Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Preface -- Chapter I. The Classics in Economic Sociology -- Chapter II. Contemporary Economic Sociology -- Chapter III. Economic Organization -- Chapter IV. Firms -- Chapter V. Economic and Sociological Approaches to Markets -- Chapter VI....

Main description: Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) has long been recognized as a major political and social thinker as well as historian, but his writings also contain a wealth of little-known insights into economic life and its connection to the rest of society. In Tocqueville's Political...

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- NOTE ON THE TEXTS OF THE READINGS -- Introduction -- PART I: MODERN CAPITALISM -- O N E Modern Capitalism: Key Characteristics and Key Institutions -- TWO The Spirit of Capitalism -- THREE The Market -- FOUR The Beginnings of the Firm -- FIVE Class, Status, and Party...

Economic sociology is a rapidly expanding field, applying sociology's core insight--that individuals behave according to scripts that are tied to social roles--to economic behavior. It places homo economicus (that tried-and-true fictive actor who is completely rational, acts only out of...