin Sınırlarını Çizmek: Eleştirel Bir Değerlendirme

Year 2021, , 936 - 956, 18.09.2021
https://doi.org/10.25295/fsecon.963161

Abstract

Yeni iktisat sosyolojisi (YİS) alt alanının özünü, sosyologların yerleşik iktisada yönelttiği birbiriyle ilişkili iki farklı temel eleştirinin oluşturduğu iddia edilebilir: i) rasyonel tercih kuramı “toplumsallaşmasını tamamlayamamış” (under-socialized) birey kavramına yol açmaktadır; ii) piyasa ilişkilerini doğru anlayabilmek için “toplumsal iç içe geçmişlik” (embeddedness) kavramını çözümlemenin merkezine koymak gerekir. Bu yazıda her iki eleştirinin de yetersiz olduğu iddia edilecektir. İlkin, bireyin bu şekilde kavramsallaştırılmasına yönelik eleştiriler, YİS araştırmacıları bunları öne sürmeden çok daha önce, iktisat disiplininin kendi içinde zaten tartışılmış ve geleneksel iktisat tarafından kuralın istisnaları olarak kabul edilmişti. İkincisi, YİS’in “toplumsal iç içe geçmişlik” kavramını öne sürerek neoklasik iktisadı alaşağı edebileceği iddiaları yersizdir; nitekim bu konuda da YİS ile geleneksel iktisadi anlayışı benimsemekle birlikte anaakım iktisada eleştirel yaklaşan iktisatçılar arasında, her iki düşünce geleneği de iktidar ilişkilerini kişilerarası ve durumsal boyutlarıyla ele alıp yapısal boyutunu göz ardı ettiği için, ciddi bir fark söz konusu değildir.

