International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology

The analysis of the economy has been a core concern of sociological scholarship ever since the institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline. For ‘classical’ sociologists like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Vilfredo Pareto and others, the understanding of the economy, its social and political constitution, and its effects on society were main areas of their scholarship. Many of their writings stand close to the institutionalist traditions in economics