Work and economy in a neo-institutionalist sociological perspective. Reflections on 100 issues of the journal Sociology of Work

Abstract

The market – as an ideal type – is a social institution that governs anonymous action contexts for the exchange of goods, which are more or less homogeneous, countable and quantifiable, whose value is determined by the labor time it takes to manufacture them. Historically, this social institution of the market, and of work as a central channel of social participation, developed late – for example compared to the institution of the family or the profession – and maintained a marginal weight in the social life of the people. human beings until the rise of modern capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until then, the market was important for merchants and sporadically for farmers or artisans. With regard to economic and work life, older than the market is the social institution of the social network, primarily and traditionally in the form of the extended family and, today, also in the form of secondary social networks. The text briefly outlines the five structural social institutions of the organizational fields of economy and labor.