| CODE | SOC2000 | ||||||||||||
| TITLE | Economic Sociology | ||||||||||||
| 今日黑料 LEVEL | 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||||||
| EQF/MQF LEVEL | 5 | ||||||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Sociology | ||||||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | How do people find jobs? Why are supermarkets and shopping malls organised the way they are? And in what ways do Google, Amazon, and Facebook shape our consumption? This study-unit introduces students to economic sociology by exploring how everyday economic life is shaped by social relations, power structures, and technologies. Rather than viewing markets as neutral mechanisms, we investigate the social forces, cultural meanings, and political processes that organise economic activity, from social networks to targeted advertising and digital platforms. The study-unit first situates contemporary sociological approaches within the intellectual history of economic thought, by giving close attention to scholarship more explicitly rooted in sociological or anthropological foundations, such as Max Weber’s and Karl Polanyi’s. Building on this foundation, the unit introduces three contemporary approaches in the ‘new economic sociology’. Firstly, we conceive of markets as socially constituted by examining the economy’s embeddedness in social relations and networks. Secondly, we explore the political dimension of markets, examining how some economic actors dominate and define the rules of exchange. Thirdly, we explore markets as objects of design and material construction, taking a science and technology perspective to markets. By the end of the study-unit, students gain a sociological toolkit for understanding the economic world around them, one that reveals how markets are built, maintained, and transformed through social relations, political struggles, and technological devices. Study-Unit Aims: - To explore the social constitution of economic life and markets; - To appraise the various, and sometimes contrasting, theoretical and methodological approaches within economic sociology; - To introduce alternative modes of thinking on the economy, markets and economic policy, and relate them to current dominant approaches in economics; - To critically examine the ways in which economics itself shapes markets and the governance of the economy. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Identify the key differences between a sociological take on the economy against the dominant approaches in economics; - Appreciate the historical lineage of current thought on the economy and trace it back to classical political economy and classical sociology; - Understand how the institutional and methodological divide between economics and sociology shaped scholarship in economic sociology; - Assess the various approaches within economic sociology and how they interact and intersect. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Apply a variety of theories and concepts to markets and behaviour in the economy; - Interpret current economic issues, developments and policy from a sociological standpoint; - Situate contemporary scholarship around the economy within the intellectual and institutional historical developments; - Employ close reading of academic texts and appraise the literature. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Smelser, N, & Swedberg, R. (eds.). (2005). The Handbook of Economic Sociology (2nd edition). New York and Princeton: Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press. Supplementary Readings: - Callon, M. (2007). 'What does it mean to say that economics is performative?' In MacKenzie, D. Muniesa, F., & Siu, L. (eds.), Do economists make markets? On the performativity of economics. Oxford and Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 311-357. - Fligstein, N. (1996) 'Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions', American Sociological Review, 61(4), pp. 656-673. - Granovetter, M. (1985). 'Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness'. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481-510. - MacKenzie, D. (2009) Material markets: How economic agents are constructed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Polanyi, K. (1944/2001). The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. - Stark, D. (2000). For a Sociology of Worth. Keynote Address for the Meetings of the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy, Berlin, November 2-4. - Swedberg, R. (2003). Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, pp. 1-31. - Weber, M. (1922/1978). Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Edited by G. Roth & C. Wittich). Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Dylan Cassar |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2026/7. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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