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Title: The Architecture of Markets : An Economic Sociology of Twenty-First-Century Capitalist Societies by Neil Fligstein ISBN: 0-691-10254-6 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 16 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Not very revealing
Comment: I had high hopes for this book.
It really let me down.
As I read through the book I kept saying "duh" to myself. Unless you are a conservative with a fantasticailly naive ideal of capitalism wherein business acts perfectly rationally and only to maximize profit, there is little to be gained from this book. Anyone with a basic knowledge of the realities of capitlism will not be learning much that wasn't already known - though they may lack the terminology and rigor of his sociological definitions.
There is an interesting chapter near the end about how the ideology of corporate control has changed, and with it how corporations have functioned. This is the only real chapter that I found interesting.
The last chapter of the book is a weak defense of globalization. His "political-cultural approach" fails to offer any explanation for why the economy has undergone so many significant changes in the past twenty five years. He defines the amount of "globalization" as the amount of trade flows across borders and then insists that globalization has not caused an increase in inequality because Japan and Europe, who are less dependent on foreign trade than America have not suffered the same increase in inequality!
look for a better book.
Rating: 5
Summary: The market as a social field
Comment: Over past decades, what has bestowed the identity on economic sociology is the shared hostility to neoclassical economics. But besides it, unfortunately, they have agreed on nothing. And worse, economists simply pass over their arguments. They are no more than fusses about nothing. The reason is simple: there are no potent enough alternatives in sociological camp. Fligstein argues that this is because sociological approaches lack a organizing frame to explain economic processes as generic social processes. To make it effective, there should be a simple and powerful enough theoretical frame. Offering such an approach is what Fligstein intends with this book.
Economic action takes place in the market. Fligstein holds that there is no reason to treat the market differently. Social action takes place in organized social space, or field in Bourdieu¡¯s term. Fields is the space where one try to dominate others. But the domination in that space is systemized and routinized. It defines local relations between actors. Once in place, the interactions in fields become ¡®games¡¯ where groups in filed who have more power use the acceptable rules to reproduce their power: the domination system is institutionalized. This process makes action in fields inherently political. Studying field is about opening of new social space, how it becomes and remains stable (become a field), and the forces that transform fields.
Fligstein replaces profit-maximizing actor with one who takes care of the survival of their firm. Managers and owners are trying enhance the survival of the firm by reducing the uncertainties they face in the market. Managing uncertain environment is a sizable task. It¡¯s about the search for stable and predictable interactions with competitors, suppliers, and workers. Relationship between seller and buyer is fleeting. Stability in the market lies in the relationship between sellers, then. Relationships between them delineate the market as a field. The social relations are oriented toward maintaining the advantage of largest seller firms in the face of their challengers. They define how the market works and how competition is structured. Although the firms compete, they have produced an equilibrium whereby they survive by following the accepted tactics of competition. As forms of social relation, market systems involve both shared understanding and concrete social relations. The shared understandings structure the interactions between competitors but also allow actors to make sense of their competitors actions. There are four types of rules relevant to producing social structure in markets: property rights, governance structures, rules of exchange, and conception of control. These categories are the essential analytic tools in Fligstein¡¯s approach. They enable researcher to dissect empirically. But definition and details are intricate to propose here. I¡¯ll skip it.
Part I of this book sketch out the theoretical outline of Fligstein¡¯s approach. Part II support it with case studies of labor market, corporate governance, and globalization. On the whole, this book is readable and persuasive. Points are clear, lines are easy to follow. In my opinion, it¡¯s a breakthrough in economic sociology.
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Title: Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production. by Harrison C. White ISBN: 0691088713 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage by Peter A. Hall, David W. Soskice ISBN: 0199247757 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $32.50 |
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Title: The Sociology of Economic Life by Mark Granovetter, Richard Swedberg, Richard Swedburg ISBN: 0813397642 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: 03 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $49.00 |
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Title: Principles of Economic Sociology by Richard Swedberg ISBN: 0691074399 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.50 |
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Title: The Handbook of Economic Sociology by Neil J. Smelser, Richard Swedberg ISBN: 0691044856 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 03 July, 1995 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
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