Current Research Projects

CRESI brings together a cluster of people engaged in research in a wide range of empirical areas, considerably broadening the scope and ambition of economic sociology. Below is an indication of current research activity:

Market Institutions and Regulation

• Financial markets and pensions
• Research in markets as instituted processes of exchange and distribution, with a particular emphasis on 'ordinary' mass markets of mass consumption (e.g.supermarkets).

Corporate Institutions and Business Networks

Social and Economic Rights

• A project on the institutional and societal shaping of the life-course, pension reform, new employment relations, and active labour market policy is in its late stages

Corporate Social Responsibility

Cultural Economy

• The politics of abundance and the growth of mass consumer markets in post-war Britain, with particular focus on the advertising industry.
  
  
• The growth of multiplex cinemas and the political economy of media in India.

Food and consumption

• A project on ready-made food and the role of supermarkets and consumers is currently in progress.

Work and Employment

• Transformations of work, and new divisions of labour in call centres, food provisioning, elder care, and consumption work.

Migration and Work

• Labour markets, economic cultural differences and European integration with ex-Soviet accession countries

Fiscal Sociology including Participatory and Gender Budgeting

Biotechnology and Bioeconomy

• A major research project on the emergent bioeconomy for fuels and energy started in October 2007.

Economies of Knowledge

• A project on the different evolutionary paths, and uneven development of different scientific and technological disciplines (natural and social), is being developed in collaboration with Richard Nelson (Columbia, NY).