Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness Author(s): Mark Granovetter Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (Nov., 1985), pp. 481-510 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780199 . Accessed: 18/10/2013 11:39
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Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness'
Mark Granovetter State University of New York at Stony Brook

How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclassical accounts provide an "undersocialized" or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized"way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under- and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must