Why and How Do Social Relations Matter for Economic Lives?

With bold concepts, methodological versatility, and refusal to accept theoretical straightjackets, Elinor Ostrom pioneered a radical rethinking of economic activity. One of her most transformative contributions was paying attention to the critical significance of social relations for explaining economic governance. This chapter establishes connections between Ostrom’s approach and economic sociologists’ relational accounts of economic life. Drawing from my own research, the paper shows how social relations matter for a set of economic arrangements I call “circuits of commerce”. It focuses on the cases of migrant remittances and college students’ economic transactions as two different categories of circuits.

This paper adapts my keynote lecture prepared for the launching of the Ostrom Speaker Series celebrating the 10th anniversary of Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize in Economics, sponsored by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University’s F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics on October 17, 2019. I draw substantial portions of the paper from Zelizer (2011, 2015). I am grateful to Stefanie Haeffele and Virgil Storr for their generosity and editorial efforts to make this volume possible. Stefanie also wonderfully coordinated my initial visit.

This chapter is part of an edited volume, "Living Better Together: Social Relations and Economic Governance in the Work of Ostrom and Zelizer."

Find the full chapter here.