Beyond the Market launches a sociological investigation into economic efficiency. Prevailing economic theory, which explains efficiency using formalized rational choice models, often simplifies human behavior to the point of distortion. Jens Beckert finds such theory to be particularly weak in explaining such crucial forms of economic behavior as cooperation, innovation, and action under conditions of uncertainty--phenomena he identifies as the proper starting point for a sociology of economic action. Beckert levels an enlightened critique at neoclassical economics, arguing that understanding efficiency requires looking well beyond the market to the social, cultural, political, and cognitive factors that influence the coordination of economic action. Beckert searches social theory for the components of an alternative theory of action, one that accounts for the social embedding of economic behavior. In Durkheim and Parsons he finds especially useful approaches to cooperation; in Luhmann, a way to understand how people act under highly contingent conditions; and in Giddens, an understanding of creative action and innovation. Together, these provide building blocks for a research program that will yield a theoretically sophisticated understanding of how economic processes are coordinated and the ways that markets are embedded in social, cultural, and cognitive structures. Containing one of the most fully informed critiques of the neoclassical analysis of economic efficiency--as well as one of the most thoughtful blueprints for economic sociology--this book reclaims for sociology the study of one of the most important arenas of human action.

PREFACE viiINTRODUCTION 1PART ONE: CRITIQUE 5ONE: The Limits of the Rational-Actor Model as a Microfoundation of Economic Efficiency 7Cooperation 18Uncertainty 36Innovation 50PART TWO: CONCEPTS 67TWO: Émile Durkheim: The Economyas Moral Order 69Sociology as the Science of Morality 74Durkheim's Critique of Economics 76Economic Institutions as Moral Facts 81Anomie and Forced Division of Labor 114Stabilizing Economic Relations with Professional Groups 119Cooperation and Morality 122Appendix: Systematizing the View of the Economy in Sociological Theory: Durkheim through Weber to Parsons 125THREE: Talcott Parsons: The Economyas a Subsystem of Society 133Economic and Sociological Theory in Parsons's Early Work 135The Economy as the Adaptive Subsystem of Society 149The Boundary Proceses of the Economy 156The Institutional Establishment of Economic Rationality 192Cooperation and Interpenetration 197FOUR: Niklas Luhmann: The Economyas a Autopoietic System 201The Self-Referentiality of the Economy 207The Reentry of the Excluded Third Party 216System and Action 233FIVE: Anthony Giddens: Actor and Structure in Economic Action 241Interpretation and Structuration of Economic Action ???Cooperation and Reflextivity 259Innovation and Creativity 269PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS 283SIX: Perspectives for Economic Sociology 285NOTES 297BIBLIOGRAPHY 327INDEX 347