"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.
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