Should sociology be afraid of methodological individualism? A critical discussion of Mark Granovetter's Society and Economy: Framework and Principles

This review presents Mark Granovetter's most recent book, which aims to lay out the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the new economic sociology-a field that has been strongly influenced by this eminent sociologist. This provides the opportunity to return to some of his previous work. As part of our critical discussion of the book, we express our perplexity about the sudden introduction of the notion of the "pragmatic actor" in the final two chapters. Never clearly defined, this figure closely resembles the actor of methodological individualism, an analytic position that Granovetter firmly rejects and avoids in the first section. This conceptual inconsistency is all the more perplexing when seen in light of another, which, equally strange, can be observed in the most recent book by Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam, A Theory of Fields. Having presented actors whom they describe as competent and strategic, the authors then deny them any real autonomy or ability to evaluate or measure their commitment to and in collective action. The review concludes by questioning the broader significance of such conceptual slippages, and proposes the hypothesis that they are the sign of sociology's problematic position within the broader field of the social sciences.