Uncertainty, Conventional Behavior, and Economic Sociology

This paper addresses the problem of the conceptualization of social structure and its relationship to human agency in economic sociology. The background is provided by John Maynard Keynes’s observations on the effects of uncertainty and conventional behavior on the stock market; the analysis consists of a comparison of the social ontologies of the French Intersubjectivist School and the Economics as Social Theory Project in the light of these observations. The theoretical argument is followed by concrete examples drawn from a prominent recent study of the stock market boom of the 1990s.