The New Sociology of Economic Behaviour
- Ralph Fevre - Cardiff University, UK
In this assured and timely volume, the author demonstrates how the sociology of economic behaviour was hijacked by the economic sociology which grew out of Parsons' interpretation of Weber. This development meant that the moral considerations of classical sociology only received attention as means to economic ends. Economic sociology is based on insupportable assumptions about the power of economic rationality which also obscures the political nature of economic behaviour.
The book seeks to revitalize the classical approach and introduces students to the essential ideas in the field. It also shows researchers and graduate students how to make use of concepts like demoralization, cheap labour, dignity at work and a fair day's pay to develop critiques of current economic arrangements.
'Fevre’s book is a long overdue iconoclastic assault on the pretensions of ‘economic sociology’. Drawing the reader back to the sociology classics the author forces the reader to reconsider long cherished beliefs about contemporary business and the long avoided issue of morality. It is compulsive reading and it ought to be compulsory reading' - Keith Grint Saïd Business School and Templeton College, Oxford University
'A stimulating critical discussion of key issues in the field of economic behaviour and will constitute an invaluable resource for all those who believe social analysis is a moral-political practice. Economics has tended to affirm the existing market order of things, the task of sociology is to critically reinterpret economic life. The New Sociology of Economic Behaviour represents a significant contribution to the regeneration of a critical sociology of economic life' - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth
'How, Fevre asks in his brilliant new book, can we critique Max Weber's "iron cage" of economic rationality if we're looking at the world from inside it? This is an enormously important challenge to our basic thinking about the most important organizing force in the world today: the market. A must read' - Arlie Russell Hochschild, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley