Sociology 652
Economic Sociology and Economic Institutions∗
Bob Freeland
Email: [email protected]
Office: 3458 Social Science Bldng
Office hours: Th,4-5 or by appt.
This course is intended to serve as an introduction to sociological analyses of the economy,
economic processes, and economic institutions. The central focus is to understand how economic
activities are shaped, facilitated, altered, and impeded by social relations and social institutions.
The course is divided into three parts. The first focuses on the general notion of the “social
embeddedness” of economic activity. The concept of embeddedness originated with Polanyi and
came to the forefront of modern economic sociology through the work of Granovetter. It
implicitly or explicitly permeates much of the work in this area that has been done over the last
twenty years. The basic aim of the readings in this section is to begin to get an idea of the
different meanings of embeddedness in order to understand how economic processes are shaped
and constituted by social relations. The second part of the course deals with firms, networks, and
industrial regions. These can be seen both as specific forms of “embedded” economic
relationships and as “alternatives” to more atomized (and perhaps fictitious) market relations.
The third part of the course focuses more explicitly on the concepts and types of economic
institutions. Here, we examine how different types of economic institutions (state, law, labor
markets) shape and constitute economic behavior. We also begin to consider variations across
societies in the organization of economic institutions and activities, and the ways in which these
forms of organization may facilitate distinctive economic capacities and possibilities.
Course Readings
Course readings can be downloaded from the course website. If any students are interested in
purchasing a course packet containing the readings, I will have the Social Science Copy Center
(6th floor or William Sewell Hall, aka Social Science Building) create one on demand only. (This
means it will take 24 to 48 hours for them to make you a copy. You will probably have to pay in
advance. Please note that I will ask whether anybody wants to purchase a hard copy during the
first class meeting. Only if I ascertain that this is the case will I leave a copy with the Social
Science Copy Center.)
How to download course readings from web page:
Type the following link into your browser:
https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-4880603_1
Click on the folder for the week that you want to download readings for. (Please note that the
folders contain both undergraduate and graduate readings for the week.)
Click on file name to download reading.
∗
Please note that the title shown on the syllabus differs from the official course title in the catalog. We are in
the process of rethinking and restructuring our offerings in economic sociology. Since the focus of this
course is no longer strictly on economic institutions, I have altered the title on the syllabus. This has
absolutely no implications for your ability to get course credit if you’ve already taken Sociology 651 or any
other course in the sociology department!
Course Requirements
Please note that this course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Requirements
vary depending on whether you are an undergrad or a graduate student.
A. Attendance and Participation
All students must attend class and participate. This will be 10% of your grade, regardless of
whether you are an undergrad or graduate. The course will be run primarily as a lecture. I hope
to set up an additional discussion section for graduate students that will meet once a week in
addition to scheduled course times.
B. Readings
All students must do the core readings before the class meets. On average, this is from 50-100
pages per week for undergraduates. I know that some of the readings will be difficult. Don’t let
this worry you too much, as they should become clearer in lecture.
For many (but not all) weeks, graduate students will have additional reading to do. Graduate
student reading averages more like 125-150 pages per week. Such is the life of an intellectual
(and/or the ideological portion of the ruling class, if you prefer Marx’s categorizations to mine.)
C. Written Requirements
Undergraduates
There will be three written take-home assignments. These are somewhere between a take-home
exam and a paper assignment. Each assignment has two questions that you must answer (or a
choice of two out of three questions). The dates that the papers will be handed out and/or due
are noted on the syllabus. The papers will average about 10 pages in length (5 pages per
question). Each constitutes 30% of your grade.
Graduate students
In terms of official requirements, you too will have three 10 page paper assignments each worth
30% of your grade. However, the assignments are much less structured, with you essentially
choosing what you will write about. The exact nature of the papers is up to you, but they should
not be summaries of the readings. Rather, they should take critical issue with (some portion of)
the readings, develop ideas, and engage the arguments/authors we are covering. To steal a
sentence from Erik Wright’s 621 syllabus, the paper “can be written as if it were designed to be a
published ‘commentary’ in a journal, or a book review, or a substantive essay in its own right
dealing with the issues in the reading.”
Note, however, that if you have other ideas for what you would like to do as a written
assignment, I am flexible. The goal of the course is to introduce you to and get you interested in
economic sociology. If you have specific things you want to achieve or that would be more
useful to you as assignments – a paper for qualifying exams, a research proposal, etc. – we can
discuss ways to make these part or all of the official writing assignment.
I. Economic and Sociological Views of the Economy –Themes and Concepts
Week of September 5-7: The Neoclassical View of the Economy
Robert Gilpin. 2001. “The Neoclassical Conception of the Economy,” from Global Political
Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, pp. 46-60. (14 pp.)
