The Sociology of Markets Neil Fligstein and Luke Dauter Department of Sociology,University of California,Berkeley,California 94720; email:fligst@uclink4.berkelev.edu,luked@berkeley.edu Annu.Rev.Sociol.2007.33:105-28 Key Words First published online as a Review in Advance on April 4,2007 fields,networks,institutions,performativity,culture,politics The Amual Revie of Sociology is online at Abstract http://soc.annualreviews.org The sociology of markets has been one of the most vibrant fields in This article's doi: sociology in the past 25 years.There is a great deal of agreement 10.1146 /annurev.soc.33.040406.131736 that markets are social structures characterized by extensive social Copyright 2007 by Annual Reviews. relationships between firms,workers,suppliers,customers,and gov- All rights reserved ernments.But,like in many sociological literatures,the theory camps 0360-0572/07/0811-0105S20.00 that have formed often seem to speak by each other.We show that some of the disagreement between theory camps is due to differ- ences in conceptual language,and other disagreements stem from the fact that theory camps ignore the concepts in other theory camps, thereby making their theories less complete.We end by considering deeper controversies in the literature that seem open both to new conceptualization and further empirical research. I05ANRV316-SO33-06 ARI 24 May 2007 10:6 The Sociology of Markets Neil Fligstein and Luke Dauter Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720; email: fligst@uclink4.berkeley.edu, luked@berkeley.edu Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2007. 33:105–28 First published online as a Review in Advance on April 4, 2007 The Annual Review of Sociology is online at http://soc.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.33.040406.131736 Copyright c 2007 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved 0360-0572/07/0811-0105$20.00 Key Words fields, networks, institutions, performativity, culture, politics Abstract The sociology of markets has been one of the most vibrant fields in sociology in the past 25 years. There is a great deal of agreement that markets are social structures characterized by extensive social relationships between firms, workers, suppliers, customers, and gov￾ernments. But, like in many sociological literatures, the theory camps that have formed often seem to speak by each other. We show that some of the disagreement between theory camps is due to differ￾ences in conceptual language, and other disagreements stem from the fact that theory camps ignore the concepts in other theory camps, thereby making their theories less complete. We end by considering deeper controversies in the literature that seem open both to new conceptualization and further empirical research. 105 Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2007.33:105-128. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by Shanghai Jiaotong University on 02/04/15. For personal use only.