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Social Structures of Accumulation: A “Punctuated” View of Embeddedness
Author(s) -
MCDONOUGH TERRENCE
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2011.00805.x
Subject(s) - punctuated equilibrium , embeddedness , capitalism , sociology , institutional change , economic system , social change , creative destruction , neoclassical economics , economics , political science , social science , economic growth , biology , law , paleontology , politics , public administration
A bstract This article starts from the institutional/evolutionary insight that economic processes are necessarily embedded in broader sets of social institutions and that these institutions change over time. It uses a Marxian framework, the Social Structure of Accumulation school, to argue that this change is not gradual or continuous. Rather, wide‐ranging institutional transformations follow periods of capitalist crisis, setting the stage for renewed accumulation and, eventually, new crises. This leads to a punctuated pattern of successive stages of capitalism.