Description
Book SynopsisThis book offers a sociological analysis of globalised capitalist markets, advancing the notion of âdisembedded marketsâ to challenge the idea of âsocial embeddednessâ common in economic sociology. Avoiding an exclusive focus on institutions, networks and trust relationships surrounding markets, the author concentrates on private property as the key institution of markets, in order to emphasise the historical origins of modern capitalism the free market narrative, and develop a socio-historical analysis of the disembedding process together with an account of the built-in contradictions and limits of market universalisation. Through an analysis of their encompassing character, this volume demonstrates that disembedded markets do not fit standard theoretical accounts of sociality â a problem taken up not only by Karl Marx, but also by Friedrich August von Hayek and Niklas Luhmann â and questions the attempts of the emerging approach of âeconomic theologyâ to draw parallels between the
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Disembedded markets and society: Ambiguities in Polanyi’s analysis
3. Markets as a social system: The liberal narrative
4. Dimensions of disembedding
5. Religion as a self-representation of society
6. Modernity, capitalism and religion
7. Disembedding and the dilemma of self-representation of society
8. Markets as an ultimate social reality?
9. A multilevel model of capitalist dynamics
10. Conclusions
