book symposium on the emergence of organizations and markets

At the ASA meetings last August I was lucky to participate in an authors-meet-critics session for John Padgett’s and Woody Powell’s new book, The Emergence of Organizations and Markets. That vibrant session has now been published as a book symposium in the political sociology section newsletter, which you can download here.  My comments are a bit critical at points. I’m not convinced that the concept of “autocatalysis” is especially useful. John’s and Woody’s responses are definitely worth reading though. As you’d expect, they rise to the occasion and give a convincing defense of their perspective.

Being a part of the symposium has got me thinking more about different modes of theorizing and making way for the role of humans and actor motivation in sociological theory. Stay tuned for more thoughts on this in the near future.