Analysing economic phenomena from a sociological perspective poses a number of transdisciplinary challenges which are both highly topical and relevant. This means that the complementary research fields of economic sociology and political economics are among the most dynamic areas of the social sciences in both theoretical and empirical terms.
Economic sociology offers analytical perspectives on the logic of economic activity and the way it is embedded into social structures, which are arranged in a continuum of market relations, networks, organisational hierarchies and other coordinating bodies. Research papers from this field therefore deal with a vast array of subjects, ranging from entrepreneurship, innovation and organisation in the workplace to monetary economics and financial markets.
Political economics complements and supplements economic sociology’s focus on action by taking institutional interaction between economic and political systems into consideration and by treating the state’s involvement in the organisation of economic processes as particularly significant. In this respect, the issue of variations in capitalist market economies in the context of globalisation assumes a central role.
The series of publications entitled “Wirtschaftssoziologie und Politische Ökonomie” (Economic Sociology and Political Economics) therefore provides a forum for theoretical and empirical works from these research areas with no thematic restrictions.