Articulating method: Viviana Zelizer, Stuart Hall, and situating the cultural in economic sociology

Relational economic sociology (RES) has powerfully demonstrated the multiplicity of markets and the persistence of intimate social relations, lively cultural practices, and active moral contestations within them. Much of the literature’s intellectual project stems from Viviana Zelizer’s critique of ‘hostile worlds,’ namely the conceptualization of markets as universally homogenizing and determining forces of rationalization. This paper engages with this literature and the wider field in three ways. First, I contend that RES’ yearning to transcend a totalizing conception of markets shares much with the economic determinism critique levelled by Stuart Hall and the Cultural Studies project. Second, I juxtapose the two literatures to point to four key areas of distinction. Finally, I argue that by making visible how investigations of the micro-interactional can inform seemingly macro-structural problematics of commodification, Cultural Studies points to the possibility for RES to systemically extend its optic into questions of structuring, scale, dis-embedding, and differentiation.