CONTRACTUAL ARRANGEMENTS AND RELATIONAL S TRUCTURES

The notion of network is used in two different ways in current economi c sociology. In its first use, a network is considered to be a form of coordination of collective action, an alternative. to market and hier archy, in its second use, network analysis is a method for describing relational structures. On the occasion of the publication of the Handb ook of economic sociology (1994), edited by Nell Smelser and Richard S wedberg, in which eleven chapters deal with this difference, we rely o n sociological theories of collective action and the notion of partial equilibrium in order to put forward a criticism of the first approach and a defence of the second.