Socio‐Economics Revisited
In: Sociological inquiry: the quarterly journal of the International Sociology Honor Society, Band 61, Heft 1, S. 68-73
ISSN: 1475-682X
Parsons' Marshall Lectures were an important and still are a relevant contribution to the critique of the utilitarian, rationalist, radically individualist paradigm which still dominates scholarship, especially economics, today. Parsons advised economists to stop ignoring the broader societal context of which the economy is only a sub‐system; economic actors are not impersonal, fully independent individuals but should be viewed as people with internalized moral and social values, values which cannot be accounted for as mere external, environmental constraints. Parsons, however, paid little attention to the role of power in the market. Socio‐economics incorporates issues addressed in the Marshall Lectures, treats the leverage of interventionist power (large corporations and labor unions) as significant, and seeks to grow as a coherent alternative to the neoclassical paradigm.