Economic sociology in Japan

Economic sociology is an established field in the Western tradition of sociology. Departing from the instrumental rationality of neoclassical economics (Weber 1968), it has made a breakthrough with its foundational conception that economic action of individuals constructs social structures and these social structures heavily influence decision- making of individuals as the economic transactions are embedded in society. Since the rather sensational emergence of economic sociology in Western academia in the late twentieth century, it has been legitimized as a subsection of the American Sociological Association and has evolved into a loosely integrated discipline with its rapid global expansion. Attracting disciplinary variations and complexities of approach, it has been much discussed in American and European academia ever since, with flagship concepts such as norms of informal groups and organizational dynamics (Homans 1950), relational structures of networks (White, Boorman, and Breiger 1976; Burt 1992), Japan has its own local, original version that has evolved historically since the early twentieth century, if not earlier, and is not widely known outside the country, in part due to the fact that findings and results have been published mainly in Japanese. (...)