John Lie. 1997. “Sociology of Markets.” Annual Review of Sociology. 23, pp. 341-346. (5 pp.)
Additional recommended (not required) reading for graduate students:
Karl Polanyi. 1944. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. New
York: Beacon, Chapters 4-7 & 10, pp. 43-76 & 135-150 (48 pp.)
Week of September 12-14: Social Embeddedness and Social Capital
Mark Granovetter. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology.
91,3:481-510. (27 pp.)
Alejandro Portes and Julia Sensenbrenner. 1993. “Embeddedness and Immigration: Notes on
the Social Determinants of Economic Action.” American Journal of Sociology. 98,6:1320-1350.
(26 pp.)
John Lie. 1997. “Sociology of Markets.” Annual Review of Sociology. 23:346-354. (8 pp.)
Clifford Geertz. 1978. “The Bazaar Economy”, American Economic Review. 68,2:28-32. (5 pp.)
Additional Required Reading for Graduate Students
Greta B. Krippner. 2001. “The Elusive Market: Embeddedness and the Paradigm of Economic
Sociology.” Theory and Society. 30,6:775-810. (27 pp.)
Week of September 19-21: Culture, Meaning, and the Moral Dimension of Economic Activity
Viviana Zelizer, “Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in 19th
Century America.” American Journal of Sociology. 84,3:591-610. (18 pp.)
Viviana Zelizer. 1996. “Payments and Social Ties.” Sociological Forum. 11,3:481-495. (13 pp.)
Richard M. Titmuss. The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy. Pp. 195-224. (29 pp.)
Week of September 26-28: Getting a Job: Labor Markets, Embeddedness, and Institutions
Mark Granovetter. 1995. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, 2nd edition. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, pp. 41-62 & 73-92. (41 pp., easy reading)
Mary C. Brinton and Takehiko Kariya. From The New Institutionalism in Sociology. Palo Alto:
Stanford, pp. “Institutional Embeddedness in Japanese Labor Markets.” Pp. 181-207 (23 pp.)
Week of October 3-5: Negative Consequences of Embeddedness and Culture: Getting a Job II
Joleen Kirschenmann and Kathryn Neckerman. “ ‘We’d
Love to Hire Them, But...’: The Meaning of Race for
Employers,” in Christopher Jencks and Paul Peterson
(eds.), The Urban Underclass, Washington, DC: Brookings,
pp. 203-234. (31 pp.)
Roberto Fernandez and M. Lourdes Sosa. 2005. “Gendering the Job: Networks and Recruitment
at a Call Center.” American Journal of Sociology. 111: 859-904. (44 pp.)
Trond Petersen, Ishak Saporta, and Marc-David L. Seidel. 2000. “Offering a Job: Meritocracy
and Social Networks.” American Journal of Sociology. 106,3:763-816. (40 pp., lots of tables)
FIRST PAPER ASSIGNMENT, HANDED OUT 10/5; DUE 10/12
II. Firms, Networks, and Regions
Week of October 10-12: The Modern (Anglo-American) Corporation
Simon, Herbert. 1991. “Organizations and Markets.” Journal of Economic Perspectives. 5:25-44 (19
pp.).
Oliver Hart. 1989. “An Economist’s Perspective on the Theory of the Firm,” Columbia Law Review,
v. 89 (1989), pp. 1757-1774. (17 pp.)
Oliver Williamson. 1980. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: Free Press, pp. 4363. (20 pp.)
Stewart Macaulay. 1963. “Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study.”
American Sociological Review. 28:55-69. (14 pp.)
Additional Required Reading for Graduate Students
Robert F. Freeland. 2000. “Creating Holdup Through Vertical Integration: Fisher Body
Revisited.” Journal of Law and Economics. 43: 33-66. (31 pp.)
Week of October 17-19: Economic Theories of the Firm
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. 1977. “Introduction” from The Visible Hand. Cambridge: Belknap, pp. 112 (12 pp.)
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. 1984. “The Emergence of Managerial Capitalism.” Business History
Review. 58,4:473-507 (34pp.)
Oliver Williamson. “The Multidivisional Structure.” from Markets and Hierarchies. New York:
Free Press, 1975, pp. 132-154. (21 pp.)
Additional Required/Suggested Reading for Graduate Students
Art Stinchcombe. “Market Uncertainty and Divisionalization: Alfred D. Chandler’s Strategy and
Structure.” from Information and Organizations. Berkeley: UC, 1990, pp. 100-151.
(suggested). Robert F. Freeland. 1996. “The Myth of the M-Form? Governance, Consent, and
Organizational Change.” American Journal of Sociology. 102,2:483-526. (40 pp.)
