FREE and OPEN to everyone!
Day 1: 1175 Grainger Hall @ 8:00 AM
Day 2: 8417 Sewell Social Science @ 8:00 AM
Wisconsin School of Economic Sociology (WSES) is excited to convene its second meeting with the generous support of the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR)
In its prime, economic sociology was premised on the moral and communal contours of economic life, with research centered on questions of embeddedness, relational work, and performativity. But in recent years, the limits of these perspectives have become apparent. As previous agendas grow stale, the field is increasingly rudderless. There is no consensus as to what questions, if any, it seeks to answer. Worse yet, it is politically impotent — effectively divorced from policymaking and lacking any real capacity to transform the world. This does not bode well if the world in question happens to be on fire.
Yet there may be reason for cautious optimism. As global leaders sound the death knell of neoliberalism, so too have scholars begun re-engaging the macrosociological. In response to decades of tax evasion and capital flight, they are exploring central banking and democratic finance. In response to the climate crisis, they are grappling with questions of state power and green planning. And in response to technological transformations, they are interrogating platform capitalism and digital currency.
What is now urgently needed is an agenda capable of weaving together these threads. The WSES 2025 Meeting contributes to this goal by drawing together a variety of presentations under a new theoretical framework. Our contention is that economic sociology’s perennial topics — markets, money, law, firms, states, and the like — must be conceptualized not as sites of cultural exchange but as a matrix of institutions and protocols. Drawing on the best of economic sociology, political economy, and institutionalisms old and new, we are interested in mapping the “rules of the game.” Because it is only by attending closely to these rules that we might begin to ponder how to change them.
Learn more about the event at WSES 2025