Release:
2026. Vol. 12.. № 2 (46)About the authors:
Elena V. Andrianova, Cand. Sci. (Soc.), Associate Professor, Head of the Department of General and Economic Sociology, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia; Senior Researcher at the West Siberian Branch of the Federal Research Sociological Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Tyumen, Russia; e.v.andrianova@utmn.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7769-9206, WoS ResearcherID: R-3798-2017, Scopus Author ID: 57202746090, RSCI: 612791Abstract:
In the second part of the critical review of the Handbook of Economic Sociology, edited by Milan Zafirovski, fifteen concluding essays are examined following the analytical logic of the first part. The commitment to the most precise possible transmission of the meaning of the authors’ texts in a concise and compact format of a “residual essence” is preserved, along with continued attempts to rethink the “discoveries and rediscoveries anew in economic sociology and economics” (p. 3), taking into account the specific features of the methodological approaches employed, retrospective principles, and reflexive positions. An analysis is conducted of the essays in the Handbook of Economic Sociology of the Twenty-First Century concerning the meanings of texts and semantic units of moral economy, the economics of conventions (the foundational component of the new French economic sociology), fiscal sociology, the sociology of financial markets, the sociology of monetary policy and central banking, the sociology of consumption, leisure, and lifestyle, the sociology of sustainable development, social capital and its types, various markets and social networks, network structures of interdependencies identified by Harrison White as “identities and control,” “uncertainty in sociology,” and the “future in economics,” each of which is presented by its creators as an outstanding direction of economic sociology, with motivations for the continuation of scholarly inquiry. Each of the analyzed essays presents thematic perspectives of the reviewed handbook that deserve close attention from readers, which, according to the intentions of their authors, constitute narratives that expand and deepen the intersecting research areas of economics and sociology. Summarizing overall, among some of the provocative conclusions of the analysis of the handbook edited by Milan Zafirovski, a troubling question arises: was Pierre Bourdieu actually correct in setting himself the goal of expelling the model of homo economicus from economic sociology, identifying it as an “anthropological monster” of economics? In conclusion, as authors of the second part of the critical analysis, we also emphasize that the review proceeded from our own scholarly interests and value preferences, and we substantiated reinterpretations of those theories and approaches that are closest to us. At the same time, it is necessary to stress that, without exception, all authors of the essays in the handbook edited by Milan Zafirovski wrote them on a realistic empirical foundation and have all made a significant scholarly contribution to contemporary social science—economic sociology and social economics.Keywords:
References:
Barsukova, S.Y. (2004). Informal economy: an economic and sociological analysis. Moscow. Publishing House of the Higher School of Economics. 446 p. [In Russian]
Barsukova, S.Y. (2017). Essays on the informal economy, or 16 shades of Grey. 2nd ed. Moscow. Publishing House of the Higher School of Economics. 221 p. [In Russian]
Barsukova, S.Y. (2021). Lectures on the informal economy: briefly, clearly, visually. Moscow. Publishing House of the Higher School of Economics. 221 p. [In Russian]
Barsukova, S.Y., Radaev, V.V. (2012). Informal economy in Russia: a brief overview. Economic Sociology. 13(2), 99–111. [In Russian]
Chayanov, A.V. (1989). Peasant farming: Selected works. In L. I. Abalkin et al. (Eds). M.: Economics. 492 p. [In Russian]
Bourdieu, P. (2005). Principles of an Economic Anthropology. In Smelser N. & Swedberg R. (Eds.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology (pp. 75–89). Princeton University Press.
Carrier, J. G. (Ed.). (2022). A handbook of economic anthropology. Edward Elgar Publishing. 560 p.
Fleming, P. (2017). The death of homo economicus: work, debt and the myth of endless accumulation. Pluto Press. 224 p.
Fourcade, M., Healy, K. (2024). The Ordinal Society. Harvard University Press. 384 p.
Hochschild, A. (2003). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, With a New Afterword. 2nd ed. University of California Press. 330 p.
Mahieu, F. R. (2023). A new economic anthropology. Routledge. 118 p. DOI: 10.4324/
9781003386742
Pevehouse, J.C.W., Seabrooke, L. (Ed.). (2025). The Oxford handbook of international political economy. Oxford University Press. 880 p. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198793519.001.0001
Polanyi, K. (2001). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon Press. 360 p.
Róna, P., Zsolnai, L. (Eds.). (2019). Economic Objects and the Objects of Economics. Springer. 339 p.
Scott, J. (1977). The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. Yale University Press. 254 p.
Thaler, R. (2015). Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. Norton & Company. 432 p.
Thompson, E. (1971). The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century. Past & Present, 50(1), 76–136.
Zafirovski, M. (Ed.). (2024). The Routledge international handbook of economic sociology. Routledge. 632 p.
