How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does That Mean?

Abstract

My paper proposes the concept of relational work to explain economic activity. In all economic action, I argue, people engage in the process of differentiating meaningful social relations. For each distinct category of social relations, people erect a boundary, mark the boundary by means of names and practices, establish a set of distinctive understandings that operate within that boundary, designate certain sorts of economic transactions as appropriate for the relation, bar other transactions as inappropriate, and adopt certain media for reckoning and facilitating economic transactions within the relation. I call that process relational work. After identifying specific elements of a relational work approach, the paper focuses on the case of monetary differentiation. It compares a relational work theory of earmarking money with behavioral economics’ individually based mental accounting approach.

Linking Group Theory to Social Science Game Theory: Interaction Grammars, Group Subcultures and Games for Comparative Analysis

“…21 Of course, some interactions approach the pure or ideal ritual or symbolic; others approach the pure strategic. In addition, of course, as Goffman (1959Goffman ( , 1969 and also Zelizer (2012) stress, people are capable of combining ritual and strategic modalities (in some cases, possibly having to "work hard" at it or drawing on rich culturally established traditions to produce complex patterns).…”

“…Also, actors attend to the production of a "self", an "image", a "self-presentation", or a group, community, or national "identity" (Goffman 1959). For instance, actors work at producing or realizing the symbols and properties of gender (Zelizer 2012) as well as the production or realization of a particular body form, male or female, in many instances, as "attractive" as possible-with aesthetic goals in the interaction situation.…”

“…-Earlier (Burns andRoszkowska 2005, 2006), we modeled how the norms of asymmetrical relationships, such as status relationships based on gender, education, ethnicity, professional association (including military, hospital and educational systems), indicate appropriate and equilibrium interaction behavior and outcomes, namely asymmetrical ones. Zelizer (2012) speaks in terms of the actors "conducting relational work" in order to select or produce interactions and outcomes that are compatible with the relationship-they try to find and reproduce patterns that confirm their sense of what the relationship is all about and try to maintain these patterns or practices. In general, actors try to match their interactions, for instance, economic transactions, with the "meaning of the particular relation".…”

Transactional and Relational Exchange in Supply Chains: Constitutive Elements and Main Factors

“…Мы предлагаем обратиться к процессному подходу к анализу социаль ной структуры, в соответствии с которым «в краткосрочной перспективе акторы со здают отношения, в то время как в долго срочной перспективе отношения создают акторов» [Padgett, Powell, 2012, p. 2]. В ста тье будет проанализировано, как участни ки рынка формируют отношения именно в краткосрочной перспективе, делая свой выбор между стратегиями укоренения или разукоренения [Heidenreich, 2012, p. 550] и тем самым осуществляя то, что В. Зелизер называет «отношенческой работой» (re la tional work) [Zelizer, 2012].…”

“…Здесь упор делается не на культурно символические элементы [Zelizer, 2012] и не на эмоцио нальные составляющие отношений [Ban delj, 2012], а на институциональные аспек ты отношенческой работы, проявляющие ся в формировании разнообразных правил обмена [Флигстин, 2013]. Кроме того, в ка честве основного объекта исследований избираются не связи между индивидами (как в концепции отношенческой работы), а меж организационные связи, пусть даже они и воплощаются индивидами, наделен ными специальными полномочиями (ме неджерами компаний).…”