Abstract
So many and so complex are the linkages between the economy and its socio-cultural environment that it is almost impossible to summarize the relevance of economic sociology for economics in the compass of a short paper. Accordingly, in what follows I am forced to be both somewhat cryptic and somewhat selective in my emphases.
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References
Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 3. A more concise, but essentially similar definition is given by Bronfenbrenner: ‘Economics is the systematic study of social adjustment to, and management of, the scarcity of goods and resources’. Martin Bronfenbrenner, ‘A “Middlebrow” Introduction to Economic Methodology’, in Sherman Roy Krupp (ed.), The Structure of Economic Science: Essays on Methodology (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 6.
A more elaborated definition may be found in Neil J. Smelser, (ed.), Sociology: An Introduction, second edition, (New York: Wiley, 1973).
Wassily Leontief, ‘Mathematics in Economics’, in Essays in Economics: Theories and Theorizing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 23. For a recent discussion of utility functions and ‘economic man’, see Jerome Rothenberg, ‘Values and Value Theory in Economics’, in Krupp (ed.), The Structure of Economic Science, op. cit., p. 6.
Unless, in fact, the utility function is characterized in such general and indeterminate terms that every act can be characterized as rational by definition.
Talcott Parsons and Neil J. Smelser, Economy and Society (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1956), p. 175.
Karl Polanyi, Conrad Arensberg and Harry Pearson, Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press and the Falcon’s Wing Press, 1957).
Marshall Sahlins, ‘On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange’, in Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1972), p. 186.
Ibid., p. 196.
Richard Titmuss, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), p. 179.
See Oleg Zinam, ‘The Economics of Command Economies’, in Jan S. Prybyla (ed.), Comparative Economic Systems (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), p. 16.
For an introductory characterization of the ‘mixed’ character of the Soviet economy, see William N. Loucks and William G. Whitney, Comparative Economic Systems, eighth edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), pp. 392–532.
Gregory Grossman, Economic Systems, second edition (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp. 18–20.
John K. Galbraith, ‘Power and the Useful Economist’, American Economic Review, Vol. 63 (1973), pp. 1–12.
Kenneth E. Boulding, ‘Urbanization and the Grants Economy: An Introduction’, in Kenneth E. Boulding, Martin Pfaff and Anita Pfaff (eds.), Transfers in an Urbanized Economy (Belmont California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1973), p. 1.
Kenneth E. Boulding, ‘The Grants Economy’, in Collected Papers, edited by Fred R. Glahe (Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado Press, 1971) p. 477.
Ibid., p. 478.
Boulding, ‘Urbanization and the Grants Economy’, op. cit.
Ibid., Chapters 1–6.
Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), Vol. I, p. 19.
Guenter Roth, ‘Max Weber’s Comparative Approach and Historical Typology’, in Ivan Vallier (ed.), Comparative Methods in Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 92–93.
Economy and Society, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 212–254.
Ibid., p. 71.
Ibid., p. 83.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid., p. 107.
Ibid., pp. 41–42.
Ibid., p. 98.
Ibid., p. 375.
Ibid., p. 377.
Ibid., p. 381.
A number of these theories are summarized and criticized in Pitirim A. Sorokin, Modern Historical and Social Philosophies (New York: Dover Publications, 1963).
Talcott Parsons and Neil J. Smelser, Economy and Society (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1956).
Talcott Parsons, ‘Some Comments on the Pattern of Religious Organization in the United States’, in Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1960), pp. 295–321.
S. M. Lipset, The Sources of the Radical Right, in: Daniel Bell (ed.), The New American Right (New York: Criterion Books, 1955), pp. 166–233.
Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan, The American Occupational Structure (New York: Wiley, 1967).
Economics, op. cit., p. 3.
For a survey of these technical developments, see Armatya K. Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1970).
L.S. Shapley and Martin Shubik, ‘Ownership and the Production Function’, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 81 (1967), pp. 88–111.
For a survey of such analyses, see James M. Buchanan and D. Tollison (eds.), Theory of Public Choice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972).
Peter Marris, Family and Social Change in an African City: A Study of Rehousing in Lagos (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961).
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Smelser, N.J. (1976). On the relevance of economic sociology for economics. In: Huppes, T. (eds) Economics and Sociology: Towards an Integration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1368-9_1
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