Crisis of capitalism? Economic crisis? Crisis of economic sociology?

Mariana Heredia
What new can be said about crisis? What can be added that does not resonate, at least in most of the West, to a litany that has been documenting and warning, for almost five decades, about the worsening social inequalities and the monetary and financial collapses that are multiplying and spreading? It is not that there has been a lack of analysis of the crises so far. Alongside a literature attentive to environmental degradation and the difficulties of advancing prudential agreements and legislation, the events of 2008-2009 attracted particular attention from the social sciences and most particularly from economic sociology.

Simone Polillo
Events, ruptures, critical junctures: these have become critical concepts in sociology. Yet, they have not enabled current models to grasp the complexity of capitalist crises, in their dual nature as unique occurrences and intrinsic characteristics of capitalist economies. Studies of political crises, where these concepts have been developed most fully, make political conflict, semiotics, and cultural change central to understanding the contingencies and emergent properties of crises and their fragile connection to the underlying reality they represent.

Megan Tobias Neely
Hedge funds have a track record of profiting on stock market crashes and sociopolitical crises. In 2008, hedge fund managers made billions betting that the US housing bubble would burst (Lewis 2011). Despite the fact that hedge funds contributed to bringing about the crisis (Lysandrou 2011) and profited from it, investors entrusted even more money to them, in response to the US government interventions in the failing investment banks (IMF 2014). [...] How did these private financial firms come to control so much power and might in the United States?

Rogrigo Cantu
Fiscal crises are a central theme in the recent history of many emerging economies, as they are more vulnerable to budget distress than developed countries. From 1970 to 2015, emerging markets experienced more than twice as many fiscal crises as their wealthier counterparts (Gerling et al. 2017, 13). Of the scholarship dedicated to understanding this theme, mainstream economics has made commendable efforts. [...] Sociology can offer fresh and more comprehensive perspectives on fiscal crises. What are their causes and consequences, not just from an economic standpoint but also from a sociopolitical one?

Ia Eradze
The US dollar has been an integral part of everyday life and political-economic order in Georgia for more than three decades. Thinking and planning in two currencies – the Georgian lari and the dollar – is common not only for local companies and the government but also for households. The dollar hegemony in Georgia is manifested in its high share in the currency composition of loans (45%) and deposits (51%), as well as in prices. From real estate companies to private tutors, prices are set and payments are made in US dollar, even though the only legal tender is the national currency, the lari.

María Soledad Sánchez
Argentina began 2024 with the odd privilege of becoming the country with the highest inflation in the world. Although inflation has once again become a first-order global issue due to the impact on the prices of basic goods of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Argentinian inflation rates were well above the global and even regional average for the period (IMF 2023). [...] Digital investments in cryptocurrencies and financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, and novel digital accounts linked to money market funds started to be part of the financial repertoires of many Argentines, making the ways to cope with inflation more complex.

Richard Swedberg, one of the founders and the first editor of what is now economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, is stepping down from the editorial board, the first of the original editorial board members to do so in the publication’s 25-year history.

Philipp Staab · 2024
Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism.
Manchester: Manchester University Press
Reviewer: Dieter Plehwe

Ya-Wen Lei · 2023
The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China.
Princeton: Princeton University Press
Reviewer: Timur Ergen

Matthias Thiemann · 2024
Taming the Cycles of Finance? Central Banks and the Macroprudential Shift in Financial Regulation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Reviewer: Zsófia Barta

Brett Christophers · 2024
The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.
London/New York: Verso
Reviewer: Max Willems