Contemporary Economic Sociology: Globalization, Production, Inequality

by Tonkiss; Fran

• ISBN13: 9780415300940
• ISBN10: 0415300940
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-05-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This text examines critical and contemporary issues in the sociology of economic life. Bringing together a range of theoretical perspectives, it examines major shifts in the organization of economy and society--from the politics of globalization to the cultural economy, social exclusion and the "end" of class. The book is organized around three core themes: globalization, work and inequality. Key changes in each of these domains raise new challenges for analyzing social and economic relations, power, agency and identity. This book examines how these issues are being re-shaped in contemporary societies, and explores competing frameworks for understanding such changes. Drawing on arguments from economic sociology, politics and political economy, the text focuses on both conceptual approaches to the social study of the economy, and trans-national processes of social and economic restructuring. The arguments provide a critical overview of current concerns for economic sociology, and extend the boundariesof the discipline to a new set of questions.

Author Biography

Fran Tonkiss is Lecturer in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. vii
Economic globalisation	p. 1
Capitalism and globalisation	p. 3
Economic globalisation	p. 4
The capitalist world economy	p. 9
The 'new imperialism': accumulation by dispossession	p. 16
Globalisation as the new imperialism?	p. 24
A new global economy?	p. 29
The globalisation 'myth'	p. 30
Modes of global integration	p. 38
The economy of signs, flows and networks	p. 39
Global 'scapes'	p. 41
The network economy: Castells	p. 43
The politics of economic globalisation: governance and resistance	p. 54
Globalisation and the question of governance	p. 55
The 'crisis' of the nation state	p. 56
International economic governance	p. 61
Civil society and economic governance	p. 71
Anti-globalisation movements	p. 78
Production	p. 85
Fordism and after	p. 87
Fordism	p. 88
The crisis of Fordism	p. 93
After Fordism	p. 95
Post-Fordist problems	p. 101
Knowledge, information, signs	p. 105
Post-industrial society: the economic role of knowledge	p. 106
Information society	p. 110
The 'economy of signs'	p. 112
From non-material products to 'nothings'	p. 119
Culture and economy	p. 121
Summary of key changes	p. 124
Social identities and economic divisions	p. 127
Class	p. 129
Neo-Marxist accounts	p. 130
Weberian analysis: market position and status	p. 133
Changing formations of class and work	p. 141
Class in a global context	p. 150
Inequality	p. 157
Inequality 'after' class	p. 158
Structures of inequality	p. 163
Global inequalities	p. 165
Poverty, inequality, insecurity: challenges for human development	p. 169
Bibliography	p. 174
Index	p. 191
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