Economic Sociology: State, Market, and Society in Modern Capitalism (review)

Carlo Trigilia's Economic Sociology is an expansive sweep of the field of economic sociology, from its classical origins to its contemporary problematics. He separates the text into two distinct parts. In the first half, he recounts the classical origins of the field through the work of seven economic sociologists: Simmel, Sombart, Weber, Durkheim, Veblen, Polanyi, and Schumpeter. These authors are organized by how they analyzed the origins, causes, consequences, and crises of capitalist development. In the second half, Trigilia shifts from theorists to theories, working thematically and chronologically: from modernization to comparative development, and from Fordist to post-Fordist organization of production and the structure of firms. These themes range from the postwar through contemporary eras.

This text arrives during a time when the so-called "new economic sociology" is enjoying a renaissance. Texts such as Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg's Handbook of Economic Sociology, Mark Granovetter and Swedberg's Sociology of Economic Life, and Nicole W. Biggart's Readings in Economic Sociology provide collections of articles about the new economic sociology. Bruce Carruthers and Sarah Babb's Economy/Society is thematically organized but aimed at undergraduates. And Neil Fligstein's Architecture of Markets and Harrison White's Markets from Networks are more substantive. Tragilia's book thus fills an important niche as a graduate-level overview of the field from its origins to contemporary problems.

Trigilia traces the origins of economic sociology to the work of Max Weber and Werner Sombart and takes as its area of study "the reciprocal interaction of economic and sociocultural phenomena." He identifies the roots of economic sociology as comprising a collection of methodological perspectives that identify a conception of the economy, economic action, the rules of exchange, and a method of inquiry. Classically, it conceives of the market economy as one historically specific way to arrange institutions for exchange. Economic action is quintessentially social, always influenced by expectations relative to others. The rules for economic exchange are shaped by both market and nonmarket institutions, including social reciprocity and political sanctions. And the method of inquiry is inductive, historical, and empirical, with relatively bounded generalizations.

The second half of the book tacks in a different direction. While the classics build on each other, Trigilia's maps contemporary developments to the then-current geopolitical and economic landscapes. Thus, he claims that economic sociology in the 1970s is internationally about modernization and development and domestically about inflation and economic growth. In the 1980s, it is about comparative development (with the growth of the so-called Asian Tigers and small-firm growth in Europe). In the 1990s, it is a crisis of Fordism, including changes in the hierarchical organization of firms and the "markets or hierarchies" problems characteristic of flexible production. Finally, Trigilia ends with a discussion of the diversity of capitalisms and whether economic systems converge or remain distinct in an era of globalization.

The disparities between the first and second halves of the text are striking and consequential. He identifies the contemporary field with themes and questions rather than with people, with the result that it is hard at times to tell how central texts or scholars are to the field. For instance, he suggests that a concern with inflation, unions, firms, and states drove the field during the 1970s, a claim that seems less convincing than suggestions that the 1990s were driven by structural embeddedness and neo-institutionalisms. Thus, at times Trigilia's analysis conflates concerns of the real world with related but not identical concerns of economic sociology.

Any account of a field will inevitably be shaped by what is included and what is left out, and Trigilia's account is heavy on comparative political economy. For both good and bad, the questions engaged in by scholars of embeddedness, as well as neo-institutionalism and its concomitant research agenda — two research streams that currently appear to be at the core of...