Richard Swedberg Guest researcher

Professor Emeritus in Sociology

E-mail:richard.swedberg@score.su.se
Telephone:

+46 (0)8 674 79 89

My research has two foci, economic sociology and social theory. In economic sociology I am primarily interested in entrepreneurship, markets and theoretical ideas. I have made studies of the social structure of markets, financial crises, the development of entrepreneurial theory and, most recently, of Trump’s political ideology. For some of my work in economic sociology, see e.g. (ed. with Neil Smelser), The Handbook of Economic Sociology (2nd. ed 2005), (ed. with Mark Granovetter), The Sociology of Economic Life (3rd ed. 2011) and (ed. with Hirohito Miyazaki) The Economy of Hope (2017).

My second major interest is social theory, with an emphasis on theorizing. In theorizing you look at the processes through which a theory is created, that is, on the attempts to create and use such tools as concepts, categories, abstractions, metaphors and the like. For my general approach to theorizing, see The Art of Social Theory (2014) and (ed.) Theorizing in the Social Sciences.

For separate articles on theorizing (also on economic sociology), see my web page at the Department of Sociology, Cornell University: https://sociology.cornell.edu/richard-swedberg