How does culture impact economic life? Is culture like a ball and chain that actors must lug around as they pursue their material interests? Or, is culture like a tool-kit from which entrepreneurs can draw resources to aid them in their efforts? Or, is being immersed in a culture like wearing a...

1. Introduction -- 2. Economists should study culture -- 3. But economists often misunderstand the relationship between culture and markets -- 4. Economists ought to be looking at the spirits that animate markets -- 5. This does not mean that economists have to abandon economics.

Prominent economic sociologist Richard Swedberg has argued that economists have failed to develop a theory of the market that recognizes it as a “social phenomenon in its own right.” While this may be true of mainstream economics, the Austrian school's theory of the market is much richer...

Economic sociology, the study of how economic phenomena affect and are affected by social forces, is a field that arguably dates back to classical economists and social thinkers such as Adam Smith. Arguably, however, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber did the most to systematize and outline the field...