Society, production and work

The article outlines an economic sociology approach for understanding the interrelationships between society, production and work. The first section gives an overview over markets, labor markets, organizations, networks and the state as key institutions governing production and work in modern society. Modern society is being identified as a dynamic system based on disembedded markets. The second section turns to the perspectives of individual collective actors, asking for the orientations and motives relevant for participation in production and work. Referring to recent debates in economic sociology, the article emphasizes the importance of fictional future scenarios and of the individual quest for social advance via market innovation for capitalist dynamics. Should the feedback between social structures and individual motives be successful, this will make the economy grow, as the third, concluding section argues. However, successful feedback is everything else but guaranteed.