Disembedded Markets

This book offers a sociological analysis of globalised capitalist markets, advancing the notion of ¿disembedded markets¿ to challenge the idea of ¿social embeddedness¿ common in economic sociology. Avoiding an exclusive focus on institutions, networks and trust relationships surrounding markets, the author concentrates on private property as the key institution of markets, in order to emphasise the historical origins of modern capitalism the free market narrative, and develop a socio-historical analysis of the disembedding process together with an account of the built-in contradictions and limits of market universalisation. Through an analysis of their encompassing character, this volume demonstrates that disembedded markets do not fit standard theoretical accounts of sociality ¿ a problem taken up not only by Karl Marx, but also by Friedrich August von Hayek and Niklas Luhmann ¿ and questions the attempts of the emerging approach of ¿economic theology¿ to draw parallels between the