Over the two last decades the boundaries between economics and sociology have become increasingly blurred. On the one hand, proponents of ‘economic imperialism’argue that the model of homo oeconomicus should be exported to all social sciences in order to provide them with the scientific rigor of neoclassical reasoning. On the other hand, proponents of ‘economic sociology’argue that economic action is always embedded in social relations, and the neoclassical postulate of atomized and asocial individuals is not able to explain economic phenomena adequately. The above methodological debate corresponds to a shift in the subjects studied by each discipline. Economics of the last two decades has become aware of the importance for economic efficiency of knowledge, trust, norms, institutions, values, culture, and so on. Sociology in turn has discovered that the abstraction from economic concerns is a serious missing link in its analysis. As M. Zald has remarked in his review essay on the new institutional economics of O. Williamson, it is ‘extraordinary how sociologists manage to ignore issues of profit and efficiency in their thinking about capitalism’(Zald, 1987, p. 705).

In this intellectual context the past relations between economics and sociology have come under scrutiny, especially from authors belonging to the strand of ‘economic sociology’(Swedberg, 1987; Granovetter, 1990; Gislain and Steiner, 1995). Thanks to these works we have today a comprehensive view of the history of ‘economic sociology’and indirectly of the past relations between economics and sociology. However, the already existing historical studies pay little attention to the role of the broader social and ideological context in the evolution of economic sociology. Consequently, many interesting questions remain insufficiently answered: why was the period 1890–1920 so fruitful for economic sociology? What happened during the period 1920–80, when the idea of an economic sociology was marginalized? And, most importantly, why has a new economic