Ecologizing economic sociology

Leon Wansleben
Economic activities force earth systems to undergo dramatic changes, while some ecosystems collapse. In consequence, conditions for economic activities change, sometimes rapidly and sometimes in slow motion. Under these circumstances, economic sociologists can no longer afford to study selected markets and firms as if they existed in some immaterial social space rather than on planet earth. Ecologizing economic sociology is thus not some niche project occupying the small area at the intersecting circles of economic and environmental sociology, but means going to the heart of economic sociology itself in order to rethink its defining categories and concepts. I am happy that the contributors to this issue have agreed to take up the challenge.

Interview with Jens Beckert and Neil Fligstein
In the tradition of new economic sociology, how have the topics of climate change or other environmental issues been taken up?
NEIL. Generally, economic sociologists haven’t been that engaged with this issue. [...] But what’s happened is that the climate crisis is becoming more and more central in societies and politics. [...] Economic sociologists have increasingly started to turn towards ecological issues, particularly climate change. We have a lot of tools for that, both from the political economy side and from the markets side.
JENS. [...] Like Neil, I would say that the tools developed in economic sociology can be usefully applied to the topic of climate change and environmental issues. [...] The tradition of economic sociology offers interesting insights that can be fruitfully applied to issues of climate change.

Ute Tellmann
The destruction of existing modes of exchange and production in many places is a likely outlook for a world that is unable to deal adequately with its dependency on a “critical zone” of livability (Latour and Weibel 2020). In the Anthropocene, food and water security will probably be more difficult to achieve; social and political protection against loss through floods, heatwaves, and hurricanes will be more costly; and the provisioning of goods, services, and public health will become more demanding (Elliot 2021; Thomas, Williams, and Zalasiewicz 2020, 12). Given the rapidness with which the tipping points of the earth system seem to be reached, a considerable reinvention of economies appears to be imminent in the near future.

Caleb Scoville
Suddenly it appears that the natural environment is at the front of sociologists’ minds.¹ It’s an exciting moment, but it’s also a bit awkward. Environmental sociologists, alongside other environmental social scientists in adjacent disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, have been working on ecological crises and environmental inequalities for decades, but they have largely been relegated to the margins of sociology. How should economic sociologists navigate this complex intellectual landscape, in light of their track record of having little to say about nature, environmental issues, or climate change?

Annika Rieger
Ecological issues are often seen as only one of the many “problems” societies face today, even though they go deep and affect everything – from physical disruption and displacement to perhaps more subtle long-term changes in temperature, flora, and fauna that alter the face of the planet and the norms of everyday life. As a result of this view, the study of the environment has been siloed into the realm of “environmental sciences” with a few “environmental fill-in-the-social-science-blank” subfields scattered about. This is not to say that only “environmental” problems are important, but that across all disciplines and subfields, greater attention needs to be paid to these issues – especially to the ways in which environmental problems intersect with other social problems, including those of race, gender, and class.

Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston · 2024
The Political Development of American Debt Relief
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Reviewer: Charlotte Cavaillé

Cornelia Woll · 2023
Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Politics of Negotiated Justice in Global Markets
Princeton: Princeton University Press
Reviewer: Arjan Reurink

Liliana Doganova · 2024
Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology
New York: Zone Books
Reviewers: Zachary Huxley and Marion Brivot

Éric Pineault · 2023
A Social Ecology of Capital
London: Pluto Press
Reviewer: Leon Wansleben