Νέα οικονομική κοινωνιολογία ως αντίδραση στον "οικονομικό ιμπεριαλισμό": Η έννοια της έδρασης

Abstract

The attempts by some economists to make economics an imperial science by infiltrating in several areas in which sociology has been active and displacing it, has triggered the reactions of sociologists. In the context of such reactions one should perceive the treatment and analysis of homo economicus by sociology as an individualized undersocialised theoretical scheme, and thus inappropriate for the comprehensive understanding of the social interaction of real actors, of their function and behavior, as well as of their conceptualization in the economic process. As opposed to this representation of economic life, considered to lack realism, economic sociologists have juxtaposed the designation of economic actors as non-individualized, and above all as embedded in networks of continued and active social relations. In this way, a basis is provided which, because of its realist complexity, offers an enhanced potential to interpret economic action and its framework in which individuals interact. It is this sociological reaction that has set the ground for the containment of economic imperialism, on the one hand, and for claiming anew multifaceted economic action as social action that necessitates sociological analysis and interpretation, on the other. In this paper, two variants of economic imperialism are examined. Subsequently, the focus shifts on discussing the notion of social embeddedness, which is constitutive for the New Economic Sociology, by looking into the work of K. Po- lanyi, B. Barber and M. Granovetter.