Contemporary Research Trends in Economic Sociology: An Analytical Study of Two Scientific Journals

(Maha Ezzat Mohamed Aboraya)

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Abstract

This review article aims at monitoring and analysing the development of economic sociology approaches, and the important theses/ assumptions, which helped to understand sociological phenomena and topics, as reflected in the intellectual production published in scientific articles by sociologists in two American and British journals, namely Current Sociology and the British Journal of Sociology, respectively. During the period of three years (2017 to 2019), this article had classified the academic production of both journals into six issues: 1) transnational social class between death and reproduction, 2) labour market capitalism: is reforming self the way to achieve equity and equality? 3) culture forms consumption, 4) social capitalism and social networks in the economic context, 5) towards the commodification of transnational social welfare in the contemporary economy, and 6) money and social action. The main findings of the study were: the control of cultural theories while studying the economic issues, trends in the economic sociology in contemporary research. Besides, the American and British research schools use quite different theories and approaches, where, on the one hand, American economic sociologists derived their epistemological assumptions from an interpretive point of view, hence, the majority of their studies were qualitative and adopted systematic interpretive tools designed to decipher or interpret symbolic meanings in this field. On the other hand, British economic sociologists followed a holistic approach to study the economic phenomena, social classes, status groups, labour and professions. KEYWORDS culture, economic sociology, labour market capitalism, moralised markets, presumption, transnational social welfare
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References

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