The book is a study in comparative legal and economic history. It asks why early modern property institutions in rural China and England went down distinctly different paths—and whether these institutional differences had any macro-level economic effects. The book’s central thesis ties together cultural analysis with law and economics—two theoretical paradigms that have had virtually no interaction over the past several decades—but also engages the growing literature on global economic divergence.

"Economists and Societies" is the first book to systematically compare the profession of economics in the United States, Britain, and France, and to explain why economics, far from being a uniform science, differs in important ways among these three countries. Drawing on in-depth interviews with economists, institutional analysis, and a wealth of scholarly evidence, Marion Fourcade traces the history of economics in each country from the late nineteenth century to the present, demonstrating how each political, cultural, and institutional context gave rise to a distinct professional and disciplinary configuration. She argues that because the substance of political life varied from country to country, people's experience and understanding of the economy, and their political and intellectual battles over it, crystallized in different ways - through scientific and mercantile professionalism in the United States, public-minded elitism in Britain, and statist divisions in France. Fourcade moves past old debates about the relationship between culture and institutions in the production of expert knowledge to show that scientific and practical claims over the economy in these three societies arose from different elites with different intellectual orientations, institutional entanglements, and social purposes. Much more than a history of the economics profession, "Economists and Societies" is a revealing exploration of American, French, and British society and culture as seen through the lens of their respective economic institutions and the distinctive character of their economic experts.

The Great Good Place argues that "third places" - where people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation - are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of democracy.

In this landmark work of economic sociology, Lucien Karpik introduces the theory and practical tools needed to analyze markets for singularities. Singularities are goods and services that cannot be studied by standard methods because they are multidimensional, incommensurable, and of uncertain quality. Examples include movies, novels, music, artwork, fine wine, lawyers, and doctors. "Valuing the Unique" provides a theoretical framework to explain this important class of products and markets that for so long have eluded neoclassical economics. With this innovative theory - called the economics of singularities - Karpik shows that, because of the uncertainty and the highly subjective valuation of singularities, these markets are necessarily equipped with what he calls 'judgment devices' - such as labels, brands, guides, critics, and rankings - which provide consumers with the credible knowledge needed to make reasonable choices. He explains why these markets are characterized by the primacy of competition by qualities over competition by prices, and he identifies the conditions under which singularities are constructed or are in danger of losing their uniqueness. After demonstrating how combinations of the numerous and multiform judgment devices can be used to identify different market models, Karpik applies his analytical tools to the functioning of a large number of actual markets, including fine wines, movies, luxury goods, pop music, and legal services.

How do dealers price contemporary art in a world where objective criteria seem absent? "Talking Prices" is the first book to examine this question from a sociological perspective. On the basis of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, including interviews with art dealers in New York and Amsterdam, Olav Velthuis shows how contemporary art galleries juggle the contradictory logics of art and economics. In doing so, they rely on a highly ritualized business repertoire. For instance, a sharp distinction between a gallery's museumlike front space and its businesslike back space safeguards the separation of art from commerce. Velthuis shows that prices, far from being abstract numbers, convey rich meanings to trading partners that extend well beyond the works of art. A high price may indicate not only the quality of a work but also the identity of collectors who bought it before the artist's reputation was established. Such meanings are far from unequivocal. For some, a high price may be a symbol of status; for others, it is a symbol of fraud. Whereas sociological thought has long viewed prices as reducing qualities to quantities, this pathbreaking and engagingly written book reveals the rich world behind these numerical values. Art dealers distinguish different types of prices and attach moral significance to them. Thus the price mechanism constitutes a symbolic system akin to language.

本书考察了从20世纪60年代开始对东京本土历史的利用和动员所发生的四个场所：公共广场、居住社区、道路和博物馆。这四个场所中的每一个都代表了一种类型的活动，都与城市所有权以及市民们围绕着这些所有权提出的基本诉求相关联，也象征了对于城市空间的一种态度。这四者一起构成了一组关于空间和物品的所有权的分类模型：属于所有人，属于对它进行共同占有的一部分人，属于那些对它进行改造的人，属于被官方界定的遗产范围之内。

The definitive, bestselling book on the origins and development of nationalism.
Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: what makes people live, die and kill in the name of nations? He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was adopted by popular movements in Europe, by imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa, and explores the way communities were created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism and printing, and the birth of vernacular languages-of-state. Anderson revisits these fundamental ideas, showing how their relevance has been tested by the events of the past two decades.

收入本文集的文章最早一篇写于1986年，最近一篇写于2017年，作者始终依托中国改革的实际经验研究产权与制度变迁。
在开篇“真实世界的经济学”一文中，作者对“既不时髦也不流行”的科斯经济学研究方法进行了阐释——到引人入胜的真实世界找问题、重点研究约束条件以及努力把认识一般化。以此方法论为引领，接下来的文章都是关于中国改革的经验研究，涉及农地改革、国企改革、医疗改革、城乡关系、货币制度以及管制改革等领域。在结尾的“体制成本与中国经济”一文中，作者在重新厘定概念的基础上，对中国经济高速增长及其转变的经济逻辑给出了新的解释。
阅读这本文集，读者不但可以跟随作者由微及著，纵览波澜壮阔的改革历程，也可为研究和理解中国的现实问题拓宽思路。

