Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online

Extract

Economics as a modern discipline focuses primarily on systems of money-coordinated exchange and wage-based production. Since the early twentieth century it has been dominated by the use of mathematical models and quantitative data to explore markets, i.e., the aggregate outcomes of individual actors' decisions to buy and sell various commodities.It is probably the most influential of the social sciences, and throughout its history it has always been closely connected to national and international policy. From the 1940s onwards its influence seems to have been bound up with its quantitative nature, something that helps it integrate with government and business organizations and claim discursive legitimacy as a science. Its involvement in policymaking and implementation has become increasingly international during the era of neoliberalism and globalization.Its relationship to sociology has been quite unstable. A number of social theorists have attempted to integrate the two disciplines, either by positioning economics within a wider social systems framework, or by promoting market analysis and rational choice as the central paradigm for all social science. In general, however, sociologists have found the market-dominated focus and methodological individualism of economics to be far too narrow a basis for adequately explaining most social phenomena.Economics mainly analyzes the material ... log in or subscribe to read full text