Drawing The Boundaries Of Economic Sociology: A Critical Assessment

It can be argued that the core of the subfield of new economic sociology (NES) is consisted of two inter-related yet distinct foundational criticisms by the sociologists to mainstream economics: i) that its commitment to rational choice leads to an “under-socialized†concept of the agent; and ii) that it can correct the mainstream understanding of market affairs, if the concept of “embeddedness†is included in the analysis. In this paper, I will argue that these dual criticisms are insufficient, due to; first, even in the economics discipline itself, such a reconceptualization of the agent had already been posed long before the NES scholars even formulated their criticisms, and thus such criticisms had already been absorbed by the conventional economic thinking as exceptions to the rule; and second, the introduction of the concept of “embeddedness†by the NES cannot overturn neoclassical economics, since the NES scholars hardly differ from the heterodox-minded economists as both focus merely on the interpersonal and situational (while largely dismissing the structural) dimensions of power relations.