How behaviour and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclasical accounts provide an “undersocialized” or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the “oversocialized” way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under- and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. The argument in illustrated by a critique of Oliver Williamson’s “markets and hierarchies” research program.

Granovetter conveys to French readers of some of his 1973-1990 essays what they all have in common, and how his thought evolved over this period. He relates how early social network analysts rebelled against Parsons’ neglect of individuals and social networks by devaluing the importance of culture and norms, and how their later work tried to restore the proper balance. Comparing economic sociology in the French and Anglo-Saxon traditions, he concludes that while the former is often considered more attuned to power and institutions, the differences are smaller than has typically been imagined. While some adherents of the “New Economic Sociology” may have excessively privileged the causal role of social networks, he argues that his own work and the main thrust of this movement have always identified networks as a proximate and intervening cause that links the behavior of individuals to the development and operation of social institutions.

Jens Beckert is a central fi gure among the second generation of economic sociologists who emerged following the discipline’s revival in the 80’s and the pioneering work of Mark Granovetter, Harrison White, Paul DiMaggio, Viviana Zelizer, Frank Dobbin, Richard Swedberg, and Neil Fligstein. Over the last 20 years his work has greatly contributed to the institutionalization of economic sociology in Europe. Since 2005 Beckert has been the director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), one of the leading research institutes for economic sociology and political economy. Beckert is currently one of the central theorists working in economic sociology. Social theory is concerned with three main questions: What is action? What is social order? What determines social change (Joas and Knöbl 2009: 18)? Beckert has been investigating these questions with reference to the economy. He has written extensively on the concept of economic action (Beckert 2003; Beckert 2013b; Beckert 2016; Joas and Beckert 2001), the problem of economic order (Beckert 1996b; Beckert 2009; Beckert 2016), and economic change (Beckert 2010a; Beckert 2010b; Beckert 2016). What characterizes his theoretical work is that it starts out from the fundamental theoretical problem in economic sociology: Why should sociologists study the economy when a discipline called economics already exists (Beckert 1996a; Beckert 1996b)? An introduction to his work can be done by looking at four articles that should be considered his programmatic statements (Beckert 1996b; Beckert 2009; Beckert 2013a; Beckert 2013b). In “What is sociological about economic sociology? Uncertainty and the embeddedness of economic action” (Beckert

Introduction Foundations of Economic Sociology * The Economy as an Instituted Process Karl Polanyi * Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness Mark Granovetter * Max Webers Vision of Economic Sociology Richard Swedberg * Forms of Capital Pierre Bourdieu * Embeddedness and Immigration: Notes on the Social Determinants of Economic Action Alejandro Portes and Julia Sensenbrenner The Sociology of Markets * The Bazaar Economy Clifford Geertz * Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in 19th Century America Viviana Zelizer * Economic and Sociological Approaches to Gender Inequality in Pay William Bridges and Robert Nelson * Non-Contractural relations in Business Stewart Macaulay * Social Structure and Competition: The Paradox of Embeddedness Brian Uzzi The Sociology of Firms and Markets * Group Dynamics and Intergroup Relations George Strauss * Men Who Manage Melville Dalton * Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production Arthur Stinchcombe * Processing Fads and Fashions Paul Hirsch * Functional and Historical Logics in Explaining the Rise of the American Industrial Corporation William Roy * Coase Revisited: Business Groups in the Modern Economy Mark Granovetter * Inside-Out: Regional Networks and Industrial Adaptation in Silicon Valley and Route 128 AnnaLee Saxenian Comparative and Historical Economic Sociology * Webers Last Theory of Capitalism Randall Collins * Why the Economy Reflects the Polity: Early Rail Policy in Britain, France, and the United States Frank Dobbin * Goodwill and the Spirit of Market Capitalism Ronald Dore * Market, Culture and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East Gary Hamilton and Nicole Biggart * Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism David Stark About the Book and the Editors

The failure of several policy-makers around the world to reproduce the Silicon Valley cluster reveals the misunderstanding of the innovative dynamic in Silicon Valley. This study uses complex network theory to analyse the complex innovative capability of Silicon Valley and to understand the heterogeneity of agents and the multiplexity of ties that support the creation and development of high-tech start-ups. Silicon Valley is a complex network, whose nodes are companies and whose links represent the various economic and financial ties connecting them. In a systemic perspective, the presence of a specific agent in a network induces specific interactions with other agents that could not take place if this agent were not there. Thus, the diversity of agents influences the dynamics of the system. The presence of venture capital firms in an innovative cluster opens potential specific interactions with other agents in the network (universities, large companies, laboratories) that determine a particular dynamic of innovation. What is distinctive about Silicon Valley is its complete and robust complex system of innovation supported by social networks of interdependent economic agents in which the VC firms have a specific function. Our perspective examines five different contributions of VC firms to Silicon Valley: financing, selection, collective learning, embedding and signalling.

Little is known about how consumers of direct-to-consumer personal genetic services share personal genetic risk information. In an age of ubiquitous online networking and rapid development of social networking tools, understanding how consumers share personal genetic risk assessments is critical in the development of appropriate and effective policies. This exploratory study investigates how consumers share personal genetic information and attitudes towards social networking behaviors. Methods: Adult participants aged 23 to 72 years old who purchased direct-to-consumer genetic testing from a personal genomics company were administered a web-based survey regarding their sharing activities and social networking behaviors related to their personal genetic test results. Results: 80 participants completed the survey; of those, 45% shared results on Facebook and 50.9% reported meeting or reconnecting with more than 10 other individuals through the sharing of their personal genetic information. For help interpreting test results, 70.4% turned to Internet websites and online sources, compared to 22.7% who consulted their healthcare providers. Amongst participants, 51.8% reported that they believe the privacy of their personal genetic information would be breached in the future. Conclusion: Consumers actively utilize online social networking tools to help them share and interpret their personal genetic information. These findings suggest a need for careful consideration of policy recommendations in light of the current ambiguity of regulation and oversight of consumer initiated sharing activities.

This paper is a comment on Capitalist Entrepreneurship: Making Profit Through the Unmaking of Economic Orders by Thorbjorn Knudsen and Richard Swedberg which can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2209371.

Analysis of social networks is suggested as a tool for linking micro and macro levels of sociological theory. The procedure is illustrated by elaboration of the macro implications of one aspect of small-scale interaction: the strength of dyadic ties. It is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another. The impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored. Stress is laid on the cohesive power of weak ties. Most network models deal, implicitly, with strong ties, thus confining their applicability to small, well-defined groups. Emphasis on weak ties lends itself to discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups.