I've been dipping into Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy by Viviana Zelizer. It has been both fruitful and irritating.

Fruitful because this eminent economic sociologist covers some of the most interesting terrain in economics. In the past she has written about the concept of modern childhood in Pricing the Priceless Child, and about The Purchase of Intimacy. I've long believed economists should pay more attention to the sociological aspects of economic institutions. Would we be in the same boat in the financial crisis if there had been more careful study, including by economists, of the sociology of financial institutions? Yet few sociologists have entered that terrain – Donald Mackenzie is one exception when it comes to finance.

So I very much welcome Zelizer's research agenda. This volume is a series of essays covering the valuation of human lives, the social meaning of money, intimacy and caring, as well as some more general ruminations on capitalism and the economy. There is a lot of absolutely fascinating insight in the essays I've read so far, especially the historical accounts of how some economic structures and institutions have come about.

My irritation is twofold. One is a constant complaint about the impenetrable language of academic sociology. I know we economists have our own jargon, but I found Zelizer just as heavy-going as most other sociologists. Please, publishers, could you encourage some pop sociology for frivolous readers like me?

The other is the author's tendency to be as dismissive of economists as – to be fair – many economists are of sociology. I suppose I should be hardened to the way critics of economics are criticizing a straw man version of my subject but it does become wearisome. However, there is a more substantive issue, which is that economics itself offers some deep insights about human motivation. Behind the caricature of selfish calculating machine human beings in economic models, there is an evolutionary truth about self-interested actions. Behind the abstraction of identical individuals engaging in market transactions, there is the truth that the anonymity of markets brings real benefits to people compared with the stasis and intrusiveness of traditional (usually rural) economic relationships. Traditional economies have their downside – they limit mobility and human potential, trap people in hierarchies, discourage innovation, at worst become tribal and repressive. In other words, the sociology of markets is multifaceted and conventional economics approaches set out one of the facets very clearly. Partha Dasgupta has written illuminatingly about this.

Still, in the interests of fruitful exchange between economists and sociologists, I think this debate is only to be encouraged, and this is a volume of sociology well worth economists having a look. It also offers a good introduction to Zelizer's previous books.

PS Apologies that this blog has been offline for a few days due to technical problems. Full service resumed again!