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Economy in Society: Economic Sociology Revisited
Author(s): Jacek Tittenbrun (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 8 Nov. 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 585 pages
- ISBN-10: 144383145X
- ISBN-13: 9781443831451
Book Description
This book offers an in-depth analysis of sociology, e.g. such classics as Weber, Parsons and Homans, and its adjacent social sciences with special reference to economics, including public choice theory, property rights theory, the Austrian school and others. This discussion submits many fresh observations; giving the theories under consideration their due, it at the same time exposes their flaws. In addition, the book contains a constructive programme of the research field in question, termed socio-economic structuralism, which involves many theoretical innovations, notions of ownership and class. This positive theory draws on, but is far from mimicking, achievements of the thinkers considered in the remaining parts of the book.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Jacek Tittenbrun’s painstaking work truly astounded me. I have nothing but deep admiration for this book. [For] many years, I have not come across . . . a work of equally encyclopaedic intent, and fully fulfilled at that. In our runaway world it would be difficult to find someone who, like Jacek Tittenbrun, would endeavour to thoroughly examine the entire knowledge, accumulated for many decades and by an extensive discipline. Indeed, Tittenbrun has created a compendium of all [that] sociologists have managed to say on the economy and a manual for everyone who would wish to deal with economic sociology and develop further models and approaches worked out by it. Thousands of scholars would be grateful to Jacek Tittenbrun for his labours. My praise is redundant since the book stands on its own owing to its merits: an enormous [amount] of knowledge accumulated in it, insight of its considerations, and meticulousness of its delivery.” – Zbigniew Bauman, University of Leeds “Jacek Tittenbrun is a sociologist with a keen interest in economic processes and a courage to go against the grain of the prevailing philosophy of science and ideology of public discourse. His methodological roots can be found in Max Weber. In his book, [the] reader gets a crash course in Max Weber, Parsons, Smelser [and] Homans, and has to decide between sugar daddy and nanny state or between the invisible hand and the public interest. My personal prize goes to the Gary Becker and shareholder/stakeholder chapters, though more fashion-conscious readers will probably focus on property rights and a critical assessment of a theory of open access property. The author does not hesitate to criticize his masters, past economic sociologists, even if they are as influential as Bourdieu or Becker or as monumental as Weber or Marx. His critique, however, is not meant to mask his piggy-backing on them. He wants to interest a non-specialist reader (students or general educated public). In my library, Jacek Tittenbrun’s book will stand next to Sheldon Wolin’s, Theda Skocpol’s and Luc Boltanski’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if it became an academic best-seller in business schools, where it would offer . . . welcome nourishment after a dull diet of the mainstream US handbooks on market economy and business enterprise.” – Prof. Dr. S. J. Magala, Erasmus University of Rotterdam
About the Author
Jacek Tittenbrun is Professor of Sociology at the University of Poznan. Among his numerous publications are The Collapse of ‘Real Socialism’ in Poland (1993) and Public vs. Private Ownership: In Search of the Rationale of Privatisation (1996).
