ECONOMY

944 the tool kit of economic sociology
actors perceive their different interests. A religious interest, for example, can be
considerably stronger than an economic interest in certain situations and so can
a political or an erotic interest. The nature of the interest must not be assumed
before the analysis, but should be determined through research. While interests are
sometimes based in human nature, they are only acknowledged and negotiated in
society—in their social form—and it is this social form that must be established
empirically.
Interests can only be realized through social relations. While the role of social
relations in explaining economic phenomena is explicitly denied in early neoclassical
economics, and while it is increasingly acknowledged in today’s mainstream economics,
it has been at the core of economic sociology from the very beginning. Many
difficult problems no doubt arise for sociologists by taking this position, and one
way to approach these would be to make the assumption that interests drive actions,
while social relations give them their direction. Or to paraphrase Weber’s well-known
formulation:
Not social relations, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet
very frequently the social structures that have been created by social relations have, like
switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of
interest. (cf. Weber 1946, 280)
One example that can illustrate how the perspective of a sociological concept of
interest may be of help in analyzing problems at the intersection of politics and the
economy can be found in Weber’s theory of political capitalism (see in particular
Weber’s studies of antiquity in e.g. Weber 1976; cf.Love1991). In various writings
Weber contrasts what he terms rational capitalism to other forms of capitalism,
especially traditional capitalism and political capitalism. In traditional capitalism,
economic interests can only be realized through accepted and long-standing forms of
interaction (such as traditional work forms, non-dynamic competition, slow-moving
markets, and so on). In rational capitalism, economic interests are primarily realized
through impersonal markets, with the state in the background, guaranteeing the rules
of the market. Finally, in political capitalism profit is made through contacts in the
state or under the direct umbrella of the state’s intervention in another country, as in
classical imperialism. The result is a form of capitalism that is prone to corruption
and closely bound to the fortunes of the political power.
Another example of how actors typically need to take social relations into account
in order to realize their interests can be found in a classic in economic sociology,
Stewart Macaulay’s “Non-contractual relations in business” (1963). In a preliminary
study based on interviews with representatives for manufacturing firms in Wisconsin,
Macaulay found that businessmen often prefer not to go to court when a contract
has been broken. The reason for this is that going to court would once and for all
destroy the relationship between the two parties. Subsequent studies have confirmed
Macaulay’s findings, even if the decision not to go to court may not be as common as
Macaulay had found in 1963.