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

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 an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPolitics & society Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 145 - 174
Main Author Zelizer, Viviana A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2012
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Accounting
Activity analysis
Appropriations
Behavioural economics
Boundaries
Differentiation
Economic activity
Economic differentiation
Economic sociology
Economics
Mass Media
Money
Personal relationships
Relational work
Social Relations
Sociologists
Sociology
Transactional analysis
economic sociology
earmarking
relational work
mental accounting
embeddedness
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Summary: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.
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ISSN:0032-3292
1552-7514
DOI:10.1177/0032329212441591