Conventions and Categories in Markets

Abstract

Sociological interest in the topic of market conventions and categories has a long history, extending back to the works of Weber. With the rise of organization theory and new economic sociology in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars expanded the concept of conventions and categories in markets into important research topics, particularly in the context of market change and boundary expansion. Scholars in these fields have suggested that conventions and categories function both as a cognitive frame and as a formal structure, although the research foci have developed differently over time.