Economy/Society
Markets, Meanings, and Social Structure
- Bruce G. Carruthers - Northwestern University, USA
- Sarah L. Babb - Boston College, USA
Sociology of Organizations, Institutions & Structure
Understanding how society shapes the economy helps us answer many important questions. For example, how does advertising get people to buy things? How do people use their social connections to get jobs? How did large bureaucratic organizations come to be so pervasive in modern economies - and what difference does it make? How can we explain the persistence of economic inequalities between men and women and across racial groups? Why do some countries become rich while others stay poor? This book presents sociological answers to questions like these, and encourages its readers to view the economy through a sociological lens.
Economy/Society is one of the book on which this course is based. Students very much appreciate the clear overview and the examples. Together with journal articles, this book provides them with a good understanding of how sociologists investigate economic processes.
A fine book in this relatively niche area. Looks at this area from a fresh perspective and lends a counter argument to much mainstream economic literature
Carruthers and Babb present an excellent textbook both for those working in fields that transcend a simple view of Economics as an optimization science and to more orthodox economists interested in expand their mental maps of economic science. It debates how markets are embedded in societies and depend on social structures and institutions that frame their functioning. In this way, the authors show that markets are neither the only institution nor the most relevant one in economic order. The book, anchored in notions, such embeddedness and networks that are being developed in the scope of Economic Sociology, provides the understanding of the interconnections between economy and society, facilitating a deeper comprehension of organizations, finance, inequalities and development. It is a textbook that I will recommend to postgraduate students but also at undergraduate level in introductory disciples of Economics .