万历十五年，亦即公元1587年，在西欧历史上为西班牙舰队全部出动征英的前一年；而在中国，这平平淡淡的一年中，发生了若干为历史学家所易于忽视的事件。这些事件，表面看来虽似末端小节，但实质上却是以前发生大事的症结，也是将在以后掀起波澜的机缘。在历史学家黄仁宇的眼中，其间的关系因果，恰为历史的重点，而我们的大历史之旅，也自此开始……
《万历十五年》是黄仁宇的成名之作，也是他的代表作之一。这本书融会了他数十年人生经历与治学体会，首次以“大历史观”分析明代社会之症结，观察现代中国之来路，给人启发良多。英文原本推出后，被美国多所大学采用为教科书，并两次获得美国书卷奖历史类好书的提名。

《社群、组织与大众民主:印度喀拉拉邦社会政治的民族志》讲述了：“到民间去”，曾经是一个世纪前中国现代社会科学发生期所酝酿出来的口号。先有具备学术规范的社会调查，才有社会科学的出现。在少数人一段时间的尝试之后，一句凝结着共同体集体意识的“到民间去”成为1919年之后的知识界的运动，在中国促成书斋学问之外的社会调查之风蓬勃兴起。社会科学诸学科此前在中国主要是课堂传授的西方书本知识，“到民间去”的调查之风呼唤着以中国社会为对象的知识生产，这种知识生产逐渐造就了中国社会科学诸学科。

关于中国国家的治理逻辑，本书主要沿着两条脉络进行探讨：一是中央权威与地方政府之间的关系，这体现在各级政府体制的制度设施和行为方式；一是国家与民众之间的关系，这体现在国家与社会群体的相互影响上。本书从学术上推进了当前国内的国家治理研究，并为社会科学研究者提供了一种可以参照 的研究路径和视角。

Do institutions think? If so, how do they do it? Do they have minds of their own? If so, what thoughts occupy these suprapersonal minds? Mary Douglas delves into these questions as she lays the groundwork for a theory of institutions. Usually the human reasoning process is explained with a focus on the individual mind; her focus is on culture. Using the works of Emile Durkheim and Ludwik Fleck as a foundation, "How Institutions Think" clarifies the extent to which thinking itself is dependent upon institutions. Different kinds of institutions allow individuals to think different kinds of thoughts and to respond to different emotions. It is just as difficult to explain how individuals come to share the categories of their thought as to explain how they ever manage to sink their private interests for a common good. Douglas forewarns us that institutions do not think independently, nor do they have purposes, nor can they build themselves. As we construct our institutions, we are squeezing each other's ideas into a common shape in order to prove their legitimacy by sheer numbers. She admonishes us not to take comfort in the thought that primitives may think through institutions, but moderrjs decide on important issues individually. Our legitimated institutions make major decisions, and these decisions always involve ethical principles.

本书以中产阶级的生活方式为观察对象，透过丰富鲜活的民俗材料，描述了1880年至1910年间的瑞典中产阶级的生活图景：他们尝试摆脱“暴发户”的嘴脸，并希望与农民、没落贵族以及无产者划清界限；在努力营造自身的文化和生活方式的同时，他们也认为自己的文化形式是最文明、最先进的，并应被推广给普罗大众。正是在对“美好生活”的包装与塑造中，中产阶级自身的文化和价值观也成功地渗透到现代日常生活的每一个琐碎庸常的角落。
对于世纪之交瑞典中产阶级的这一研究发人深省，它表明对中产阶级的研究与认识应当基于理解而非抨击；本书的另一个重要贡献是表现历史研究可以结合其他相邻学科的方法。这两个成就令人鼓舞。
——Journal of Modern History
作者们所体现的知识视野之广令人惊叹。他们对来自民族学档案、课本、回忆录、小说和礼仪手册中的材料巧手编织，展现了中产阶级、农民和工人阶级的丰富的日常生活画面。本书还对社会文化的复杂性、冲突与抵牾进行了深入的思考，而这些内容往往都被忽视了。
——American Anthropologist
本书融合了历史学和民族学的方法所呈现的生活方式，不仅能吸引斯堪底纳维亚的学者们，同样也能吸引历史学家、社会学家，以及试图描述与解读19世纪西方文化和中产阶级的所有人。
——Ethnos

While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr. observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one way: from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do not: how to think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians.
Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History, he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.

This book reformulates the sociologicalsubdiscipline known as the sociology of knowledge.Knowledge is presented as more than ideology, including aswell false consciousness, propaganda, science andart.

A major challenge confronting contemporary theory is to overcome its fixation on written narratives and the culture of print. In this presentation of a general theory of systems, Germany's most prominent and controversial social thinker sets out a contribution to sociology that reworks our understanding of meaning and communication.
Luhmann concedes that there is no longer a binding representation of society within society, but refuses to describe this situation as a loss of legitimation or a crisis of representation. Instead, he proposes that we search for new ways of coping with the enforced selectivity that marks any self-description under the conditions of functionally differentiated modern society. For Luhmann, the end of metanarratives does not mean the end of theory, but a challenge to theory, an invitation to open itself to theoretical developments in a number of disciplines that, for quite some time, have been successfully working with cybernetic models that no longer require the fiction of the external observer.
Social Systems provides the foundation for a theory of modern society that would be congruent with this new understanding of the world. One of the most important contributions to social theory of recent decades, it has implications for many disciplines beyond sociology.

Originally published over twenty-five years ago, "Micromotives and Macrobehavior" still feels fresh today. And the subject of these stories - how small and seemingly meaningless decisions and actions by individuals often lead to significant unintended consequences for a large group - is more important than ever. In one famous example, Thomas C. Schelling shows that a slight-but-not-malicious preference to have neighbours of the same race eventually leads to completely segregated populations. The updated edition contains a new preface and the author's Nobel Prize acceptance speech.