References

  • Arrow, K. (1985). Collected Papers of Kenneth J. Arrow: Applied economics, Volume 6. Blackwell.
  • Backhouse R. E. and Steven G. Medema (2009) “On the Definition of Economics,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(1): 221-233.
  • Baron J. and Michael T. Hannan (1994) “The Impact of Economics on Contemporary Sociology,” Journal of Economic Literature, 32:1111-46.
  • Beamish, T. D. (2007). “Economic sociology in the next decade and beyond”, American behavioral scientist, 50(8): 993-1014.
  • Becker, G. S. (1976). The economic approach to human behavior (Vol. 803). University of Chicago press.
  • Becker, G. S. (1993). “Nobel Lecture – The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior,” Journal of Political Economy, 101: 385-409.
  • Bourdieu, P. (2008). “The Forms of Capital”. In Readings in economic sociology, 280-290.
  • Bourdieu, P. (2010). “Principles of an economic anthropology”, The handbook of economic sociology, Princeton University Press, 75-89.
  • Calnitsky, D. (2014). “Economic sociology as disequilibrium economics: a contribution to the critique of the new economic sociology”, The Sociological Review, 62(3): 565-592.
  • Camerer, C. F., & Fehr, E. (2006). “When does “economic man" dominate social behavior?”. Science, 311(5757): 47-52.
  • Cangiani, M. (2011). “Karl Polanyi's Institutional Theory: Market Society and Its “Disembedded" Economy”, Journal of Economic Issues, 45(1): 177-198.
  • Chibber, V. (2014). Postcolonial theory and the specter of capital. Verso Books.
  • Collins, R. (1980). “Weber's last theory of capitalism: a systematization”, American Sociological Review, 925-942.
  • Coase, R. H. (1937). “The nature of the firm”. Economica, 4(16): 386-405.
  • Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). “A garbage can model of organizational choice”, Administrative science quarterly, 1-25.
  • Convert, B., & Heilbron, J. (2007). “Where did the new economic sociology come from?” Theory and Society, 36(1): 31-54.
  • Davis, G. F., Diekmann, K. A., & Tinsley, C. H. (1994). “The decline and fall of the conglomerate firm in the 1980s: The deinstitutionalization of an organizational form”. American Sociological Review, 547-570.
  • Dawes, R. M., & Thaler, R. H. (1988). “Anomalies: cooperation”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2(3): 187-197.
  • Dequech, D. (2003). “Cognitive and cultural embeddedness: combining institutional economics and economic sociology”, Journal of Economic Issues, 37(2): 461-470.
  • DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). “The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields”, American sociological review, 147-160.
  • Dobbin, F., & Dowd, T. J. (2000). “The market that antitrust built: public policy, private coercion, and railroad acquisitions, 1825 to 1922”. American Sociological Review, 631-657.
  • Dobbin, F. (2005). “Comparative and historical approaches to economic sociology”. The handbook of economic sociology, 226-48.
  • Dow, S., (1996). The Methodology of Macroeconomic Thought: A Conceptual Analysis of Schools of Thought in Economics, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
  • Emirbayer, M., & Johnson, V. (2008). “Bourdieu and organizational analysis”, Theory and Society, 37(1): 1-44.
  • Gemici, K. (2008). “Karl Polanyi and the antinomies of embeddedness”, Socio-Economic Review, 6(1): 5-33.
  • Granovetter, M. (1985). “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness”, American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481-510.
  • Granovetter, M. (1992). “Economic institutions as social constructions: a framework for analysis”. Acta sociologica. 35(1), 3-11.
  • Granovetter, M. (2005). “The impact of social structure on economic outcomes”, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1): 33-50.
  • Gulati, R., & Westphal, J. D. (1999). “Cooperative or controlling? The effects of CEO-board relations and the content of interlocks on the formation of joint ventures”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(3): 473-506.
  • Hirsch, S. M. and Ray Friedman (1987) “Dirty Hands vs. Clean Models: Is Sociology in Danger of Being Seduced by Economics?” Theory and Society, 16:317-336.
  • Hodgson, G., M., (1993). Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics. Oxford: Polity Press.
  • Kahneman, D., & Thaler, R. H. (2006). “Anomalies: Utility maximization and experienced utility”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(1): 221-234.
  • Krier, D. (1999). “Assessing the new synthesis of economics and sociology: Promising themes for contemporary analysts of economic life”. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 58(4): 669-696.
  • Krippner, G. R. (2001). “The elusive market: Embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology”, Theory and society, 30(6): 775-810.
