Is There a Canon in Economic Sociology?

This paper is devoted to the findings of a bibliometric analysis of 52 syllabi on economic sociology provided by the members of the American Sociological Association section “Economic Sociology” and scholars from the UK, France, Germany, and Russia. In addition, the initial collection was expanded to course syllabi submitted from outside of sociology, including management departments, policy programs and anthropology. The analysis aims at measuring to what extent economic sociologists are consensual and have an agreement upon a set of core texts. Two indicators of the reference canonicity that might appear on a syllabus are developed. The first counts the number of times a reference is observed in the collected syllabi. The second indicator is based on a Kleinberg's HITS algorithm applied for search ranking, which better captures the relational aspect of consensus formation in economic sociology as a scientific discipline. The research findings demonstrate that rather small group of articles, largely rooted in a relational-network perspective and a cultural/political approach, form the canon of economic sociology. The Granovetter’s paper on social embeddedness (published in 1985) still emerges as the most popularly listed reference on the observed 39 syllabi. Additionally, the author highlights role of “broker”, references that bridge different territories of economic sociology. The article Bazaar Economy by Clifford Geertz published in“American Economic Review” (1978) is one example of such references