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To reexamine the Weber Thesis pertaining to the relationship between ascetic Protestantism – especially Calvinism – and modern capitalism, as between an economic “spirit” and an economic “structure,” in which the first is assumed to be the explanatory factor and the second the dependent variable.

The chapter provides an attempt to combine theoretical-empirical and comparative-historical approaches to integrate theory with evidence supplied by societal comparisons and historically specific cases.

The chapter identifies the general sociological core of the Weber Thesis as a classic endeavor in economic sociology (and thus substantive sociological theory) and separates it from its particular historical dimension in the form of an empirical generalization from history. I argue that such a distinction helps to better understand the puzzling double “fate” of the Weber Thesis in social science, its status of a model in economic sociology and substantive sociological theory, on the one hand, and its frequent rejection in history and historical economics, on the other. The sociological core of the Thesis, postulating that religion, ideology, and culture generally deeply impact economy, has proved to be more valid, enduring, and even paradigmatic, as in economic sociology, than its historical component establishing a special causal linkage between Calvinism and other types of ascetic Protestantism and the “spirit” and “structure” of modern capitalism in Western society at a specific point in history.

In addition to the two cases deviating from the Weber Thesis considered here, it is necessary to investigate and identify the validity of the Thesis with regard to concrete historical and empirical instances.

The chapter provides the first effort to systematically analyze and distinguish between the sociological core and the historical components of the Weber Thesis as distinct yet intertwined components.

This article aims to show that studies of transnational risk regulation can benefit from Polanyian and neo-Polanyian research agendas in the field of law, economy, and society. Risk regulation would then be understood as a corrective force within the market society. Drawing on the relevant literature in the field, Karl Polanyi’s work is contextualized both in the past (“scholarship before and beside Polanyi”) and in the present (“scholarship after and beyond Polanyi”). The review considers developments within sociology, its neighboring disciplines economics and jurisprudence, and the interdisciplinary research fields of “economy and society,” “law and society,” and “law and economy.” The article demonstrates that Polanyi is a “late classic” who shares the holistic orientation of classical historical scholarship. At the same time, it is argued that his “early revival” is due to the topicality of his criticism of the market society, and its inherent risks, in an era of neoliberalism and globalization. By going back and forth in time, the article situates Polanyi in a line of holistically minded scholarship that combines insights of general, economic, and legal sociology in what can be called the “economic sociology of law.” This is “old” and “new,” at the same time.

Purpose – This introductory essay to an edited volume proposes possible contributions from economic sociology to the study of work broadly defined. Weber had a vision of economic sociology as a study of not only economic phenomena but also economically relevant and economically conditioned phenomena. Work, in its market and nonmarket variety, falls in all these categories and thus presents a fruitful research arena for economic sociologists who have thus far primarily studied markets and corporations.

Methodology/Approach – The essay provides an analytic review of literature in economic sociology, uses information from the content analysis of recent publications in sociology of work, and provides an overview of chapters included in this edited volume.

Value of paper – Applying economic sociology to work means: (a) investigating its embeddedness in social structures, culture, and politics; and (b) uncovering the socially constructed nature of what constitutes paid market work. This article also proposes that economic sociologists can expand the boundaries of work by examining such activities as care work, work in the informal economy, and prison work.

Our volume is comprised of six sections: (1) the crisis; (2) its similarities to, and differences from being a “normal accident;” (3) sociological and historical explanations for the meltdown; (4) analyses of comparable speculative bubbles and business cycles; (5) international parallels and consequences; (6) analysis of how we might approach the future development of society and economy; and also a section of postscripts for looking ahead to future policy and prevention. Each contribution addresses its main topic, and concludes with practical policy recommendations for a better future.

Our volume is comprised of six sections: (1) the crisis; (2) its similarities to, and differences from being a “normal accident;” (3) sociological and historical explanations for the meltdown; (4) analyses of comparable speculative bubbles and business cycles; (5) international parallels and consequences; (6) analysis of how we might approach the future development of society and economy; and also a section of postscripts for looking ahead to future policy and prevention. Each contribution addresses its main topic, and concludes with practical policy recommendations for a better future.