  • Krippner, G., Granovetter, M., Block, F., Biggart, N., Beamish, T., Hsing, Y., ... & ORiain, S. (2004). “Polanyi Symposium: a conversation on embeddedness”, Socio-economic review, 2(1): 109-135.
  • Lazerson, M. H., & Lorenzoni, G. (1999). “The firms that feed industrial districts: a return to the Italian source.” Industrial and corporate change, 8(2): 235-266.
  • March, J. G. (1982). “Theories of choice and making decisions”. Society, 20(1): 29-39.
  • Marx, K. (1977). Capital, Vol. 1. Vintage Books: New York
  • Mizruchi, M. S. (1996). “What do interlocks do? An analysis, critique, and assessment of research on interlocking directorates”. Annual review of sociology, 22(1): 271-298.
  • Nee, V. (2010). “The new institutionalisms in economics and sociology”, In The handbook of economic sociology, Princeton University Press, 49-74.
  • North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge university press.
  • Piore (1996) “Review of The Handbook of Economic Sociology,” Journal of Economic Literature, 34:741-754.
  • Podolny, J. M., & Page, K. L. (1998). “Network forms of organization”, Annual review of sociology, 57-76.
  • Polanyi, K. (2001). The Great Transformation: The Political And Economic Origins Of Our Time. Beacon Press Pa.
  • Polanyi, K. (2018). “The economy as instituted process”. In The sociology of economic life, Routledge, 3-21.
  • Portes, A., & Sensenbrenner, J. (1993). “Embeddedness and immigration: Notes on the social determinants of economic action”, American journal of sociology, 1320-1350.
  • Powell, W.W. (1990). “Neither market nor hierarchy: network forms of organization”, Research in Organizational Behavior, 12: 295-336.
  • Powell, W. W. and P. J. Di Maggio (Eds.). (1991). The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Przeworski, A. (1985). “Marxism and rational choice”. Politics & Society, 14(4), 379-409.
  • Schumpeter, J. A. (1994). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Routledge: New York
  • Sen A. K. (1977). “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Assumptions of Economic Theory”. Philosophy & Public Affairs. 4: 318-44.
  • Simon, H., A., (1979), “Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations”, American Economic Review, 69: 493-513.
  • Smelser, N. J., & Swedberg, R. (2005). The handbook of economic sociology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Smith-Doerr, L., & Powell, W. W. (2010). “Networks and economic life”. In The handbook of economic sociology, Princeton University Press, 379-402.
  • Stearns, L. B., & Mizruchi, M. S. (2005). “Banking and financial markets.” The handbook of economic sociology, 2: 284-306.
  • Stigler, G. J., & Becker, G. S. (1977). “De gustibus non est disputandum”. The American Economic Review, 67(2): 76-90.
  • Swedberg, R. (1987). “Economic Sociology: Past and Present”, Current Sociology, (35:1), 1-215.
  • Swedberg, R., & Granovetter, M. S. (Eds.). (1992). The sociology of economic life. Westview Press.
  • Swedberg, R. (1997). “New economic sociology: What has been accomplished, what is ahead?”, Acta Sociologica, 40(2): 161-182.
  • Swedberg, R. (2003). Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton University Press.
  • Sugden, R. (1989). “Spontaneous order”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3(4): 85-97.
  • Uzzi, B. (1996). “The sources and consequences of embeddedness for the economic performance of organizations: The network effect”, American sociological review, 674-698.
  • Uzzi, B. (1999). “Embeddedness in the making of financial capital: How social relations and networks benefit firms seeking financing”, American sociological review, 481-505.
  • Veblen, T. (1898). “Why is economics not an evolutionary science?”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 12(4): 373-397.
  • Veblen, T. (2009). The Theory of the Leisure Class. The Floating Press.
  • Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Williamson, O. E. (1981). “The economics of organization: The transaction cost approach.” American journal of sociology, 548-577.
  • Williamson, O. E. (1993). “Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization”, The journal of law and economics, 36(1, Part 2): 453-486.
  • Wood, E. J. (2000). Forging democracy from below: Insurgent transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. Cambridge University Press.
  • Young, H. P. (1996). “The economics of convention”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10(2): 105-122.
  • Zelizer, V. A. (1978). “Human values and the market: the case of life insurance and death in 19th-century America”, American journal of sociology, 591-610.
  • Zukin, S., & DiMaggio, P. (Eds.). (1990). Structures of capital: The social organization of the economy. Cambridge University Press.

