1 THE ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY OF CAPITALISM: AN INTRODUCTION AND AGENDA by Richard Swedberg Cornell University
[email protected] revised version July 27, 2003 2 Capitalism is the dominant economic system in today’s world, and there appears to be no alternatives in sight.1 Socialism, its main competitor, has been weakened immeasurably by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Where socialism still prevails, such as in the People’s Republic of China, serious attempts are made to turn the whole economic system in a capitalist direction so that it will operate in a more efficient manner. “It doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black as long as it catches mice”, to cite Deng Xiaping (e.g. Becker 2000:52-3). While the superiority of capitalism as an economic system and growth machine has fascinated economists for centuries, this has not been the case with sociologists. For sociologists capitalism has mainly been of interest for its social effects – how it has led to class struggle, anomie, inequality and social problems in general. Capitalism as an economic system in its own right has been of much less interest. Some of this reaction has probably to do with the unfortunate division of labor that developed between economists and sociologists in the 19th century: economists studied the economy, and the sociologists society minus the economy. In this respect, as in so many others, sociology has essentially been a “left-over science” (Wirth 1948). 1 For inspiration to write this chapter I thank Victor Nee and for comments and help with information Mabel Berezin, Patrik Aspers, Filippo Barbera, Mark Chavez, Philippe Steiner and two anonymous reviewers.