Moral struggles in and around markets abound in contemporary societies where markets have become the dominant form of economic coordination. Reviewing research on morality and markets across disciplinary boundaries, this introductory essay suggests that a moral turn can currently be observed in scholarship, and draws a direct connection to recent developments in the sociology of morality. The authors introduce the chapters in the present volume “The Contested Moralities of Markets.” In doing so, the authors distinguish three types of moral struggles in and around markets: struggles around morally contested markets where the exchange of certain goods on markets is contested; struggles within organizations that are related to an organization’s embeddedness in complex institutional environments with competing logics and orders of worth; and moral struggles in markets where moral justifications are mobilized by a variety of field members who act as moral entrepreneurs in their striving for moralizing the economy. Finally, the authors highlight three properties of moral struggles in contemporary markets: They (1) arise over different objects, (2) constitute political struggles, and (3) are related to two broader social processes: market moralization and market expansion. The introduction concludes by discussing some of the theoretical approaches that allow particular insights into struggles over morality in markets. Collectively, the contributions in this volume advance our current understanding of the contested moralities of markets by highlighting the sources, processes, and outcomes of moral struggles in and around markets, both through tracing the creation, reproduction, and change of underlying moral orders and through reflecting the status and power differentials, alliances, and political strategies as well as the general cultural, social, and political contexts in which the struggles unfold.

In this chapter, I want to take some stock of the subdiscipline of environmental sociology. I believe that a productive approach to restoring some of the coherence of environmental sociology is to conceive of mainstream environmental sociology as reflecting several paradoxes. The bulk of this chapter will be devoted to a brief explication of environmental sociology's theoretical and empirical paradoxes. I will begin with three paradoxes that have played a major role in environmental sociology since the 1970s. However, many of the theoretical and empirical paradoxes of the subfield are relatively new ones – and some have not even been thought of as paradoxes. The thrust of the present chapter consists of something of a research agenda for environmental sociology for the next decade or so.

German ethical banks have experienced a significant increase in customers, deposits, and lending. They aim to establish a fairer banking system. But the simultaneous pursuit of social, ecological, and economic goals leaves them vulnerable to conflicting orders of worth. The authors examine the normative foundations that ethical bank employees refer to when they describe their everyday practices and identify the specific problems that arise from negotiating between moral principles and economic demands to provide insights into the impacts, constraints, and paradoxes of normatively oriented business practices. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the sociology of critique, the authors assume that moral categories, social processes of interpretation, and justification are an essential part of markets. Ethical banking is characterized by the need to meet both market-limiting and market-expanding requirements, and this particularly becomes contentious when dealing with economic growth. By analyzing ethical banks’ freely accessible documents, the authors first outline the institutional guidelines. In a second step, the authors analyze 27 qualitative interviews with employees of ethical banks to gain insights into everyday lending practices and action-guiding normative orientations. The goal of this chapter is to examine the tensions that may arise from applying normative guidelines under the condition of increasing economic requirements and to disclose the way that ethical banks negotiate between mechanisms of expansion and limitation. The analysis of this chapter points out a paradox of ethical banking: due to the banks’ economic expansion, investments corresponding to their ethical commitments tend to become a luxury they cannot afford.

This introduction unpacks the key question that informs the articles in this special issue. How does a social sphere inform regulation and, more specifically, how can the regulatory capacity of a social sphere be harnessed, as an alternative or significant complementary force to state regulation and reliance on the self-regulatory capacity of markets? This question is salient and topical also in light of the search for new regulatory strategies and perspectives in the aftermath of the 2007 financial and subsequent EU sovereign debt crises, which have led to a major realignment of economy and society in a number of countries.

This introduction argues that economic sociology is a crucial reference point for understanding more about the social practices that constitute business behavior. It enables to explore the scope and significance of often interlinked social and legal norms for regulating various transnational risks that economic activity can give rise to. The introduction therefore locates the quest for understanding more about the regulatory capacity of a social sphere in debates that draw on Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the embedding, disembedding, and re-embedding of economic activity into social norms. The introduction highlights one of the key themes developed in this special issue, the idea of society within economy which questions an assumed conceptual distinction between economy and society.

This introduction concludes by specifying how the accounts of risk regulation developed in this special issue chart a path that is different from recent explorations of the role of a social sphere in regulation, which were conducted under the banner of “the sociological citizen,” “regulatory sociability,” and “collaborative governance.”