This book explores institutional change and economic behaviour by examining the transition process in the former socialist countries that joined the EU in 2004, looking at the growth occurring in China, offering a historical perspective on economic underdevelopment in the Middle East, and...

Using Karl Polanyi's analysis of the separation of politics and the economy, the book argues that the market economy is not a spontaneous process, but a 'political project' realized through institutional change where labour, land, money, and currently knowledge are commodities. The contributions...

Preface -- Introduction -- Before bankruptcy : conflict solution strategies of upper German / Mechthild Isenmann -- Trading companies in the fifteenth and "long" sixteenth centuries / Wolfgang Forster -- Failed memoria : rights of patronage and of burial in bankruptcy / Dave De ruysscher -- The...

Die Beiträge des Bandes zeigen und diskutieren das Potenzial einer mikrosoziologischen, prozessorientierten - qualitativen - Ungleichheitsforschung. Sie spüren Praktiken sozialer Besser- und Schlechterstellung in den Bereichen Bildung, Arbeit, soziale Beziehungen und Migration auf. Mit der...