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Social embeddedness, social capital and the market process: An introduction to the special issue on Austrian economics, economic sociology and social capital

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Notes

  1. For a similar warning about the dangers of functionalism in the neoclassical analysis of social capital, see Knorringa and van Staveren (2007:2). It should be noted, however, that North (1990) and other new institutionalist scholars go to great lengths to dispel the notion that only the most efficient institutions ‘win out’ in the evolutionary process. Further, in his later work, North (2005) examines the ways in which belief structures, or mental models, shape the process of institutional change (or in other words, how the social embeddedness of institutional change matters).

  2. For a case study, see Granovetter and McGuire (1998).

  3. For examples of such proposals, see Blair (2002) and Leigh and Putnam (2002).

  4. As Smith put it in The Wealth of Nations, ‘In civilised society [man] stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons’ (Smith [1776] 1991: Book I, chp. 2: 18).

  5. Also see von Mises ([1949] 1966: 143–76, 194–99), who argued that sympathy and friendship can be the product of trade, not just its cause.

  6. For discussions of the types of debates that have arisen, see Baron et al. (2000), Fine (2001), Bebbington et al. (2004) and Knorringa and van Staveren (2007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, King’s College, University of London, Franklin-Wilkins Building, 150 Stamford St., London, SE1 9NH, UK

    Paul Lewis

  2. Department of Economics, Beloit College, 700 College St. Beloit, Beloit, WI, 53511, USA

    Emily Chamlee-Wright

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Correspondence to Paul Lewis.

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Lewis, P., Chamlee-Wright, E. Social embeddedness, social capital and the market process: An introduction to the special issue on Austrian economics, economic sociology and social capital. Rev Austrian Econ 21, 107–118 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-007-0033-1

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