It is possible to identify a "general sociology of the economy" and an "economic sociology". The first corresponds to a sociology of capitalism as an economic and social system or to what Weber called the "science of the social economy" (die sozialökonomische Wisenschaft). The second conception, economic sociology, also retains the general orientations of the founders of sociology, aiming at critically observing the principal facts identified by the economic science. But in doing so economic sociology works on a radically different and a rather new type of institutional analysis.