Dr. Storr will be teaching a graduate economic sociology seminar (syllabus here) during spring 2011 semester. This seminar will explore key writings within the “new economic sociology” and survey recent developments within the field. Special emphasis will be placed on how culture, norms, ideologies and values shape economic action and interaction. The first half of the course will focus on the core writings in the economics and sociology of the market. The second half of the course will introduce students to interesting writings in important areas in the current economic sociology literature.

Dr. Storr has written extensively within economic sociology. His “Post-Classical Political Economy: Polity, Society and Economy in Weber, Mises and Hayek” (co-authored with Peter J. Boettke) published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (2002), argues that the Austrian School of Economics, especially the work of Mises and Hayek, complements and extends Weber’s “social economics.”

Similarly, Dr. Virgil Storr’s article “The Market as Social Space: On the Meaningful Extraeconomic Conversations that Can Occur in Markets” published in The Review of Austrian Economics (2008) draws on Swedberg’s insight that the market is a “specific type of social structure” and develops a theory of how markets facilitate social activity and encourage noneconomic relationships.

His “Weber’s Spirit of Capitalism and the Bahamas’ Junkanoo Ethic” (2006) and “Schutz on Meaning and Culture” (2010), both published in The Review of Austrian Economics, as well as “The Social Construction of the Market” published in Society (2010) are theoretical contributions to the sociology of the market.