Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Business Groups and Economic Organization
- Part II Emergence and Divergence of the Economies
- Conclusions
- Appendix A Mathematical Model of Business Groups
- Appendix B Examples of Differential Pricing Practices of Korean Groups
- Appendix C Hypothesis Tests of the Model
- Appendix D The Role of Debt in the Korean Financial Crisis, 1997
- References
- Index
- Titles in the series
Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Business Groups and Economic Organization
- Part II Emergence and Divergence of the Economies
- Conclusions
- Appendix A Mathematical Model of Business Groups
- Appendix B Examples of Differential Pricing Practices of Korean Groups
- Appendix C Hypothesis Tests of the Model
- Appendix D The Role of Debt in the Korean Financial Crisis, 1997
- References
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
Local Economies in an Age of Global Capitalism
In his new and very thoughtful book, Principles of Economic Sociology, Richard Swedberg (2003, p. 54, his emphasis) makes the following point: “It seems clear that economic sociology should set capitalism at the very center of its analysis since this is the dominant way of organizing the economy – legally, politically, and socially – in today's world.” Although the point may be obvious, Swedberg (2003, pp. 63–5) notes that very few sociologists actually build an economic sociology on this fact:
Today's economic sociologists have often taken capitalism for granted and have failed to develop a sociology of capitalism. On the whole, they have preferred to deal with middle-range phenomena, such as firms and networks of various kinds. … When it comes to the discussion of capitalism among contemporary sociologists … the desire to show that social relations and institutions matter is often so strong that the key mechanism in capitalism – the generation of profit and its reinvestment in production – is hardly ever mentioned, and rarely theorized. This leads to a flawed view of capitalism, and a failure to understand its dynamics as well as its capacity to mobilize people and resources for its purposes.
Although Swedberg singles out economic sociologists, we would add that many economists are guilty of the same oversight: The narrowed concentration on the firm and equating the firm with economic organization in general obscures the very workings of capitalism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Emergent Economies, Divergent PathsEconomic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan, pp. 342 - 364Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006