The handbook of Economic Sociology (Second Edition) Edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg The handbook of Economic Sociology, Second Edition is the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of economic sociology available. The first edition, copublished in 1994 by Princeton University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation, soon established itself as the definitive presentation of the field, and has been widely read, reviewed, and adopted. Since then, the field of economic sociology has continued to grow by leaps and bounds and to move into new theoretical and empirical territory. The second edition, while being as all-embracing in its coverage as the first edition, represents a wholesale revamping. Nearly two-thirds of the chapters are new or have new authors. As in the first edition, Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg bring together leading sociologists as well as representatives of other social sciences. But the thirty chapters of this volume incorporate many substantial thematic changes and new lines of research - for example, more focus on international and global concerns, chapters on institutional analysis, the transition form socialist economies, organizations and networks, and the economic sociology of the ancient world. Neil J. Smelser was formerly University Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkley, where he was on faculty form 1958 to 1994, and director of the center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (1994-2001). Richard Swedberg is Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University.