Socio-Economics: Toward a New Synthesis.

• Author: Clark, Barry S.

Socio-economics is the most recent expression of a long-standing disenchantment with neoclassical economics. However, unlike institutional economics, post-Keynesian economics, social economics, or political economy, socio-economics is being advanced predominantly by social scientists outside the umbrella of the economics profession. With sociologist Amitai Etzioni at the forefront, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics is a vibrant and growing assemblage in which organizational theorists, sociologists, management theorists, philosophers, and policy analysts far outnumber economists. The book under review presents the highlights of an international conference held in 1989 at the Harvard School of Business. That fact, however, should not deter potentional readers. This book is substantially more than a typical "proceedings" volume from a professional conference. It stands as a prolegomenon to the synthetic and interdisciplinary approach being fashioned by socio-economists. If the quality of these articles is any indication, the future of socio-economics is quite bright.

The fundamental assertion of socio-economists is that individual choices and market outcomes are deeply embedded in historical, political, social, and cultural patterns. Thus economists' efforts to portray society as resulting from rational individual choices captures only a portion of the causative sequences determining the quality of human existence. Because of this narrowed vision, policies derived from economic theory will consistently fail to recognize and foster the human proclivities for learning, pursuing virtue, and cooperating to collectively reshape social institutions.

Sociology also is subjected to critical scrutiny by socio-economists. Whereas economic man is undersocialized, sociological man is oversocialized. Economic man is a chooser par excellence, but sociological man has no choices to make. Believing the humans are both shaped by and shapers of their social environment, socio-economists seek to develop a synthetic methodology based on reciprocal causation between individual choice and social context.

An ambivalent attitude toward economics appears in most of the articles. On one hand, there are conciliatory gestures of respect for the rigor and elegance of neoclassical models. In that vein, contributors speak of enriching and broadening economics, opening channels of communication between economists and other social scientists, and making the...