Jens Beckert is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. Previously, he was Professor of Sociology at the Georg August University Göttingen and Associate Professor of Sociology at the International University Bremen. He studied sociology and business administration at the Freie Universität Berlin and the New School for Social Research in New York. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the Freie Universität in 1996 and his Habilitation in 2003. Beckert was a visting fellow at the sociology department of Princeton University in 1994–1995 and at the Center for European Studies of Harvard University in 2001–2002. His book Beyond the Market: The Social Foundations of Economic Efficiency was published by Princeton University Press in 2002. His second monograph, “Unverdientes Vermögen. Soziologie des Erbrechts” (Campus Verlag 2004), will also be published in English by Princeton University Press. Other publications include: “Economic Sociology and Embeddedness: How Shall We Conceptualize Economic Action?”Journal of Economic Issues 37: 769–787, 2003; “Agency, Entrepreneurs and Institutional Change: The Role of Strategic Choice and Institutionalized Practices in Organizations,”Organization Studies 20: 777–799, 1999; “What Is Sociological about Economic Sociology? Uncertainty and the Embeddedness of Economic Action,”Theory and Society 25: 803–840, 1996. This is the revised version of an article that was originally published in German in the Berliner Journal für Soziologie in 2002. The author thanks Harald Wenzel for his excellent suggestions.
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Interpenetration Versus Embeddedness
The Premature Dismissal of Talcott Parsons in the New Economic Sociology
Article first published online: 14 MAR 2006
DOI: 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2006.00446.x
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How to Cite
Beckert, J. (2006), Interpenetration Versus Embeddedness. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 65: 161–188. doi: 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2006.00446.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 14 MAR 2006
- Article first published online: 14 MAR 2006
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Abstract. The economy and economics are important fields in Talcott Parsons's work. Parsons's contributions on this subject were, however, mostly critically received in the new economic sociology. In this article, main points of criticism of Parsons's economic sociology will be discussed and the question asked whether the importance of Parsons's works in economic sociology was adequately treated. It will be demonstrated that the critical assessments was based for the most part on theoretical conceptions Parsons developed during his structural-functionalist period. Hence the assessments neglected to discuss the theory of expressive-symbolic communication of affect that Parsons developed in his later systems-functionalist period. However, precisely these later theoretical developments correlate directly with the concept of social embeddedness as a key concept in the new economic sociology. A stronger linking with this development in Parsons's theory could bring economic sociology closer to finding a foundation in action theory, which has been missing up to the present.