Week of October 24-26: Network Forms of Organization
Walter W. Powell. 1990. “Neither Market Nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization.”
Research in Organizational Behavior. 12:295-336. (40 pp.)
Brian Uzzi. “Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of
Embeddedness.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 42,1:35-67, 1997. (30 pp.)
Highly recommended:
Oliver Williamson, “Calculativeness, Trust, and Economic Organization,” Journal of Law and
Economics, 36 (1993), pp. 453-486. (33 pp.)
Additional Required Reading for Graduate Students
Woody Powell. 1996. "Interorganizational Collaboration and the Locus of Innovation."
Administrative Science Quarterly, 41,1:116-145. (28 pp.)
Ezra Zuckerman. 2003. Excerpt from review essay, “On Networks and Markets.” Journal of
Economic Literature. 41,2:545-551. (6 pp. –you are not required to read beyond p. 551).
Week of October 31-November 2: Flexible Specialization and Industrial Districts
AnnaLee Saxenien. “Inside-Out: Regional Networks and Industrial Adaptation in Silicon Valley
and Route 128.” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. 2,2:41-60. (19 pp.)
Michael Piore and Charles Sabel. 1984. The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity.
New York: Basic, pp. 19-48. (31 pp.)
Bennett Harrison. 1994. Chapters 1 & 4, Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate
Power in the Age of Flexibility. New York: Basic, pp. 3-34 & 75-105. (60 pp., but very fast
reading)
Additional Required Reading for Graduate Students
Henry Farrell and Jack Knight. “Trust, Institutions, and Institutional Change: Industrial Districts
and the Social Capital Hypothesis.” Politics and Society. 31,4:537-566. (30 pp.)
Week of November 7-9: Networks, Power, and Status
Ron Burt. “The Social Structure of Competition.” Chapter 1 from Structural Holes. Harvard,
1992, pp. 8-38. (30 pp.)
Ron Burt. “Getting Ahead.” Chapter 4 from Structural Holes. Harvard, 1992, pp. 115-163. (47
pp.)
Joel M. Podolny. “Networks as the Pipes and Prisms of the Market.” American Journal of
Sociology. 107,1:33-60. (26 pp.)
Additional Required Reading for Graduate Students
John F. Padgett and Christopher K. Ansell. “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 14001434.” American Journal of Sociology, 98,6:1259-1319, 1993. (60 pp.)
SECOND PAPER ASSIGNMENT HANDED OUT 11/9; DUE 11/16
III. Economic Institutions, the State, and Business Systems
Week of November 14-16: Conceptualizaing Economic Institutions
Mary Douglas. 1986. Chapters 4 & 5 from, How Institutions Think. New York: Syracuse, pp. 4567. (22 pp.)
John Meyer and Brian Rowan. 1977. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth
and Ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology, 83:340-363. (21 pp.)
Philip Selznick. 1992. Excerpts from The Moral Commonwealth, “Part III: The Moral Institution.”
Berkeley: University of California, pp. 231-244; 265-280; 286-288. (30 pp.)
November 21: The Role of the State, I
Frank Dobbin. 2001. “Why the Economy Reflects the Polity: Early Rail Policy in Britain, France,
and the United States.” From Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg (eds.). The Sociology
of Economic Life. New York: Westview, pp. 401-424. (20 pp.)
Week of November 28-30: The Role of the State, II
Peter Evans. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Pp. 3-7; 10-18; 39-42;
43-81. (56 pp.)
Neil Fligstein. The Transformation of Corporate Control.
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Additional Required Reading for Graduate Students
Douglass North and Barry Weingast. 1989. “Constitutions
and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions
Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century
England.” The Journal of Economic History. (31 pp.)
Week of December 5-7: Institutions and Comparative Business Systems
Douglass North. 1998. “Economic Performance Through Time.” Nobel Prize Lecture, reprinted
in The New Institutionalism in Sociology. Palo Alto: Stanford, pp. 247-257. (9 pp.)
Richard Whitley. 1999. “The Nature of Business Systems and Their Institutional Structuring.”
Chapter 2 in Divergent Capitalisms: The Social Structuring and Change of Business Systems.
New York: Oxford, pp. 31-64. (33 pp.)
John L. Campbell, J. Rogers Hollingsworth, and
Leon L. Lindberg, 1991. “Economic Governance
and the Analysis of Structural Change.” Pp. 3-34
in Governance of the American Economy. New
York: Cambridge. (31 pp.)
Or Campbell and Lindberg???
Week of December 12-14: An Example: Owners and Workers in the U.S. and Germany
Readings TBA
FINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT HANDED OUT 12/12; DUE FRIDAY 12/19