I am Marco Trentini, I am an Italian sociologist,
and I work at the department of education,
University of Bologna.
What are you working on right now?
I just finished writing a book about
economic sociology.
It’s a book aimed at students of economic
sociology, a sort of hand book.
I hope to provide critical thinking, not just
revision of theory.
It is meant for students studying economic sociology,
I think also studying economics, and you know
there’s a big debate about how economics
is taught in University.
After the recent crisis there’s some disappointment
about how economics is studied in the economics
faculty or school.
There is a certain movement maybe from students
mainly that it is assumed that there are necessary
multi-perspectives to study economics and
I think economic sociology could be one of
these perspectives.
What is the book about actually?
The book is an overview about economic
sociology, and economic sociology is a field
inside sociology which analyses the economic
phenomena according to the sociological perspective.
What is the difference between economic
sociology and economics?
The difference is the approach you
use to study economics.
In the beginning economics and sociology are
not very distinctive; they’ve become distinctive
during the last century.
Since the end of 19th century economists used
a particular language to describe economics
in the economic phenomena and the language
was math, they used a lot of modelling and
so on.
Economic sociology used a different approach,
and not necessarily based on math and modelling.
So economic sociologists can use quantitative
data in a different way.
What I mean is that when you use formal modelling,
you have to simplify the reality but of course
you cannot describe the exact reality, you
have to choose some variables, to include
some variables in the model; you have to put
out some other variable.
Of course the economists are not so silly,
they know that the model simplifies their
reality, but they think that the model is
able to grasp the reality.
Economic sociology uses a completely different
perspective because some variables that in
economic analysis are out are included in
the analysis.
It is rather common especially after new economic
sociology in approach introduced mainly in
the USA starting from the 70s of the last
century, it’s quite common in economic sociology
to use the concept of embeddedness.
What does it mean; does it mean that economic
action happens in a social context?
If you have to grasp and understand how economy
works, you have to analyse also the social
context.
I don’t think that there’s just one perspective
to look at society.
And I think a good point of sociology is to
think of sociology as not a paradigm, it has
plenty of perspectives.
This gives a wider perspective, you have a
different perspective to look at the phenomena,
maybe you don’t have a strong theory but
maybe it’s not a weak point because sometimes
strong theory constrains also your perspective
or your way to understand phenomena.
How do these theoretical approaches that
we are speaking about influence our reality,
or can they influence our reality?
Why are they important to us?
Economics affects our reality because
usually economics is used to develop political
economies.
We have seen in the last era the great debate
on how to respond to an economic crisis, austerity,
or no austerity.
This debate is based on theory, but some of
these theories are not totally right.
I mean if you look at austerity, the politics
of austerity is not based on good understanding
of economics.
Do you think that we need the different
perspectives in order to understand our society
more?
If you want to understand economics
I think it’s useful to have a different
perspective.
The recent events show that just one perspective
does not help.
If you look at for instance, education, of
course I am interested in education; it’s
quite common to think of education like sort
of a human capital investment.
What does it mean?
You pay in order to get a return, and the
return of education is in time.
I don’t think it’s a good perspective
to look at education because I can say in
my case for instance, my return is a total
failure because I have studied, I have a degree,
a PhD and so on, and my return is good, but
not as good as it should be after all the
time I spent studying.
Anyway I don’t feel my investment in education
was a failure, but if you just look at the
economic return it’s a failure, a sort of
failure I mean.
I didn’t maximize.
And why didn’t you maximize it?
I prefer to be a researcher, as it
doesn’t matter how much my income is.
Tell me, what do you like doing when
you’re not working on research?
I do different things; sociology is
not all my world.
I read the news, I listen to jazz, and I watch
sport. Football.
What makes music so special for you?
Music is important to me because music
fills the silence, and I think it’s something
that gives meaning to your life to some extent,
because it gives you emotion, expresses sentiments,
and so it’s really important. Thank you Marco!
 
