This essay reviews three prominent sociological studies of firms and markets: Neil Fligstein’s The Architecture of Markets, Glenn Carroll and Michael Hannan’s The Demography of Corporations, and Harrison C. White’s Markets from Networks. The review essay discusses how economic sociology focuses on processes ignored by economists. However, research findings and theoretical developments are rarel...

Political economy and economic sociology have developed in relative isolation from each other. While political economy focuses largely on macrophenomena, economic sociology focuses on the level of social interaction in the economy. The paper argues that economic sociology can provide a microfoundation of political economy beyond rational actor theory and behavioral economics. Based on a discuss...

Throughout the United States, disadvantaged, declining and struggling rural and smaller communities have wrestled with the problem of developing a sustainable base for economic activity. In North Carolina, for example, although statewide unemployment for the end of 2004 is a very respectable 4.8%, many rural counties are over 7.0%. And in general, economic growth in smaller communities under 50...

This paper investigates the relationship between neighbourhood ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity and the formation of an individual's local and general trust. A wide literature across economics and sociology has recognised the importance of trust in facilitating economic growth and development and it is therefore important to investigate elements of social organisation that encourage or inhib...

Dear reader, In the last two issues we have turned to adjacent fields and looked at anthropology and economics. In this issue we zoom in on geography. From this glance we suggest that at least these three disciplines are getting increasingly " sociological ". Sociological ideas, theories, concepts, and ways of reasoning are being used also outside of sociology. We also argue that sociologists c...

While the notion of the crowd played a central role in the late 19th century sociology, today it is almost forgotten. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that it may be fruitful once again to take seriously the figure of the crowd. The paper in particular discusses the potential of the crowd tradition for economic sociology. The relationship between crowd and economic life is examined from ...