A01=Jens Beckert
Author_Jens Beckert
Calculation
Capitalism
Category=JHBA
Category=KCA
Competition (economics)
Consideration
Consumer Goods
Contingency (philosophy)
Contract theory
Criticism
Decision-making
Division of labour
Economic development
Economic efficiency
Economic equilibrium
Economic history
Economic policy
Economic sociology
Economics
Economist
Economy
Economy and Society
Embeddedness
Emile Durkheim
Entrepreneurship
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Explanation
Factor price
General equilibrium theory
Homo economicus
Income
Institution
Institutional economics
Investment
Marginal utility
Market (economics)
Market economy
Market failure
Market structure
Microeconomics
Modernity
Morality
Neoclassical economics
Norm (social)
Organization
Payment
Political economy
Preference (economics)
Principal-agent problem
Production function
Rational choice theory
Rationality
Resource allocation
Self-interest
Social actions
Social order
Social relation
Social science
Social structure
Social theory
Sociological theory
Sociology
Structural functionalism
Structuration theory
Structuring
Supply (economics)
Systems theory
Talcott Parsons
Technological change
Theory
Transaction cost
Uncertainty
Value (ethics)
Product details
- ISBN 9780691049076
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 23 Sep 2002
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Beyond the Market launches a sociological investigation into economic efficiency. Prevailing economic theory, which explains efficiency using formalized rational choice models, often simplifies human behavior to the point of distortion. Jens Beckert finds such theory to be particularly weak in explaining such crucial forms of economic behavior as cooperation, innovation, and action under conditions of uncertainty--phenomena he identifies as the proper starting point for a sociology of economic action. Beckert levels an enlightened critique at neoclassical economics, arguing that understanding efficiency requires looking well beyond the market to the social, cultural, political, and cognitive factors that influence the coordination of economic action. Beckert searches social theory for the components of an alternative theory of action, one that accounts for the social embedding of economic behavior. In Durkheim and Parsons he finds especially useful approaches to cooperation; in Luhmann, a way to understand how people act under highly contingent conditions; and in Giddens, an understanding of creative action and innovation.
Together, these provide building blocks for a research program that will yield a theoretically sophisticated understanding of how economic processes are coordinated and the ways that markets are embedded in social, cultural, and cognitive structures. Containing one of the most fully informed critiques of the neoclassical analysis of economic efficiency--as well as one of the most thoughtful blueprints for economic sociology--this book reclaims for sociology the study of one of the most important arenas of human action.
Jens Beckert is Associate Professor of Sociology at the International University Bremen.