Drawing The Boundaries Of Economic Sociology: A Critical Assessment

Year 2021, , 936 - 956, 18.09.2021
https://doi.org/10.25295/fsecon.963161

Abstract

It can be argued that the core of the subfield of new economic sociology (NES) is consisted of two inter-related yet distinct foundational criticisms by the sociologists to mainstream economics: i) that its commitment to rational choice leads to an “under-socialized” concept of the agent; and ii) that it can correct the mainstream understanding of market affairs, if the concept of “embeddedness” is included in the analysis. In this paper, I will argue that these dual criticisms are insufficient, due to; first, even in the economics discipline itself, such a reconceptualization of the agent had already been posed long before the NES scholars even formulated their criticisms, and thus such criticisms had already been absorbed by the conventional economic thinking as exceptions to the rule; and second, the introduction of the concept of “embeddedness” by the NES cannot overturn neoclassical economics, since the NES scholars hardly differ from the heterodox-minded economists as both focus merely on the interpersonal and situational (while largely dismissing the structural) dimensions of power relations.

References

  • Arrow, K. (1985). Collected Papers of Kenneth J. Arrow: Applied economics, Volume 6. Blackwell.
  • Backhouse R. E. and Steven G. Medema (2009) “On the Definition of Economics,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(1): 221-233.
  • Baron J. and Michael T. Hannan (1994) “The Impact of Economics on Contemporary Sociology,” Journal of Economic Literature, 32:1111-46.
  • Beamish, T. D. (2007). “Economic sociology in the next decade and beyond”, American behavioral scientist, 50(8): 993-1014.
  • Becker, G. S. (1976). The economic approach to human behavior (Vol. 803). University of Chicago press.
  • Becker, G. S. (1993). “Nobel Lecture – The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior,” Journal of Political Economy, 101: 385-409.
  • Bourdieu, P. (2008). “The Forms of Capital”. In Readings in economic sociology, 280-290.
  • Bourdieu, P. (2010). “Principles of an economic anthropology”, The handbook of economic sociology, Princeton University Press, 75-89.
  • Calnitsky, D. (2014). “Economic sociology as disequilibrium economics: a contribution to the critique of the new economic sociology”, The Sociological Review, 62(3): 565-592.
  • Camerer, C. F., & Fehr, E. (2006). “When does “economic man" dominate social behavior?”. Science, 311(5757): 47-52.
  • Cangiani, M. (2011). “Karl Polanyi's Institutional Theory: Market Society and Its “Disembedded" Economy”, Journal of Economic Issues, 45(1): 177-198.
  • Chibber, V. (2014). Postcolonial theory and the specter of capital. Verso Books.
  • Collins, R. (1980). “Weber's last theory of capitalism: a systematization”, American Sociological Review, 925-942.
  • Coase, R. H. (1937). “The nature of the firm”. Economica, 4(16): 386-405.
  • Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). “A garbage can model of organizational choice”, Administrative science quarterly, 1-25.
  • Convert, B., & Heilbron, J. (2007). “Where did the new economic sociology come from?” Theory and Society, 36(1): 31-54.
  • Davis, G. F., Diekmann, K. A., & Tinsley, C. H. (1994). “The decline and fall of the conglomerate firm in the 1980s: The deinstitutionalization of an organizational form”. American Sociological Review, 547-570.
  • Dawes, R. M., & Thaler, R. H. (1988). “Anomalies: cooperation”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2(3): 187-197.
  • Dequech, D. (2003). “Cognitive and cultural embeddedness: combining institutional economics and economic sociology”, Journal of Economic Issues, 37(2): 461-470.
  • DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). “The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields”, American sociological review, 147-160.
  • Dobbin, F., & Dowd, T. J. (2000). “The market that antitrust built: public policy, private coercion, and railroad acquisitions, 1825 to 1922”. American Sociological Review, 631-657.
  • Dobbin, F. (2005). “Comparative and historical approaches to economic sociology”. The handbook of economic sociology, 226-48.
  • Dow, S., (1996). The Methodology of Macroeconomic Thought: A Conceptual Analysis of Schools of Thought in Economics, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
  • Emirbayer, M., & Johnson, V. (2008). “Bourdieu and organizational analysis”, Theory and Society, 37(1): 1-44.
  • Gemici, K. (2008). “Karl Polanyi and the antinomies of embeddedness”, Socio-Economic Review, 6(1): 5-33.
  • Granovetter, M. (1985). “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness”, American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481-510.
  • Granovetter, M. (1992). “Economic institutions as social constructions: a framework for analysis”. Acta sociologica. 35(1), 3-11.
  • Granovetter, M. (2005). “The impact of social structure on economic outcomes”, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1): 33-50.
  • Gulati, R., & Westphal, J. D. (1999). “Cooperative or controlling? The effects of CEO-board relations and the content of interlocks on the formation of joint ventures”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(3): 473-506.
  • Hirsch, S. M. and Ray Friedman (1987) “Dirty Hands vs. Clean Models: Is Sociology in Danger of Being Seduced by Economics?” Theory and Society, 16:317-336.
  • Hodgson, G., M., (1993). Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics. Oxford: Polity Press.
