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Assessing the New Synthesis of Economics and Sociology: Promising Themes for Contemporary Analysts of Economic Life
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1999 by Dan Krier
DAN KRIER [**]
ABSTRACT. In this essay, the emergence of the "New Synthesis" of economics and sociology is explored and analyzed in the context of the classical writings in economic sociology ("Old Synthesis"). The aim is not to provide an exhaustive survey, but rather a selective assessment that introduces readers to the most important questions, answers, and contributions of this emerging and important specialized literature. The essay seeks to i) translate faithfully the internal logic of this active specialty field into a language and problematic that can be appreciated by non-specialists, ii) identify central assumptions and themes in the New Synthesis writings that seem particularly promising for the appreciation of contemporary economic happenings, and iii) indicate opportunities for the development of further theoretical richness by incorporating Old Synthesis approaches.
I
Introduction
THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES have witnessed worldwide economic transformations of unprecedented scale. Socialist alternatives to capitalism have fallen or foundered.
Capitalist production has become geographically decentered. Developed industrial nations have experienced slow productivity gains, massive de-industrialization, and declining real wages, while production has been shifted to developing nations. Financial booms (Japan's Bubble Economy of the 1980s, United States' boom during the 1980s and again in the 1990s, among many others) and busts (Japan in the 1990s, "Asian Tigers" in the 1990s) have dominated business and popular imagination. These events have been only partly understandable by traditional "economic" approaches and have encouraged diverse networks of sociologists to enter empirical territory traditionally held by economists. The resulting interdisciplinary border dispute is forging what has been prominently referred to as a "New Synthesis of Economics and Sociology" (New Synthesis: Smelser and Swedberg 1994; Martinelli and Smelser 1990; Granovetter and Swedberg 1992; Etzioni and Lawrence 1990; Zukin and DiMaggio 1990; Friedland and Robertson 1990). The emergence of a re-invigorated economic sociology is arguably one of the most important disciplinary developments of our time, in part because it returns the discipline to a consideration of the kind of big questions regarding economy and society that helped launch it so effectively over one hundred years ago. Further, given the social upheaval associated with recent economic events, it is difficult to imagine where sociological perspectives are more urgently needed or more fruitfully applied. Economic sociology has the opportunity to demonstrate the utility of sociological perspectives to a new and important audience.
In this essay, I explore the emergence of the "New Synthesis" of economics and sociology and analyze it in the context of the classical writings in economic sociology ("Old Synthesis"). My aim is not to provide an exhaustive survey, but rather a selective assessment that introduces readers to the most important questions, answers, and contributions of this emerging and important specialized literature. I rely not only on primary source material, but also build upon and borrow from overviews written by others to translate faithfully the internal logic of this active specialty field into a language and problematic that can be appreciated by general sociologists and economists. I aim to identify areas where New Synthesis approaches seem particularly promising for the appreciation of contemporary economic happenings and to indicate opportunities for further theoretical richness by incorporating Old Synthesis approaches.
II
The Development of the New Synthesis
RICHARD SWEDBERG (1987), in a book-length article in Current Sociology, traces the history of economic sociology from its beginnings in the disciplinary split between economics and sociology that occurred at the end of the last century to its culmination in the New Synthesis writings of the present. Swedberg's thesis is that economic sociology failed to "take-off" after a shaky beginning at the hands of Weber, Durkheim, Veblen, and Pareto and lay dormant until the 1970s, when economists and sociologists began re-questioning both the intellectual divide between economists and sociologists and the relationship between their respective subject matters. Swedberg's article presents a convincing case for a "dark age" of economic sociology; however if one examines his bibliography (over eight hundred entries) and ignores the article text, one gets a completely different view. His bibliography reveals a steady stream of socioeconomic writings throughout every decade of this century. In fact, during the middle decades of the twentieth century, the period Swedberg portrays as the most disinterested in economic sociology, such important writers as C. Wright Mills, Gunnar Mrydal, Talcott Parsons, Karl Polyani, Everett Hughes, W. Lloyd Warner, Robert and Helen Merrill Lynd, Rheinhard Bendix, and Philip Selznick, among others, were producing their best-known works dealing with essentially economic matters. Even sociologists known primarily for other work, such as Herbert Blumer, wrote extensively about economic issues (Blumer 1990).
