ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY IN FRANCE Open Access

With the work of Durkheimian scholars like François Simiand, Maurice Halbwachs and Marcel Mauss, economic sociology became an original and particularly creative research tradition in France. When the Durkheimian approach to the economy was gradually replaced by the sociology of work, it survived outside of sociology proper, especially among economic historians, heterodox economists and anthropologists. At the end of the twentieth century economic sociology re-emerged as a major research field. The revival was part of a multidisciplinary movement for a critical rethinking of the economy (represented notably by the so-called Regulation School, the economics of conventions, and the Mauss movement). Within this context three research tendencies have acquired a specific significance: the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his collaborators, various ethnographic and anthropological approaches, and research on alternative economic arrangements distinct from market exchange as well as from the public sector.