摘要：Economic Sociology has had a long,
complicated, fluctuating, hot-and-cold
relationship with economic history. Karl Marx and Max
Weber both knew a lot of (then) state-of-the-art economic
history, and it is difficult to think of a contemporary topic
of interest to economic sociologists that doesn¡¯t have an
historical angle (in between Marx and today, consider Neil
Smelser¡¯s analysis of the British cotton manufactures during
the industrial revolution). But our warm embrace of
economic history is filled with ambivalence because it remains
important to have a separate academic identity, to
maintain our sociological bona fides, to show that we
aren¡¯t ¡°merely¡± doing economic history, and so on. And
indeed we aren¡¯t doing the same thing. So the relationship
consists of wary distance punctuated by periods of close
contact. Like it or not, economic sociology is saddled with
economic history.
