paSt aChievementS and preSent ChallengeS

Economic sociology has experienced a remarkable rebirth. this trend has been chronicled and celebrated in a number of publications and reached its height with the appearance of two successive editions of a massive Handbook, edited by neil J. Smelser and richard Swedberg. 1 this feat, added to the influence achieved by mark granovetter's article on the social " embeddedness " of economic action, appeared to signal that the field was well underway. 2 Yet, in more recent years, there seems to have been a loss of direction. While purportedly sociological studies of economic activity have proliferated, basic texts in the field continue to chronicle its origins in the nineteenth century and to repeat notions that have become widely familiar by now. above all, there is a disturbing re­ turn to " embeddedness " as if it were everything that, by way of theoreti­ cal contribution, contemporary economic sociology has to offer. this impasse is not due, in my view, to the absence of an overarch­ ing theoretical framework, but to the lack of a precise understanding of the character and role that ideas at different levels of abstraction play in the organization of a given field. overarching frameworks can do more harm than good, as sociology's experience with structural­functionalism and orthodox dialectical materialism can attest. 3 this is so because grand narratives tend to become self­referential, to approach reality deduc­ tively, and to force events into procrustean theoretical categories rather to than learn from them. mercifully, economic sociology has no such grand narrative, but it simultaneously lacks a clear understanding of its constitutive elements. in my view, these can be summarized into three broad categories: (1) meta­theoretical principles, (2) explanatory mechanisms, and (3) strate­ gic sites of inquiry. the first component establishes the cognitive " lens " through which a particular field sees the world. this lens is neither su­ perior nor inferior to others, it is simply distinct in privileging certain areas of empirical reality as worth investigating and in orienting ways of going about this enterprise. the second category includes ideas that