TAILIEUCHUNG - What Is Economic Sociology and Should Any Economists Care?

A couple years ago, two of my colleagues independently proposed approximately the same title for their respective contributions to a series of lunchtime talks: “Why Erving Goffman Is My Hero (and Should Be Yours, Too).” I emerged from these two lunches mightily impressed – both by Goffman’s (1959) insights into The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and by the potential for Goffman’s micro-sociological research to inspire a major new research stream in behavioral game theory. In a similar spirit, I considered titling this introduction “Why Robert Merton Is My Hero,” but this approach seemed prone to at least two. | What Is Economic Sociology and Should Any Economists Care Robert Gibbons Robert Gibbons is Sloan Distinguished Professor of Organizational Economics and Strategy Sloan School of Management and Department of Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge Massachusetts. I am grateful to Tim Taylor for helpful comments and to Jim Baron Roberto Fernandez Jim March Joel Podolny Jesper Sorensen and Ezra Zuckerman for patient tutoring. 1 A couple years ago two of my colleagues independently proposed approximately the same title for their respective contributions to a series of lunchtime talks Why Erving Goffman Is My Hero and Should Be Yours Too . I emerged from these two lunches mightily impressed - both by Goffman s 1959 insights into The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and by the potential for Goffman s micro-sociological research to inspire a major new research stream in behavioral game theory. In a similar spirit I considered titling this introduction Why Robert Merton Is My Hero but this approach seemed prone to at least two problems. First explaining hero worship in a short space would probably require poetry which is not my forte. Second I feared that the title would be opaque to those economists who would immediately think of Robert C. Merton the Nobel Laureate in financial economics rather than his father Robert K. Merton one of the great sociologists in the history of that discipline. I take the ideas in these papers and their underlying sociological literatures quite seriously. In fact one sociologist friend recently declared that I have an economist s eye for the sociological guy. More precisely my interest is in economic sociology which I will define as the sociology of economic actors and institutions see the two Handbooks of Economic Sociology by Smelser and Swedberg 1994 forthcoming for volumes of detail. In this introduction I will highlight some of the prominent themes from economic sociology that are illustrated in these papers and .

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