Peter Boettke on Economics and Sociology

Peter Boettke has a new post on economic sociology, providing lots of links and his thoughts. As I've mentioned on here before (probably sharing many of these same points), I've also got a warm spot in my heart for economic sociology, which I studied with Deirdre Royster at William and Mary. A lot of Boettke's important influences - Weber, Granovetter, Berger - are quite important to my thinking too.

Boettke highlights a relatively new book by Swedberg on Tocqueville's Political Economy, which looks interesting.

He mentions Granovetter with respect to embeddedness, but doesn't really get into his work on networks. Smithian division of labor is something that is often appealed to but isn't really central to a lot of modern economics of any school, except for some institutionalists and Coasians. I think any serious modern exposition of the division of labor has to be along the lines of Granovetter and network economies.

Other economic sociologists that have influenced me have been Tilly, Evans, and Skocpol.

Boettke also recommends Alex Preda's Information, Knowledge, and Economic Life: An Introduction to the Sociology of Markets.