Blackwell Reference Online

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Markets are a fundamental category of economic science often described as “market economics” ( Schumpeter 1954 a : 12). Economists place the analysis of markets at the “heart of economics” ( Mises 1960 : 3; Wieser 1956 : 3) and view the evolution of economic theory as the history of their attempt to explain the “workings of an economy based on market transactions” ( Blaug 1985 : 6). As sociologists also note, a “central problem area” of conventional economic theory is the “structure of markets” ( Parsons & Smelser 1965 : 143). This emphasis often reaches the point of what critics from economic science and sociology alike call “market fundamentalism” ( Stiglitz 2002 ) or “absolutization” of markets ( Barber 1995 ) within orthodox economics. Markets are also an important subject of economic sociology of which one of the main subfields is the “economic sociology of the market” ( Boulding 1970 : 153). However, economics, especially its orthodox version, and economic sociology usually differ in approaching the subject in that the first treats markets as purely economic phenomena or mechanisms, and the second conceives them as complex social structures or institutions. For instance, prominent economists like Joseph Schumpeter (1954b : 9–22) distinguish pure or theoretical economics as the “study of economic mechanisms,” notably “market mechanisms,” from economic sociology as the ... log in or subscribe to read full text