  • Kahneman, D., & Thaler, R. H. (2006). “Anomalies: Utility maximization and experienced utility”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(1): 221-234.
  • Krier, D. (1999). “Assessing the new synthesis of economics and sociology: Promising themes for contemporary analysts of economic life”. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 58(4): 669-696.
  • Krippner, G. R. (2001). “The elusive market: Embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology”, Theory and society, 30(6): 775-810.
  • Krippner, G., Granovetter, M., Block, F., Biggart, N., Beamish, T., Hsing, Y., ... & ORiain, S. (2004). “Polanyi Symposium: a conversation on embeddedness”, Socio-economic review, 2(1): 109-135.
  • Lazerson, M. H., & Lorenzoni, G. (1999). “The firms that feed industrial districts: a return to the Italian source.” Industrial and corporate change, 8(2): 235-266.
  • March, J. G. (1982). “Theories of choice and making decisions”. Society, 20(1): 29-39.
  • Marx, K. (1977). Capital, Vol. 1. Vintage Books: New York
  • Mizruchi, M. S. (1996). “What do interlocks do? An analysis, critique, and assessment of research on interlocking directorates”. Annual review of sociology, 22(1): 271-298.
  • Nee, V. (2010). “The new institutionalisms in economics and sociology”, In The handbook of economic sociology, Princeton University Press, 49-74.
  • North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge university press.
  • Piore (1996) “Review of The Handbook of Economic Sociology,” Journal of Economic Literature, 34:741-754.
  • Podolny, J. M., & Page, K. L. (1998). “Network forms of organization”, Annual review of sociology, 57-76.
  • Polanyi, K. (2001). The Great Transformation: The Political And Economic Origins Of Our Time. Beacon Press Pa.
  • Polanyi, K. (2018). “The economy as instituted process”. In The sociology of economic life, Routledge, 3-21.
  • Portes, A., & Sensenbrenner, J. (1993). “Embeddedness and immigration: Notes on the social determinants of economic action”, American journal of sociology, 1320-1350.
  • Powell, W.W. (1990). “Neither market nor hierarchy: network forms of organization”, Research in Organizational Behavior, 12: 295-336.
  • Powell, W. W. and P. J. Di Maggio (Eds.). (1991). The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Przeworski, A. (1985). “Marxism and rational choice”. Politics & Society, 14(4), 379-409.
  • Schumpeter, J. A. (1994). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Routledge: New York
  • Sen A. K. (1977). “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Assumptions of Economic Theory”. Philosophy & Public Affairs. 4: 318-44.
  • Simon, H., A., (1979), “Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations”, American Economic Review, 69: 493-513.
  • Smelser, N. J., & Swedberg, R. (2005). The handbook of economic sociology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Smith-Doerr, L., & Powell, W. W. (2010). “Networks and economic life”. In The handbook of economic sociology, Princeton University Press, 379-402.
  • Stearns, L. B., & Mizruchi, M. S. (2005). “Banking and financial markets.” The handbook of economic sociology, 2: 284-306.
  • Stigler, G. J., & Becker, G. S. (1977). “De gustibus non est disputandum”. The American Economic Review, 67(2): 76-90.
  • Swedberg, R. (1987). “Economic Sociology: Past and Present”, Current Sociology, (35:1), 1-215.
  • Swedberg, R., & Granovetter, M. S. (Eds.). (1992). The sociology of economic life. Westview Press.
  • Swedberg, R. (1997). “New economic sociology: What has been accomplished, what is ahead?”, Acta Sociologica, 40(2): 161-182.
  • Swedberg, R. (2003). Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton University Press.
  • Sugden, R. (1989). “Spontaneous order”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3(4): 85-97.
  • Uzzi, B. (1996). “The sources and consequences of embeddedness for the economic performance of organizations: The network effect”, American sociological review, 674-698.
  • Uzzi, B. (1999). “Embeddedness in the making of financial capital: How social relations and networks benefit firms seeking financing”, American sociological review, 481-505.
  • Veblen, T. (1898). “Why is economics not an evolutionary science?”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 12(4): 373-397.
  • Veblen, T. (2009). The Theory of the Leisure Class. The Floating Press.
  • Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Williamson, O. E. (1981). “The economics of organization: The transaction cost approach.” American journal of sociology, 548-577.
  • Williamson, O. E. (1993). “Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization”, The journal of law and economics, 36(1, Part 2): 453-486.
  • Wood, E. J. (2000). Forging democracy from below: Insurgent transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. Cambridge University Press.
  • Young, H. P. (1996). “The economics of convention”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10(2): 105-122.
  • Zelizer, V. A. (1978). “Human values and the market: the case of life insurance and death in 19th-century America”, American journal of sociology, 591-610.
  • Zukin, S., & DiMaggio, P. (Eds.). (1990). Structures of capital: The social organization of the economy. Cambridge University Press.
There are 72 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Articles
Authors

İhsan Ercan Sadi 0000-0002-7738-4685

Publication Date September 18, 2021
Published in Issue Year 2021

Cite

APA Sadi, İ. E. (2021). Drawing The Boundaries Of Economic Sociology: A Critical Assessment. Fiscaoeconomia, 5(3), 936-956. https://doi.org/10.25295/fsecon.963161

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