Books in the New Dynamics of Innovation and Competition series

Brings together a range of sociologists and economists to study the role of demand and consumption in the innovative process

This volume makes a significant contribution to the new economic sociology. It draws upon a Polanyian foundation but moves forward, developing neo-Polanyian agendas in relation to developments of contemporary capitalism. -- .

How do people make judgments about what food is worth eating and what tastes good?; how do such judgments come to be shared by groups of people?; what social and organisational processes result in foods being certified as of decent or proper quality? This book offers some answers to these questions from the perspective of the social sciences. -- .

The book, newly available in paperback, considers the social role of economic institutions in society and examines the various meanings embedded in the word 'markets', as well as developing arguments on the nature of competition as an instituted economic process, rather than as competition being something that disturbs norms or institutions. -- .

This book 'puts markets in their place', knocking them off the pedestal as the self-organising marvel of capitalist economies. It debates a wide variety of markets, markets for food as well as for capital, for domestic service and for scientific knowledge, markets that succeed and markets that fail. -- .