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In recent years, sociologists have noted the increasing centrality of credit for determining life chances in our society, but they have not given adequate attention to the credit market as a key site where individuals assert claims over economic resources. This article explores distinctive features of the credit transaction that differentiate claims making in the credit market from more familiar forms of claims making in the labor market. Rather than the quid pro quo exchange between formal equals that characterizes thewage relation, the extension of credit creates an obligation that marks the debtor as inferior to the creditor. The hierarchical and asymmetrical nature of the loan contract appears to erode the possibility for effective political demands in this arena. However, this article demonstrates that to the extent the status of “ownership” is institutionalized in the credit transaction, borrowers may be able to overcome some of the disadvantages associated with occupying the weaker position in an unequal relationship of exchange.

In recent years, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have turned their attention to how the rise of digital technologies is reshaping political life in contemporary society. Here, we analyze this issue by distinguishing between two classification technologies typical of pre-digital and digital eras that differently constitute the relationship between individuals and groups. In class-based systems, characteristic of the pre-digital era, one’s status as an individual is gained through membership in a group in which salient social identities are shared in common with other group members. In attribute-based systems, characteristic of the digital era, one’s status as an individual is determined by virtue of possession of a set of attributes that need not be shared with others. We argue that differences between these two types of classification technologies have important implications for how persons attach (or fail to attach) to groups, and therefore what kinds of political mobilization are possible. We illustrate this argument by examining contention over the use of gender as a variable in the pricing of risk in insurance and credit – two markets in which individuals directly encounter class-based and attribute-based systems of classification, respectively.

In this review, we explore how the concept of embeddedness has shaped—and been shaped by—the evolution of the subfield of economic sociology. Although embeddedness is often taken as a conceptual umbrella for a single, if eclectic, approach to the sociological study of the economy, we argue that in fact the concept references two distinct intellectual projects. One project, following from Granovetter's (1985) well-known programmatic statement, attempts to discern the relational bases of social action in economic contexts. Another project, drawing from Polanyi's [1944 (2001), 1957, 1977] social theory, concerns the integration of the economy into broader social systems. Critically, these two formulations of embeddedness involve different views of the relationship between the economic and the social. The implication is that the obstacles to theoretical integration in economic sociology, while not insurmountable, are greater than is typically acknowledged.

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve's shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policymaking. I argue that the evolution of US monetary policy represents a specific instance of what I term the \"neoliberal dilemma.\" In the context of generally deteriorating economic conditions, policymakers are anxious to escape responsibility for economic outcomes, and yet markets require regulation to function in capitalist economies (Polanyi 2001). How policymakers negotiate these contradictory imperatives involves a continual process of institutional innovation in which functions are transferred to markets, but under the close control of the state. Thus, under transparency, Federal Reserve officials discovered innovations in the policy process that enabled \"markets to do the Fed's work for it.\" These innovations enlisted market mechanisms, but did not represent a retreat from the state's active role in managing the economy.

Critiques the notion of 'embeddedness' as a paradigm for economic sociology, suggesting that while the concept proved useful during the subfield's productive first decade and a half, it may now be appropriate to explore the implications of the way the concept has been developed and deployed within economic sociology. Suggests that the concept of embeddedness has contributed to the lack of an adequate theorization of the market in economic sociology. As long as the market is not fully appropriated as a social object, there will be a tension between marketless conceptions of the social and conceptions of economy in which every social trace is suppressed. In either case, economic sociology will find itself in the paradoxical position of propping up the asocial market model of neoclassical economics. Where such paradoxes abound, rethinking the central premises of the discipline becomes an arduous and pressing task. (Quotes from original text)

In recent years, sociologists have noted the increasing centrality of credit for determining life chances in our society, but they have not given adequate attention to the credit market as a key site where individuals assert claims over economic resources. This article explores distinctive features of the credit transaction that differentiate claims making in the credit market from more familiar forms of claims making in the labor market. Rather than the quid pro quo exchange between formal equals that characterizes the wage relation, the extension of credit creates an obligation that marks the debtor as inferior to the creditor. The hierarchical and asymmetrical nature of the loan contract appears to erode the possibility for effective political demands in this arena. However, this article demonstrates that to the extent the status of “ownership” is institutionalized in the credit transaction, borrowers may be able to overcome some of the disadvantages associated with occupying the weaker position in an unequal relationship of exchange.

Accounts of late-twentieth-century capitalist restructuring have emphasized the decline of “permanent” work contracts and the growth of more “flexible” ways of employing labor. Most of these accounts have argued that, under conditions of global competition, firms seek to reduce the cost of wages and benefits by hiring more temporary workers. Such accounts assume permanent labor contracts to be a norm that is violated only when economic systems come under pressure. This essay adopts a different perspective, suggesting that, in fact, permanent labor contracts have been normative only in certain historical situations (such as the twentieth century United States). In a global and trans-historical context, these contracts have been introduced under specific conditions to solve particular kinds of problems. Thus, this study attempts to shift the question from “why is permanent work declining?” to “where and why do permanent work contracts emerge?”