Market Sociology Today: Anthony Giddens

Abstract

In the case of Anthony Giddens, a different aspect of the market is abstracted from the total process of economic production and reproduction. Like Parkin, Giddens attaches considerable importance, for the emergence of common class situations, to the scarcity-value of the various attributes that social actors bring to the market encounter. He does not, however, follow Parkin in viewing class primarily in terms of the resultant structure of unequal rewards. Rather, he is more directly and more consistently concerned with actual social relationships in the sphere of market interaction. Giddens’ analysis of class structuration is of particular interest, both for its relative rigour and because his debt to Weber is explicitly acknowledged.¹ His work is also instructive in that it directly challenges the Marxist theory of class and capitalism and, in doing so, makes explicit many of the assumptions that are more or less hidden in less sophisticated versions of market sociology.