Economic Sociology in the New Millennium

Economic sociology is now a sociological specialization with a distinct identity (Smelser and Swedberg 1994). In the twentieth century, it focused on the internal workings of organizations human relations, organization design, and internal labor markets (Baron and Hannan 1994) . Using the economist's black box metaphor of the firm as a point of departure, economic sociologists formulated theories of how organizations influence individual action and respond to the environment (Swedberg 1991). These theories are now part of the received wisdom. They have been validated, adopted by other disciplines (Arrow 1998), and developed into original subdisciplines organization theory and strategic management (Selznick 1957; Thompson 1967; Childs 1973; Emerson 1962; Hannan and Freeman 1977; Kogut and Zander 1996; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Granovetter 1985; Mintz and Schwartz 1985; Barney 1991). After this auspicious focus on internal organization, which originated with Weber, Gouldner, Coleman, Selznick, Coser, Blau, and their students, we see the intellectual focus of the field shifting from firms to markets. Economic sociology must extend its distinctive approach to organizations, states, and markets if it is to widen its understanding of economy and society. What's more, a number of political, economic, technological, and corporate changes have made the boundaries of firms permeable and variable, making markets more consequential because what goes on between firms shapes what goes on withirl them (Aldrich 1999; Freeland, forthcoming 2000; Haveman 2000). These changes include the neoliberal turn in economic policy, the global integration of product and capital markets, transitions from socialist to capitalist economies, widespread privatization, corporate restructuring, and outsourcing. We anticipate that these changes will transform the traditional identities, relations, and roles of economic actors, especially firms. New identities will emerge and merge in ways that may alter profoundly how wealth is accumulated and distributed. Consequently, economic sociology is likely to focus on the origins, processes, and consequences of this course of social reidentification, something we dub iderltity bricolage. Identity bricolage involves the decomposition of existing identities into their constituent components, and their recombination into a new identity (Levi-Strauss 1966). Because identities engender distinct modes of action, identity bricolage opens up new lines of action and behavior previously foreclosed to prior identities. We see new lines of research in economic sociology revolving around the process by which identity bricolage occurs, and its consequences for economy and society. Identity bricolage will also affect economic sociology itself, as it converses and trades intellectual capital with other disciplines, altering its own identity and content. Given our contention that markets will occupy center stage in economic sociology, we provide in this essay some selective predictions and projections, recognizing that the future direction of sociological theory, like society, is often driven by unforeseen developments and unintended consequences.